One of Those “Oh No!” Moments

Of course the day after I vowed to never drink water outside of the house again…. I do!  I went out with one of the translators to interview someone for my project.  We went to talk to this one lady and her daughter, they were SO nice!  They were super excited to have me in their little home; we ended up staying there for almost 3 hours! The majority of our time there wasn’t even related to my project because they wanted me to look at a bunch of their photo albums haha!  The main lady that we spoke with wanted me to see the wedding album from one of her sons who got married not too long ago.  She brought me out a HUGE book and started going through it with me, pointing out each picture and talking about it for probably 3 minutes per picture.  It took a long time to get through the album haha but it was really fun to look at.  She ended up having me go through four different albums; my translator was trying to flip through the pages as fast as she could haha recognizing how long it would take.  Well they were incredibly sweet and very hospitable; it was a great experience for the most part.  Towards the end of my interview with them, the mother brought out a plate of sweets to offer to my translator and I.  I still wasn’t feeling very well from my night before but I didn’t want to be rude so I took a “sweet” to be polite, I took a small bite and regretted it haha (a good amount of the “sweets” or “desserts” here aren’t exactly pleasing to the taste buds if ya know what I mean) I figured I would just take the rest of it home with me and dispose of it there.  Well during our conversation they insisted that I eat it haha so I fought with my mouth and stomach to swallow each bite and keep it down.  I was relieved when I finished that sweet but then she brought out another plate with two other types of sweets to offer to me!  Still not wanting to offend, I picked the smallest option and started eating it “mmm! It’s so good!” I said to try and thank her haha she smiled at me and then handed me a big cup of water!!! OH NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!  

I awkwardly held it not knowing what to do, while I tried to swallow the other treat and keep it down.  Well what do ya know, as soon as I finished that sweet she held the plate out again to me wanting me to eat the other!  There was no way I was going to be able to convince my mouth to swallow more especially when it was such a large sweet.  So I tried to say “no thank you I’m super full” but she kept insisting that I take it.  We finally settled on me at least trying it so I broke off a small piece to hurry and swallow and then took two very small sips of the water to wash it all down haha.  My translator must have recognized the panicked look on my face about the water, because she then told me that it was just fine if I didn’t finish it.  Whew!!! What a relief!!!  I’m sooo glad I didn’t have to drink all of that water!  I didn’t want to offend them so I’m so grateful for my wonderful translator!  It was a really fun visit with this family, they were so incredibly nice!  My translator told them how I was getting married when I got back home, and they insist that I get married here in India! Haha and that I could come live with them, they were really nice cute people!

Magic Muslim Medicine Man!!! And A Lesson Learned…

The cute family that we live with here has an adorable little baby boy, he is about 3 ½ to 4 months old now.  I guess he has been acting kind of sick and they think it is because some evil spirits are bothering him.  Everyone knows the obvious thing to do when you are sick…. I mean having evil spirits bother you, is to go visit a magic medicine man!  So a bunch of us wanted to go with and see this guy and what he would do.  It was really interesting to watch him work.  One of the main things that he does is make mantras? (supposedly that's what they are called) These are magic spells that are written on a tiny piece of paper, rolled up, and then placed inside a tiny capsule which is then tied around your neck, arm, or ankle.  

Close up of my mantra

Me wearing my mantra and one of my new friends, Gieva!

So we watched this magic Muslim medicine man do his work on a couple of people and then Sailaja (who came with us) said that we could all try it too!  I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to do it because at one part of the ritual or whatever it was that he was doing, he would pour some water into a little golden bowl and pour it into your mouth.  I didn’t want to drink the water in case it was bad for us and a couple of the other girls questioned it too but YOLO!  One of the girls said YOLO! and reminded us that we would probably never have an opportunity like this again so… that decided it!  We took turns sitting on the ground of his little hut in front of him so he could bless us and who knows what else. Haha I couldn’t understand anything he was saying and had no idea what he was doing so I couldn’t really tell you what happened.  He made each of us our own little mantras, blessed us, put some sort of medicine on our necks, and slapped water across our faces hahaha!  It was super funny to watch him pour some water from the little gold bowl into his hand, whisper some things to it, and then just splat it across each girl’s face!  Then he would pour the rest of the water in the bowl into our mouths… lovely.  I took some pictures of Raju, the baby’s father, while the magic man was working on him, but sadly didn’t get any other pictures.  I did get the whole thing on video when I was doing it though!  I just don’t know how to post it so sorry!

