Mosquitos, henna, and yoga. September 6, 2008

In the last few days a few things have changed. I’ve ditched my mosquito net and decided to lather on the local’s mosquito repellent. The bottle has a cheesy smiling family, an active ingredient of N,N-dimethyl benzamide (while I can draw this thanks to my organic chemistry class, I have no idea how it actually works), and smells like baby powder. But it really seems to be working. Thankfully! I thought I was going to suffocate sleeping under a no airflow mosquito net one more night here.

I also got henna on my feet. It’s so intricate and I love everything other than the detailed snails… yes, snails. Three of them, slugging along my feet. The fact that the lady spoke absolutely no English and my cheery demeanor made her think that I loved them… and so I got three. Still, it’s very cool and no special occasion was required other than being with good company in India.

Let me say, though, that my first experience with yoga… was terrible. What? How can yoga not live up to what it should in India? After class on Tuesday a few of us girls took a rickshaw to a place mentioned in Lonely Planet (our own, personal tour guide in book form). We walked through the doors to a beautiful reception desk and a blast of air conditioning. I’ve done quite a bit of yoga in the U.S. and was hoping that my experience here would surpass all. Nope. Only a few steps past the elegant entryway lead us into a hot room with fake wood floors, rickety fans, and open windows to the loud Chennai street.

We started by doing a wrist exercise, up and down, 10 times. Then rotate to the left, 10 times. Rotate to the right, 10 times. And I thought, ‘Okay, I can do this, we’re just warming up. It will get good soon.’ Wrong. It never changed. Variations of our wrists then shoulders then neck and so on, 10 times each for an entire hour.

I only really thought it was ridiculous when we started doing the chicken walk. It was not peaceful nor relaxing (in large part thanks to the loud honking horns and city traffic right outside). And it was even more unpleasant when the power went out for about 10 minutes, which is very common around here but miserable in an already hot room.

On a good note, we’ve found a place that we call “Little America” just a little farther down the block from where we live. It is a little coffee shop with blasting AC and American music. The feeling inside is western and peaceful in sharp contrast to the neighborhood it sits in. One of the guys working asked me what we furiously write about. It’s taboo in Indian culture that we go to a place to sit and journal… or to go any place alone to relax. But it’s a good spot for us, and a relaxing break from the chaos outside.

I apologize for making this post seem so negative. All is well on this end and my experience is teaching me so much. India has made me speed up and slow down all at the same time. Many new things will come soon (including a good yoga place!). Love you all!

GiveLife Chennai Marathon September 1, 2008

If anyone is ever able to fall in love with a place in one day, yesterday was it for me. Saturday night before bed we decided that it would be fun to run the race that billboards all over town were advertising, the Marg GiveLife Chennai Marathon. Deanna, one of my fellow brave travelers decided that she wanted to run the half marathon while four others of us (Myself, Ian, Tony, and Rebecca) decided that with the extreme heat and our lack of acclimation, it would be safer just to run in the 7k.

So, we woke up Sunday morning with just enough time to put on our tennis shoes, and jumped in a rickshaw to take us to the beach. Can I say that four of us crammed into a rickshaw was a spectacle in itself… The roads were closed so we walked easily a couple miles to the start of the race. Each step packed us tighter in the crowd anxious to participate… I had no idea this thing was this big… Again, as apparent celebrities, people were coming up to us and asking us many questions, most just wanted a chance to shake our hands, a man even made me do a victory pose for a photo.

The race began with a great number of balloons released into the hot morning. Did I mention, there were so many people! Rebecca and I ran the whole thing and were probably the only women in the entire 7k to do this. It was still cool to see many girls participating (small compared to the amount of men) most walking in groups with matching salwars and heeled shoes.

Something about the flavored atmosphere, the lively people, and the pride of the race made me fall in love with it. Billboards along the way said things like, “If you run today, a child can concentrate in school.” And, I believe, the children need any help with scholarships and encouragement for school they can get around here. The claim is that it will provide education and health care to 13,000 children. The race ended at a Ghandi statue (as it should in India) along the beach with masses and masses of people. If you get a chance, go online and read a little about the race. In terms of numbers it was bigger than the London, the New York, and the Boston marathons; no doubt the greatest in India.

It was amazing. I was blessed to be a part of such a monumental event for the country of India.

