Homestay (Continued)
Have I mentioned before that while on this program, time seems unusually warped and slowed? One day feels like half a week, a whole week feels like a month, and a month is simply immeasurable. In short, I think I'll be around 90 by the time this program is over.
Last week, while we were visiting a cultural site of traditional south Indian houses called Dhakshina Chitra, our tour guide was this tiny women in her 80s. She sped us through the park, barking orders, giving amazingly detailed histories of each house, and telling us "I teach at a University, so don't think I can't manage you students!" She was especially amused by the two tall guys in our group, who are each over six foot, and we have some funny pictures of the two of them with her, over two heads shorter than them, standing in the middle. When we asked her about her family she said she has a baby at home she has to go take care of every day (her husband).
So besides my homestay partner and I, two other women from our program live on the second floor of our house with our host mom's sister-in-law and her husband, but it is our host mom Suganthi, who does all the cooking and takes care of us. We've been attempting to help her cook (she laughed and just lets us watch) or just do our dishes (We say "Is this the sponge for dishes?" She laughs and says "No no," and elegantly shoves us out of the way). Finally we devised a plan to distract her, got her talking with us at the dinner table, made some jokes, complimented her cooking, discussed Indian culture, and quietly two of us slipped off to wash the dishes. But of course I couldn't keep a straight face and Suganthi started asking me why I was laughing, and then she heard the clanks and splashes. Needless to say, we were banned from even bringing dishes into the kitchen for two days afterwards.
Thursday night last week we asked Suganthi about her bangles and sarees, collections every Indian women loves showing off. We asked her which of her bangles were her favorites and she showed us the two simple gold bands, one on each wrist, that she wears everyday. "Those are too bothersome" she told us. And when we asked her how often she wears sarees she answered, "Only when I must, they're too much otherwise" and twirled a little in the kurta and loose pants she was wearing. An eminently practical woman, that is our host mom.
We spent hours after that looking at family photos, and Suraj showed us some of Suganthi's studs for her nose, teasing Suganthi for the diamond one her late husband gave her that she dropped down the sink while cleaning it a few months ago. Unlike many American teens, Suraj is always completely excited to show us pictures from his infancy and toddler-hood. He always wears this big toothy grin, with a round face and big ears. He has mostly his father's face and height, which give him sharp planes and a defined face, but his mother's eyes and build, which adds an element of sweetness and spark to his looks, and makes him as gangly thin as a young stork.
Suraj is also a game master. He loves cricket and we constantly pester him to teach us the rules (he explains when we ask, but we typically just get more confused). He is also an extremely competitive chess player, he and his eight year-old cousin who lives down the street are ruthless when they meet in a chess match. Somehow last week I got caught in a chess game with Suraj, I haven't played chess in years and he sat there stroking his chin before every move. I held on by the grace of god, before Suganthi came to the rescue with bangles, sarees and family photos (even Suraj was distracted!)
He is also a master of carrom, an Indian game that is a little like billiards, except the balls are flat disks like checkers pieces, and you flick the cue around with your fingers, attempting to get the pieces in one of four pockets on a small wooden board. Honestly, it's really hard and it hurts to flick the ivory cue around! Suraj and I teamed up against my homestay partners and Suraj's cousin last Friday. I made the most points of us newbies, but I also lost the game for my team. Suraj got revenge though, beating all his relatives (the six that were there) in the next game.
Now Chennai- I think the one thing everyone can say is that traffic in this city is one massive never-ending dangerous mess. At first it's really scary, crossing the road takes minutes of concentration, then you get used to it and think "Oh, this is no big deal", then a dump truck comes within inches of hitting you and you're back to being really scared. I haven't seen any accidents firsthand yet, but others in our group have and one of our rickshaw-men showed up one morning with a large tear in his shirt, telling us that a motorcycle ran into him the night before.
A couple days ago we were taking a bus to a site visit, but the street we were on was pretty narrow and there were other buses and autorickshaws parked on it. As we were weaving through them, stopping and starting to let other traffic past a motorcyclist drove past us in typical Chennaiker style, trying to squeeze in before the bus stopped again. Unfortunately the we started turning right then and pinned him between us and a parked auto. From the bus we couldn't really see what had happened until he began banging, hard and sharp on the bus's side.
