Indiahh (exhale)

     I hope from the rickshaw story that you could understand the craziness of Chennai.  So obviously I was very pleased to book it out of there and head over to the state of Kerala.  Kristina, Aleeza, Nick, and I took an overnight train to Alleppey, a small town where we planned a home stay in the backwaters.  The train was an experience! Think “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” (that one’s for my mom, Baker, and anyone who loved 42nd Street as much as I did) but take out the singing, substitute unfamiliar Tamil tones, and add in a few cockroaches and dirty sheets.  It was a dream.  But hey-at least we had our own beds.  In the morning we were in beautiful Kerala, just as hot as the rest of India but here there were shady trees and an air of relaxation.
     We took a rickshaw and a shaky canoe across the river to get to our home stay where Matthew showed us his house and his brother and sister’s houses right next door where they let people stay.  We were welcomed in, shown our room, and fed our first meal.
     I think Indian food is second to Japanese food now.  The food in India was incredible and very good for you.  Lots of veggies (most people in India are vegetarians) and lots of spices-plus you have the fun of eating with your hands.  That first lunch I ate with a fork since my fingers were still dirty from traveling but the next couple of meals I got right in there, mixed everything together on my plate (that’s big for me) and scooped it all between my fingers.  P.S. eating with your fingers is a lot more difficult than you would ever imagine it to be—at least when you’re eating rice and curry dishes. Basically, the food might have been one of my favorite parts about the home stay.  Everything was fresh and delicious-the best food I ate in India-and we even got a cooking lesson from Matthew’s mother.
     After lunch we were on our own.  We came out to the porch by our room and relaxed.  We soon realized we would be relaxing a lot—and that was when I realized India was giving me just what I needed.  I had been stressed out and homesick entering India.  I wanted to escape and I needed to breathe again.  Here, in the backwaters of Southern India I could breathe.  Easily.  Later that evening we went for a walk through the rice patties and down the river, and watching the sunset reflect on the water I was relieved.  It was one of those ‘everything is going to be alright’ moments.  And it was alright.  We watched the sun go down, we walked the paths that the locals walk, and we canoed down the river singing until it got dark.  Indians knows how to live.
     I was sad to leave India after the stay.  We spent two days just living, laughing, and meeting new people.  We met fellow travelers-two girls from Germany, Joanna and Sara, and two guys from Chicago, Mark and John.  They helped me sink back into the traveling spirit.  Here they were taking off from school and work, traveling and volunteering around India and learning just to be.  I was no longer stressed; I was loved-by people, by India, by the world.  I was present in India.  That was what I needed.

I LOVE YOU!

I am about to write another blog post about travels but I just got back on the ship and I wanted to say THANK YOU again and again and again to everyone who reads my blog or emails me.  It is the biggest comfort in the world to hear from people back in the states and it makes me realize how lucky and how blessed I am to have such amazing people in my life.

One Love!

Side Note

I miss my sisters.
a.a.b.j.l.l.m.n.

IndiAHH!