India. August 30, 2008

India. Enough said. All the sand and sun at the beach, the air conditioned malls, the wonderful 5 star hotel, my pedicure, the massages, the food, every wonderful part of (relatively modern) Malaysia is gone. The city streets are usually dirt, there are no traffic lanes, everything is filthy, and I’d be lying if I said I’d ever been in a hotter place in all my life.

We got off our plane to be greeted by a large van with a wire-type door. We arrived at night and it didn’t take long to realize that hardly any women were out at night… but holy cow the men were. I thought to myself… where the heck is everyone going? The city street were so crowded and I only found little comfort in the fact that I was slightly higher up in our 1970’s run down van/bus type thing. We abruptly stopped at our new home, ICSA. It’s some sort of Christian hostel with no air conditioning and a front desk worker who speaks very broken English. My room isn’t big and the most noticeable thing is the four twin beds with huge mosquito nets over them. It didn’t take long to find out that we couldn’t flush toilet paper down the toilet and for me to realize that India truly is a tri-world country.

Everything is really cheap as everyone says. Everyone wears beautiful, bright colors. And just as everyone from home said, I stick out like a sore thumb around here. The city of Chennai is such a bustle of activity. Rickshaws are terrifying and I’m lucky to get out alive everytime I ride. The roads are shared by people walking, men on clanky bicycles, many many mopeds, rickshaws, very modern beautiful cars, and buses. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of order (no designated lanes, sometimes not even a center line) besides an occasional stop light where people stop strikingly fast. It was like playing frogger my first time (really every time) crossing the road.

And hot. It’s definitely hot here. The amount that I sweat during the day is only comparable to how much I sweat at night. We have no air conditioning and the holes in our mosquitonets are only big enough to not let any air flow through. This morning I compared it to waking up stuck deep inside a sleeping bag in a tent hot by the morning sun (my thermometer said it was a cool 93 degrees in my room). However, I did sleep better last night than I did the first night and the city traffic that never stops (where is everyone going?) sort of lulls me to sleep. Plus, it sort of feels like a small princess bed with a canopy, um, sort of.

I am sitting in a extremely hot internet store, hole in the wall. By the way the keyboard looks, I should have already used hand sanitizer 400 times. I am wearing a salwar and it is absolutely beautiful. I was excited to wear Indian dress but am only more excited now that I’ve gone shopping. Irene, our teacher who takes very good care of us (our translator, our angel!), took us shopping today at a very upscale shopping district. The problem was that we didn’t know it was considered extremely upscale (a place where many women buy their wedding outfits)! I didn’t buy any saris but decided the salwars are probably more my style. I spent almost Rs2000 on four. This equivalates to about US$50… but they are gorgeous. I’ve had one of them on for about five hours and already realized that my (very upscale) salwar looks very expensive walking down the street and Rebecca and I feel very vogue with our sun glasses and red hair in glam salwars… my attempt to blend in is a sorry one!

Despite all the shocking things I’ve already seen and done, such as convincing our rickshaw driver to race the boy’s driver which turned out to be one of the scariest experiences of my life, I’ve already fallen in love with parts on India. The colors are beautiful, the children are beautiful, there is a very relaxed atmosphere (except when going into a department store with a million workers anxious to help), and the spices used in the food are extraordinary. The people from St. Olaf are a very charismatic group and some of them are already turning into best friends. It’s going to be an experience of a lifetime (just as soon as my body adjusts to the heat) and ready or not, it’s defiantly underway…

Kuala Lumper, Malaysia August 30, 2008

Oh my goodness it’s hard to believe that I’ve already been gone as long as I have. Malaysia was interesting. Kuala Lumper is a bustling city full of a melting pot of cultures. There were Indians and Asians and styles of dress ranging everywhere from very conservative to tank tops. It wasn’t hard to spot our group… tall white people. And we got more attention from everyone than we bargained for.

The first afternoon was spent figuring out the subway system and orienting ourselves to the city. It felt so good to walk after my nearly 24 hours on the plane. Luckily, I had very little jet lag!

The second day was again much walking. We found the central market and China Town. I didn’t do too much wheeling and dealing but had I of wanted any sort of knock off designer bag I could have gotten it there. It was every handbag lovers dream.

Our first eating experience was a disaster. We walked in as a group of 10 to an open, roof enclosed restaurant. The workers spoke about as little English as I did Malaysian. There was a buffet that we awkwardly served ourselves from. I’m not sure how it happened but this soon became the favorite restaurant of a few of us. We would go there sometimes three times a day to order nan (flat bread cooked in a fire oven) and milo (cold hot chocolate). We learned the names of the workers and were treated like local celebrities.