Important lesson sadly learned: Don’t drink any water outside of the house!  Our house has fresh water that’s safe delivered for us to drink.  Any other water (with the exception of bottled water) is most likely bad for us to drink.  So the water that I drank from the “medicine man” made me super sick!  It was super sweet though because the next morning the cooks made me French toast for breakfast!!!  They knew I liked it and that it would probably be better for my stomach to eat something that was familiar and not spicy.  How sweet! They take such good care of us.

My Little Puppy!!!

So we went to go see these cool ancient Buddhist ruins that are 2,000 years old.  It was a cool place to see!  But I got a little distracted….  There are TONS of dogs here, I mean TONS!  And probably 98-99% of them are strays and I’ve been good about holding myself back from petting them.  I know I shouldn’t pet stray dogs….. But how on earth am I supposed to not pet a puppy?!  Impossible!  Especially this little guy!!!

So anyways I got supper distracted on our visit to see the ruins because the puppy was so cute!  I wish I could have taken him back with me; it killed me to leave him! L L L But we did go back to the same place a few days later and I saw him hanging out with the guards so hopefully they are taking care of him!  

Oh yeah, and here's some pictures of the ruins. ;) 

Pictures from the second trip to this site:

I am So Dang Tall!

When we went to relief society on Sunday I realized how very short and small a lot of the women are here.  Some of them are around my same height but there are also some that are super short!  Seriously I’m a whole head taller than some of them!  I think India may be one of the best places for me to feel so dang tall!  So I’ll be sure to enjoy what it’s like being a tall person for the next four months before I come back home. 

We’ve taken quite a few shopping trips to get clothes and things which has also made us realize how much bigger we are than the people here.  But it’s fun to go out to different stores and find little things that remind us of home. 

One of out shopping trips.

We found this great little store that has lays chips and best of all Oreos!  We’ve also found Quaker oatmeal packets which made me so excited until I found that not one of them is a flavor you would see at home, they were all some type of spicy flavor!  Yuck!  Each flavor had some sort of hot spice flavoring.  The same thing happened when I found Cup of Noodles, all the Cup of Noodles came in some sort of spicy flavor!  There is no escaping the spice here.  So luckily they haven’t messed with the Oreos!  Even the Lays chips (here I’ve found four different flavors) come in a spicy flavor.  They specify the salty original and the sour cream and onion flavors as “American flavors” and then the other two flavors are India flavors: “India’s Magic Masala” and “Chile Limon”.  

To India We Go!

Stefanie and I flew the whole way together which made it much less scary!  We had our last cheeseburgers in Seattle.  I took forever to eat mine because I wanted to cherish every single bite!  

The flights weren’t too bad, it took us a total of 25 hours of flying to get to Visakhapatnam.  Stefanie and I met up with two of the other girls in the program (Mckenna and Sarah) in Mumbai where we had a seven hour layover.  While we waited we pulled some chairs together and watched Eat Pray Love.  This helped me get more excited for our adventure because in the movie the main character goes to India!  

Eat Pray Love scene in India!

Once we arrived in Visakhapatnam we were getting our suitcases and our two Professors were there to meet us and take us to our home for the next 4 months.  They gave each of us a garnish to wear, they are very pretty.  

They are necklace-like things made up of a ton of flowers that hang to your knees.  I’ll just say, the driving here is CRAZY!!! I have no idea how we didn’t hit other cars or run over people! Seriously they are so crazy here! I’ll have to get a video of it.  There were some points where I just had to hold on tight and close my eyes hoping for the best haha.  We were lucky though because we got to ride in a car that had some seatbelts.  Rigshaws, however, are much different.  They are three wheeled taxi like automobiles, you just cram in a ton of people, no seatbelts, and no doors to keep you inside!

Well, I Never Saw Myself Doing This! A Whole New World Indeed!