     I was in a funk when we got to India.  A lot was happening back home so I was hoping to step out into India and be greeted with friendly faces, good food, and a culture that I would just want to dive right into.  Instead I stepped out to a hoard of yellow rickshaws with obnoxious drivers.  Not a good distraction.
     “I am not a tour guide! I am a rickshaw driver! I am a rickshaw driver!”
     “WE KNOW!”
      We didn’t want a driver.  We were looking to just walk around and explore.  Unfortunately the city center was not close enough to walk to.  So our fate had to be put in the hands of Luke, the rickshaw driver we finally found a price with.  Luke, like most rickshaw drivers was trying to get us to hire him for the day. We didn’t want that.  So he took us to a temple that I (as an obnoxious American) refer to as the crazy temple (I don’t mean in a crazy loco way, I mean that it has so much going on on it-just wait til I have the fb again and you will see the picture).  Anyway, so we went to the temple and paid Luke but he still took us in and showed us where to put our shoes and told us a little bit about each part of the temple.  We didn’t sign up for that but we appreciated the extra information on Hinduism and Buddhism.  When we were leaving Luke said he would take us to a good, cheap market-for free.  But on the way we saw a restaurant we wanted to go to so we said thank you, gave him a very large tip and left his rickshaw.
     At lunch we tried to figure out a new plan.  Again, this is our first day in India and we were just trying to get our feet wet and learn a little more about Chennai.  About ten minutes into our meal, Luke came in, waved to us, and left.  We didn’t know what that meant so we continued to eat and when we came out of the restaurant we just tried to book it.  We didn’t want him to follow us…but he did anyway.  We walked around a local market with Luke right over our shoulders telling us that everything we were looking at was not good quality and that he knew a better market where we could get all of these things for a cheaper price.  Eventually we gave in, we said, “Fine! But we don’t have any money”.  Again, “for free, for free”.   So we piled back into the rickshaw, four people in a small backseat that normally barely seats three (thankfully Colette is a tiny girl who can sit on our laps), and we were off to the “better” markets.
     He takes us to a shop.  It’s okay.  It has a lot of antiques-very overpriced.  We walk through and quickly walk out.  We tell Luke we are ready to go, thanks for taking us, but can you take us to Pundi Market.  Suddenly Luke gets heated.  He starts yelling at us on the sidewalk-well mostly yelling at Nick because he is a man and thus myself, Kristina, and Colette, the women, do not exist enough to make decisions.  Luke keeps telling us we didn’t pay him.  We knew we shouldn’t have paid him in advance.  Oops.  It’s looking bad now.  We don’t know what to do and Luke has called his friend from the shop outside.  I am afraid he is going to fight with Nick.  Suddenly an Indian man walking down the street walks over to us, in between Nick and Luke and says “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay”.  The four of us booked it and headed down the first side street.  We were lost.
     This was not how we wanted to start our trip to India.  We have learned on this voyage to have faith in people and to trust.  Apparently Chennai was a little trickier.  We spent the rest of the day with a chip on our shoulders.  We were hurt.  We thought we liked him and that he wanted to be with us to practice his English.  We were wrong.  Granted, later in the day I had a very pleasant rickshaw driver that took my friends and I out to a hookah bar (p.s. hookah is not actually a big thing in Southern India but wow-it was the best hookah I have ever smoked), and while we were driving he pulled over, flipped on a switch that turned on a flashing light in the back, turned up the music, and said, “my cab turn into disco!”  He boosted a little bit of my faith in people.  But basically, I think I learned Chennai was not for me.

I Left my Heart in Southeast Asia (Part Deux)

     While the MV Explorer was still docked in HCM I was lucky enough to take a side trip to Cambodia.  We visited both Siem Reap and Pnom Penh.  The temples at Siem Reap, especially Angkor Wat at sunrise were a phenomenal experience.  Being in the presence of something so ancient, and made for love-a holy love- is definitely awe inspiring.  But my love lives in Pnom Penh.
     There was a joke made on the ship recently about how every port is changing people’s lives.  Each time we leave people feel inspired and changed.  The jokester asked, “Well if you change after every port are you going to change back when we get to Fort Lauderdale? …I think we have some serious personality issues here”.
     So, while each port has brought a different side of me out, or encouraged me to think and wonder about new issues, Pnom Penh is the one place I can honestly say has changed me and my view on the world.
     The first night in Pnom Penh we went to an orphanage.  It was dark out and the bus we took was too big to drive down the street so we had to walk down a couple of blocks to get there.  As we walked by, people stared.  It was a little eerie, unsure of where we were and what the orphanage was going to be like.  But even though it was dark and hard to see, when we turned into the orphanage there was a crowd of children, from toddlers to teenagers, waiting to meet us.  I looked around, overwhelmed, and made eye contact with one of the first girls I saw.  She looked at me; I waved and smiled; she smiled back, walked over to me, took my hand, and didn’t let go for the entire visit.
     I don’t remember her name.  It was a Cambodian name that started with an S-I felt too embarrassed to ask her what her name was again after we became friends.  She was eighteen but she looked like she was twelve.  She gave me the tour of her orphanage and first of all I need to state that these conditions were wonderful living conditions for Cambodia, but I guess my girl knew that I was taken aback when she showed me the bedroom she sleeps in with tons of other children.  The floor was bare when we went in and when I asked what they sleep on she showed me her mat, she said, “It wouldn’t be comfortable for you but it’s good for us”.  Sheesh, break my heart.
     Eventually the two of us sat down on a bench in the courtyard and watched the rest of the kids play soccer.  We talked for the rest of the time, just getting to know one another.  Although she was eighteen, she was at a ninth grade level.  She was thinking about leaving the orphanage in May to go to training school to become a receptionist or a maid.  She said she would love to finish high school and then go to college but it would take her eight more years and by that time she would be too old.  Break my heart again.  I want her to live in a world like I live in a world where you can do anything. 
     Our common ground was love.  We both discussed our relationships, past and present (well her present, and me, well…me on a ship that is 30% men).  But we understood.  She giggled when she told me that her boyfriend tells her he loves her.  I think the concept was a weird one for her nonetheless one to talk to with an almost stranger.  But we still laughed, and shared, and she taught me how to say I love you in Khmer, and she made me realize that love is the energy that keeps us alive.
     After a walk that night through the streets of Pnom Penh I got to thinking about our human needs in relation to our human happinesses.  The houses we walked past looked so shabby from an American eye-but they were normal, middle class houses-just made from metal scraps and only big enough for one bedroom—the kitchen is outside.  So people cook their meals sandwiched between the street and their home, their families gather together, they talk to their neighbors, and when the meal is through the mother’s wash the dishes on the sidewalk and the children dance and run around-barefoot.  So why don’t we do that?  Why do we lock ourselves into our four bedroom, three bathroom houses, and set the alarm when we walk through the garage?  Why do we hide from our neighbors and keep the kids in the living room watching TV?  Why don’t we live openly, freely, and quite simply, basically?
     We are human beings.  We require love and attention.  We require contact not four TVs with DVR, not a garbage disposal, not even an indoor shower.  The Cambodian people appear to have nothing to us, but they have appreciation.  They are grateful for what they have and happy to have it.  They laugh, they smile, and they live how they need.  This is my new American Dream.