The third day a few of us (Rebecca, Ian, Tony, Shoshana, and I) decided to go to the beach. The closest beach was in Port Dickson, about 90 minutes from KL. We got up really early to catch a bus out there–only to find that none of the locals really knew a way to get out there. Finally a man overheard us asking someone on the street and told us to catch a bus to Serumbrum and then connect there. This first time out of the city was when I decided that I actually liked Malaysia. Serumbrum was a cool city because a lot of the buildings had roofs modeled like buffalo horns. We were surprised to find that Port Dickson had a beach nearly 10 miles long…

We sat down witha fresh coconut to drink coconut milk and then spend some time in the sun. Malaysian women do not wear bathing suits… all of them were wearing full pants and long sleeved shirts and none of them were in the water. So you can imagine the scene we caused with three girls in two piece bathing suits. We went to a deserted part of the beach but it wasn’t long before we started drawing a crowd. Bothmen and women came to see us, some brought their entire families with little kids and sat for a while, some took pictures. Us, just being typical college students, read our novels and soaked in the sun… we didn’t think we were incredibly exciting. We found a very nice hotel to eat dinner at (soaking wet) and watched the sunset on the beach. It was beautiful. We didn’t think too much about finding a taxi but it’s extremely hard to find a taxi out on the beach after dark! We caught one just in time to miss the last bus back to Serumbrum so we decided to taxi (for a hefty fee) just in time to miss the last available bus back to KL. We ran, sprinted really, to the train station from the bus stop to catch the last train back. Two strikes out of three– we’re lucky. The sand and sun felt so good; I already miss it!

After convincing ourselves that we should see other sites instead of being beach bums everyday, we decided to go to Batu Caves.

We were greeted by a huge 200+ foot statue of a Hindu God and something like 274 steps to get inside. Monkeys played and swang on the trees around us on the walk up. The caves were so cool and the drizzling rain made them seem so mystic. The drizzle shortly turned into a downpour while we were inside so we decided to stay in for a bit until the rain slowed– which absolutely never happened.

You can’t imagine how hard it is to (again) find a taxi in flash floods! We spent a lot of time in wet clothes in our time in Malaysia… but the rest of the cave day was spent in the comfort of air conditioned malls and our hotel room getting ready to go out to the infamous golden triangle clubbing district of KL.

Wednesday Rebecca and I, the two redheaded girls who are slowly becoming inseparable, decided to have a girls’ pamper day. We got hour long full body massages, a half an hour foot massage and a pedicure. That night we went to a really cool reggaebar in China Town with a lot of international people from England, France, and Ireland.

Thursday we toured the KL tower, the 4th tallest city tower in the world. We could see for miles… the royal courts (apparently they have 9 royal families), domes, buildings, miles and miles of human development. We also zip-lined at the tower which was very cool… and the dare devil herself (me) even let go to completely hang upside down. Extreme sports in the city of KL.

We boarded the plane later that night which brought me to the craziness that I live in now, India, where I am writing this post. And oh boy, do I already have stories…

More to Come Soon! August 26, 2008

Hello all! I am safely in Malaysia! I don’t have long to post this morning and there is more to come very soon! The overall flight time for me to get over here was just a little under 24 hours. Thankfully, the jet lag wasn’t bad! The group is absolutely wonderful! Miss you all at home. Check back soon!

And the Preparations Continue… August 11, 2008

My religion paper and organic chemistry will have to wait tonight. I’m antsy for India and cannot concentrate. I have 10 days until my plane touches down in Malaysia and I’m left with one hiking backpack’s worth of stuff. I’ve bought just about everything I’m going to take, already said goodbye to friends that I won’t see until February, and continue to plow through school. With papers, tests, lab reports, and finals still to do, my anxiety builds. It will all get done, somehow!

 

The recent bombings have worried me a little. Our advisors have assured us that everything is [probably] fine. The most recent series was in Mumbai, farther south than the violence usually pertinent to northern India. I will be spending most of my time a lot farther south than even Mumbai and just hope that I am never faced with any of the violence.

 

I sent a whole slew of pictures to be printed off at Walgreens today. There is probably one of you in it if you’re reading this. It will be a way to tell the people I meet in the city and villages about my life, and all the important people in it!