Another part of the quintessential Chennai experience is the autorickshaw. Riding an auto for the first time is like riding an old theme park roller coaster, bumpy with lots of unexpected turns and basically nothing in the way of safety belts, and thus, utterly wonderful. Riding in an auto in the morning or late at night is the best. In the morning the city is just starting to get into the swing of things and doesn't have the crazy pace or horrible traffic deadlocks. At night cool breezes swim by unexpectedly and Chennai is actually very quiet. Everything smells like humidity and wet dirt, and the late night streets are ruled by animals more than man, stray dogs outnumber people in some areas. And you can spot pigs and cows rummaging through garbage as you rattle by in the auto.
Riding in an auto is also a feast for the nose, each street and neighborhood has its own scent, incense near temples, oranges and melons near rows of fruit stands, and warm spice by restaurants and food stands. The rivers consistently smell sickly sweet, like rotting biomass (which they are since the city's sewage dumps into them) and other people can't stand the smell passing by them. Chennai itself, on the whole, has a rich, thick smell to it, somehow a product of the heat, density of people, and overabundance of motor vehicles.
Unfortunately autos are also notoriously noisy, and each engine has its own unique roaring put-put. We always know when the auto driver who picks us up in the morning arrives because of the sound of his auto. different autos also have different kinds of horns, the older ones have adorable squeeze horns that are reminiscent of cars from the early 1900s. Newer ones have this horribly obnoxious wailing siren that is utterly deafening to the passengers. Getting a good auto driver -- one who doesn't charge you twice the regular price for being a foreigner, one who doesn't get angry and purposely cuts people off, one who doesn't honk too much (especially with a new horn), one who is willing to make change when all you have is big bills, and one who likes chatting with customers -- well getting a driver like that is a perpetual shot in the dark.
Okay, enough, I'll go back to updates next time. Things have just been a bit bogged down with the details for our project work. :)
Picture- Elliot's Beach, Chennai
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Have I mentioned before that while on this program, time seems unusually warped and slowed? One day feels like half a week, a whole week feels like a month, and a month is simply immeasurable. In short, I think I'll be around 90 by the time this program is over.
Last week, while we were visiting a cultural site of traditional south Indian houses called Dhakshina Chitra, our tour guide was this tiny women in her 80s. She sped us through the park, barking orders, giving amazingly detailed histories of each house, and telling us "I teach at a University, so don't think I can't manage you students!" She was especially amused by the two tall guys in our group, who are each over six foot, and we have some funny pictures of the two of them with her, over two heads shorter than them, standing in the middle. When we asked her about her family she said she has a baby at home she has to go take care of every day (her husband).
So besides my homestay partner and I, two other women from our program live on the second floor of our house with our host mom's sister-in-law and her husband, but it is our host mom Suganthi, who does all the cooking and takes care of us. We've been attempting to help her cook (she laughed and just lets us watch) or just do our dishes (We say "Is this the sponge for dishes?" She laughs and says "No no," and elegantly shoves us out of the way). Finally we devised a plan to distract her, got her talking with us at the dinner table, made some jokes, complimented her cooking, discussed Indian culture, and quietly two of us slipped off to wash the dishes. But of course I couldn't keep a straight face and Suganthi started asking me why I was laughing, and then she heard the clanks and splashes. Needless to say, we were banned from even bringing dishes into the kitchen for two days afterwards.
Thursday night last week we asked Suganthi about her bangles and sarees, collections every Indian women loves showing off. We asked her which of her bangles were her favorites and she showed us the two simple gold bands, one on each wrist, that she wears everyday. "Those are too bothersome" she told us. And when we asked her how often she wears sarees she answered, "Only when I must, they're too much otherwise" and twirled a little in the kurta and loose pants she was wearing. An eminently practical woman, that is our host mom.