One of the castes here is the Jollaries (totally spelled that wrong I’m sure).  Our professor has been working with the Jollaries for years and years, and we were invited to a celebration they were having.  Of course all of us wanted to go and were very excited! ………. Honestly I’ve put off writing about this experience because I still don’t even know how to explain it.  I’m still just in shock from it, so maybe if you want to hear all the details about it ask me when I get back home!  Basically what happened was, you guys, I went to my first animal sacrifice in the moonlight on a beach in India!!!  What the heck??  I mean really, who does that?  The whole time I felt like I was in some Indiana Jones movie or something, thinking no way could it all be real, but it was!  It really felt like something you would only see in a made up movie!  So anyways we went to this village late at night excited to see a celebration for one of their Goddesses and ended up watching a baby goat get its head chopped off and disemboweled and craziness. Fabulous! But we did learn a lot!  This celebration was for a Goddess of theirs who is crazy powerful.  She is the Goddess of broken promises and she demands a blood sacrifice.  Apparently it’s quite a lengthy ritual “celebration” with a lot of different steps to it.  We didn’t get to see the whole beginning because it was too dangerous for us, so we waited inside this little home with a cute friendly family till it was safer to go out.  We learned that part of the ritual involves people getting (or maybe acting) possessed.  If people become possessed that means that the Goddess is present, but if no one were to be possessed that would mean the Goddess wasn’t there or wasn’t pleased enough?  So I’m glad we were in side for that part.  We went to the beach to watch the rest of the ritual with the whole sacrifice part.  There were some crazy drunks all around us and these people were crazy about their fireworks, so we had to be careful and watch out for their fireworks to not get burned or something.  This was because they would set them off all around us and within a couple of feet from each of us.  After we got to leave and go back to our home all of us were in shock from what we had experienced.  It was funny though because our professor said that since we could handle animal sacrifices we should try going to some sort of human impalement thing that they do here in a couple of months!  This place is cool, but its got a lot of, let’s say interesting, things.

Since I wasn't able to get any pictures of all of this, the following pictures are a good way to sum up my expressions from this adventure!

We Are Silly Americans! You Do Not Ride The Bull!

The street we live on always has some activity going on.  I like to sit out on our balcony and just watch everything that is going on.  Sometimes guys will walk down the street shouting out to get people's attention for whatever they are selling.  Well one morning we heard a guy yelling, I went out on the balcony to see what was going on and it was this man pulling a bull along with him.  This bull was super decorated in a bunch of different colors and looked so fun so I called the others over to see.  The guy stopped and was holding out his hand to us and pointing to the bull.  We thought he was wanting us to pay him to ride the bull, so all of us kept saying no and eventually went inside.  Then Dr. Krishnayya (one of our main professors) called all of us downstairs to come outside.  He wanted to show us what the bull was all about.  One of the cooks came out and handed the man some money and some food and then put a pretty scarf onto the bulls back.  Professor Krishnayya told us that this man would come around and collect scarfs or clothing and money or food to give to the poor.  Then we told him that we thought we were supposed to ride the bull or something and he laughed so hard! He kept laughing at all of us for thinking such an outrageous thing!  Then through his laughter he said: "You are not in Mexico, you are not in Spain! You don't ride the bull!"  It was a pretty funny experience but now we know!

The people here are artists! Every night you'll see people washing off these little chalk drawings that they put on the entrance of their house and then they draw new ones.  The cooks drew a super huge one out on the street for the new year it looks so cool! 

This is an example of the chalk drawings in front of people's houses.

This is one of the carts that comes by our house.  Fun bananas!!!

Krishna Temple

Once we got back home from shopping, we were eating dinner and heard the bells from the Krishna temple going off.  The Krishna temple is in our neighborhood and its bells go off three times a day (morning, afternoon, and night).  Since we were interested in seeing the temple, Professor Nuckolls took us over.  We went all the way inside and to the room that all the people were worshiping in!  It was cool to see all the different statues of the Gods all around the room.  In the very center of the room was this big shrine of the God Krishna and his wife.  It was a big extravagant shrine, everyone was facing it but not directly.  It was interesting to learn that you never stand directly in front of a God or Deity.  It is the most important part of the worship ceremony and if you stand in the sight of the Deity or God it takes the energy out of you?  Something like that.  So all of the people were kneeling on the sides of the room instead of in front of Krishna.  So anyways, we got to watch the people sing and things.  After that part finished, there was a part where you go up and give gifts or offerings to Krishna.  Then one of the men (who I’m assuming would be similar to a temple worker) brought out this little golden cup and people would go up to him, hold out their hands, and he would dump (three times) a spoonful of “water” from the golden cup into their hands; the people would then drink it and wipe the rest of it on their hair.  Professor Nuckolls told us to do the same, to drink the water and then whatever we didn’t drink, we should put on our heads.  So when I went up and held out my hand I had two problems: 1. My hand wasn’t big enough to hold all the “water” so some fell on the floor. 2. It wasn’t water!  It was this brown watery stuff that had little things floating in it around the size of a poppy seed!  I tried to drink some and then dumped the rest of it in my hair!  It tasted like the smell of Vick’s vapor rub.  It was really late and we were all really tired from our busy day so we were going to leave, but before we did we got to participate in one more part…  After the God Krishna “eats” his food that the people bring, the leftovers are blended up and given to the people.  So we were all handed small cups of the leftovers to drink on our way out of the temple.  The majority of us found it to be… unpleasant.  It was this weird lumpy thick mixture with soggy rice in it.  I tried to drink as much of it as I could, forcing myself to swallow each mouthful before I started gagging.  I was able to drink most of it but not all of it.  So while we were walking home, me and another girl who couldn’t finish the drink turned a corner and threw the rest of it into some bushes when no one was looking!  Awful I know, but at least I tried to eat what I could!