 

This will probably be my last post before Malaysia. I have my finals here at St. Olaf on August 20^th and then I will pack up my car and drive the eleven hours home that night. Thursday the 21^st I will run some quick morning errands in Gillette and then be in the car by noon headed to Denver to be at the airport shortly after 5pm. I’ll remind myself to breathe when I get there. I’ll try to get sleep in the car on the way to Denver because there won’t be much before or after that. My connecting flight leaves from LAX at 1:40am and I’ll arrive in Malaysia at noon the next day. Believe me; my life is always this hectic.

 

On a side note, those of you who know Amanda know that she is in Tanzania for the semester. If you don’t know her, she’s from St. Olaf and one of my best friends! I’ve added a link to her blog to the right. It will be easy for you to keep updated on both of us by using our links back and forth. She’s already there and already having super cool adventures. And she is learning Swahili. Click on her link!

 

I should get going. One last thing- for those of you who love letter writing, here is my snail mail address (I know it’s long) for the first few weeks. If you write me, I promise to write back!

 

Attn: Chelsea Koloski

Dr. Moses P. Manohar

Inter-Church Service Association

Post Box No. 771

107 (old #93) Pantheon Road,

Egmore, Chennai 600 008

INDIA

 

 

Peace out.

First post! July 25, 2008

Hello Friends,

 

Welcome to my blog site! I’m probably writing this post long before I will send out the web address as it is still 28 days until I depart for India! The summer seems to have flown by and I already feel like I’ve procrastinated in getting everything taken care of for my trip. Who would have guessed how much goes into leaving the country for an entire semester! A couple weeks ago I began my vaccine series with Hep A, Polio, and the Japanese Encephalitis vaccines. Today I began an oral Typhoid vaccine. (Cross my fingers that I have had no adverse effects from any of them, yet!)

 

I’ll begin by telling you a little about the program. It’s called “Biology in South India” and offered through St. Olaf. I will still be enrolled as a full time student, taking a full course load. Nine other St. Olaf students will be going, although I will not be with the “large” group the entire time. The term structure will be split into (basically) three parts. The first three weeks will be spent in Chennai as a city orientation getting to know customs, infrastructure, and basic workings of the city. We’ll barter with rickshaw drivers and buy our whole new wardrobe of saris. The next week will be spent in a rural area, orientating ourselves to a place with little electricity and materialistic goods. I’m already looking forward to getting behind those man powered plows…

 

In late September we will split into smaller groups to head out to our first research sites. My first site will be “RUHSA” (Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs), Vellore. I am scheduled to work on care and prevention strategies for children as well as preparing a health care plan and educational materials for them. Alternatively, I may address adult dental and oral health assessing the kinds of problems (sores, cavities, loss of teeth) and realistic care and prevention strategies. This sounds pretty official, ha, and maybe a little gruesome but I am incredibly excited for the challenges it will bring.

 

From October 31st until November 12th we will then have a travel break. My plans are in the works now…  My boyfriend, Tate Ashton, is planning on joining me for another one of our infamous adventures. It is sounding like we will meet in Delhi and spend most of our time there and in the surrounding area (such as visiting the Tashmahal!).

 

Mid November we will begin our second projects. I will be with a group of three Olaf students at Mudamalai Wildlife Sanctuary. It will be a complete 180^o in regards to my research as I will be doing an ecological project related to long term predictions for the jungle surrounding Mudamalai. If I’ve ever wanted my share of wild, exotic animals, hopefully I can get it here! From the website: www.restorationfarms.com/south-india-wildlife-parks/mudumalai-sanctuary.html I can expect to be awed!

“Wild elephant, gaur, deer and primates like the bonnet macaque and langurs all inhabit the Park. The predators include the tiger, leopard and the dhole – the Asiatic wild dog that hunts in packs. The predators of the skies are the crested hawk eagle and the crested serpent eagle that can be seen circling above.”

 

Maybe mosquitoes are the least of my worries.

 

The program will end in mid December. Our group is planning on a few days in Goa on the beach to relax before we make the long plane ride home.

 

 

So, I hope that I can let you into my world while I’m exploring South Asia. I’ll have a better idea of my internet capabilities when I arrive. Please don’t hesitate to leave comments and keep in touch. I’m going to need some love from home!

 

 

I’ll post soon! I send my love!