We spent hours after that looking at family photos, and Suraj showed us some of Suganthi's studs for her nose, teasing Suganthi for the diamond one her late husband gave her that she dropped down the sink while cleaning it a few months ago. Unlike many American teens, Suraj is always completely excited to show us pictures from his infancy and toddler-hood. He always wears this big toothy grin, with a round face and big ears. He has mostly his father's face and height, which give him sharp planes and a defined face, but his mother's eyes and build, which adds an element of sweetness and spark to his looks, and makes him as gangly thin as a young stork.
Suraj is also a game master. He loves cricket and we constantly pester him to teach us the rules (he explains when we ask, but we typically just get more confused). He is also an extremely competitive chess player, he and his eight year-old cousin who lives down the street are ruthless when they meet in a chess match. Somehow last week I got caught in a chess game with Suraj, I haven't played chess in years and he sat there stroking his chin before every move. I held on by the grace of god, before Suganthi came to the rescue with bangles, sarees and family photos (even Suraj was distracted!)
He is also a master of carrom, an Indian game that is a little like billiards, except the balls are flat disks like checkers pieces, and you flick the cue around with your fingers, attempting to get the pieces in one of four pockets on a small wooden board. Honestly, it's really hard and it hurts to flick the ivory cue around! Suraj and I teamed up against my homestay partners and Suraj's cousin last Friday. I made the most points of us newbies, but I also lost the game for my team. Suraj got revenge though, beating all his relatives (the six that were there) in the next game.
Now Chennai- I think the one thing everyone can say is that traffic in this city is one massive never-ending dangerous mess. At first it's really scary, crossing the road takes minutes of concentration, then you get used to it and think "Oh, this is no big deal", then a dump truck comes within inches of hitting you and you're back to being really scared. I haven't seen any accidents firsthand yet, but others in our group have and one of our rickshaw-men showed up one morning with a large tear in his shirt, telling us that a motorcycle ran into him the night before.
A couple days ago we were taking a bus to a site visit, but the street we were on was pretty narrow and there were other buses and autorickshaws parked on it. As we were weaving through them, stopping and starting to let other traffic past a motorcyclist drove past us in typical Chennaiker style, trying to squeeze in before the bus stopped again. Unfortunately the we started turning right then and pinned him between us and a parked auto. From the bus we couldn't really see what had happened until he began banging, hard and sharp on the bus's side.
Another part of the quintessential Chennai experience is the autorickshaw. Riding an auto for the first time is like riding an old theme park roller coaster, bumpy with lots of unexpected turns and basically nothing in the way of safety belts, and thus, utterly wonderful. Riding in an auto in the morning or late at night is the best. In the morning the city is just starting to get into the swing of things and doesn't have the crazy pace or horrible traffic deadlocks. At night cool breezes swim by unexpectedly and Chennai is actually very quiet. Everything smells like humidity and wet dirt, and the late night streets are ruled by animals more than man, stray dogs outnumber people in some areas. And you can spot pigs and cows rummaging through garbage as you rattle by in the auto.
Riding in an auto is also a feast for the nose, each street and neighborhood has its own scent, incense near temples, oranges and melons near rows of fruit stands, and warm spice by restaurants and food stands. The rivers consistently smell sickly sweet, like rotting biomass (which they are since the city's sewage dumps into them) and other people can't stand the smell passing by them. Chennai itself, on the whole, has a rich, thick smell to it, somehow a product of the heat, density of people, and overabundance of motor vehicles.
Unfortunately autos are also notoriously noisy, and each engine has its own unique roaring put-put. We always know when the auto driver who picks us up in the morning arrives because of the sound of his auto. different autos also have different kinds of horns, the older ones have adorable squeeze horns that are reminiscent of cars from the early 1900s. Newer ones have this horribly obnoxious wailing siren that is utterly deafening to the passengers. Getting a good auto driver -- one who doesn't charge you twice the regular price for being a foreigner, one who doesn't get angry and purposely cuts people off, one who doesn't honk too much (especially with a new horn), one who is willing to make change when all you have is big bills, and one who likes chatting with customers -- well getting a driver like that is a perpetual shot in the dark.
Okay, enough, I'll go back to updates next time. Things have just been a bit bogged down with the details for our project work. :)
Picture- Elliot's Beach, Chennai
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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