This is the Krishna Temple in our neighborhood!

Another side note: I'll add some pictures of the Krishna temple soon! Also, my sarees are currently getting made so I'll add some pictures of those once I get them :)

Shopping Makes Everything Better ;)

After church, our rigshaw driver was outside waiting for us with one of our translators (Rajialakshmi) and Sailaja.  They took us over to the big CMR Mall to do some shopping!  Apparently getting some Indian clothing was a top priority so that we wouldn’t stand out so much.  The mall was huge and packed with people!  We were all thrilled to see a KFC and a Pizza Hut inside!  I was so grateful for having Sailaja and Rajialakshmi there to help us.  They knew where to go and helped pick out some clothes for us; we even got a few saris!  I’m excited to wear them but we have to take them to a seamstress first.  The women’s clothing here is absolutely beautiful!  There are so many colors and designs, and each one is different.  I must say, the shopping did its trick!  I felt better after getting some new clothes haha!

Church, Yay! Something Familiar-ish!

So on Sunday Sarah, Mckenna, Stefanie, and I decided we wanted to go to church.  We took a crazy Rigshaw ride over to church.  It was nice to go to church because it was something familiar; some of it was even in English! But a good amount was also in Telegu.  We came early and sat down and a lot of the people would come over to welcome us or wave hello.  Everyone was really nice!  I was really happy to see four missionaries at the meeting, they reminded me of Chase!  There was one guy, however, that came to greet us, he was really nice, but after we said hello he just kept standing there looking at us with a smile frozen on his face.  It was a little awkward…  I figured he was maybe a greeter or a member of the bishopric who wanted to make sure we felt welcomed.  He told us that BYU students are his friends and that we were all his friends.  I smiled at him and said thank you and we were happy to be his friends… oops!  When the meeting started I realized that he wasn’t in the bishopric or anything, he was one of the guys our professor warned us about.  He sat right behind us and would follow us in between the meetings.  We were warned by our professor to stay away from the boys in church because they only want romance; they want wives really bad (this became very obvious during testimony meeting when a lot of the guys would talk about how badly they want to find a wife!).   And unfortunately I learned later that it is bad to smile at the men because it gives them the wrong idea! Oh great!  Well, we left church 5 minutes early and we will be switching to a different church meeting time.  We also learned about some of the jewelry that married women wear here along with toe rings so I think I will be getting some of that!

Uh… thank you anyways!

We wanted to learn the Telegu (language everyone speaks here) word to say “thank you” to everyone, get this, they don’t have any word for “thank you”.  They don’t have thank you, or hello, or goodbye in their language!  Luckily from all the other BYU students who they have had in the past they recognize thank you and hello and goodbye.  So we say thank you to everyone in the house anyway and I think they understand.  

Our Cute Green Home

The house that we live in is quite nice!  We live in a very wealthy top class neighborhood.  There is a beautiful garden in the center that our balcony looks out to, and close by is the Krishna temple. It's fun to look out our balcony at the street because there is usually always something going on or fun animals to watch.  There's a lot of cute dogs everywhere, I wish I could pet them and take care of them haha! So there are always dogs in the street and the occasional cow or water buffalo! 

 

Garden view from our balcony

I share a room with Sarah, we have a nice room with a bathroom that has a real flushing toilet! (we are quite thrilled with our luck) some of the other bathrooms are….quite different!  We have a tub, but apparently it’s just for decoration, no one actually uses tubs.  So we take nice cold water “showers” (buckets of water) here.  We have a balcony with a pretty view of the garden and the street.  The balcony is shared with the room next door (Stefanie’s and Mckenna’s).  

There is a family that lives in the house; they do the laundry and cooking for us.  Everyone here is SO nice!  There are three cooks, and three translators; apart from the translators, no one else speaks English (this’ll be interesting).  The head cook, Durga, has a 2 year old boy named Sidhartha (he thinks he is the boss and does whatever he wants) and she has a three month old baby boy.  Her husband is named Raju, he does the laundry for us, he is really quiet but he is very nice.  Sailaja, one of the assistant cooks, lives here too, she is so very nice!  

Me holding the little baby (yet to be named) and Sidhartha in the back.

Side Note:

There are a lot of interesting names for people and things here, I have no idea how to spell them properly in English; so I will spell names and things the way they sound!