I Left my Heart in Southeast Asia

    Let’s backtrack a little-time travel if you will-back a few weeks to Vietnam.  The water is brown, palm trees are everywhere and for the first time I stepped out into port and instantly thought ‘I’m gonna like it here’.
    When I left the ship I expected to walk into a swampland, one that still had footprints of soldiers and was filled with Vietnamese that hated Americans.  To my surprise Ho Chi Minh City was a city that looked like a European twist on an Asian country and was filled with friendly, English speaking people.  People everywhere were excited to talk to Americans, practice their English, and try to get you to ride on their motorbikes.  The motorcycle thing really threw me off-it really is their main (seriously main) source of transportation.  My personal favorite image was while I was passing by a primary school as the children were getting let out.  Just as I waited outside my middle school after play rehearsal waiting for a ride from my Mom or Dad, the children were all crowded outside the front doors waiting for their parents.  But instead of the line of SUV’s and minivans there was a parking lot filled with moms on motorbikes.  It was incredible.  They were swarming-the motorbikes swarm every street.  Another personal favorite image of mine is the full family motorbike.  I searched to find the maximum number of people I could see on a motorbike—Five—one being a small child, two older children, a mom and a dad—So good.
    I don’t like motorcycles.  In the U.S. they are a death sentence—too many people, too many cars.  But here, it is a culture, a way of life, and a luxury.  Our Dean, Loren Crabtree, explained to us before we left that Vietnam was in their motorcycle stage.  Meaning that thirty years ago the Vietnamese were all riding bicycles-not really a developed enough country yet, but as time has progressed their status is improving and moving closer to a fuller more westernized society but not quite yet at SUV status, so motorcycle it is.  I thought Crabtree was using it as a metaphor for the political and social situations in Vietnam-and he was-but I had no idea how important the motorcycles really were to the culture there.
    I much more expected the Vietnam War, or as the Vietnamese call it, the American War to be a huge part of their culture-but instead it was something that has passed by, and a topic that I had not discussed with anyone outside of the war remnants museum.
    I had a trip on the first day to the war remnants museum and to visit a UPI photographer.  It was unbelievable to see these pictures and hear the stories that actually went along with the pictures too.  The photographer showed us his work and with almost every photo he knew the background of that moment.  He could tell us that in the picture where the Vietnamese woman is crouched down in front of a helicopter with her hand on her forehead, that the woman had just lost her husband, her children, and her land-she had nothing.  I couldn’t believe he could remember all the stories, the dates, the faces.  This was thirty years ago and it was all he had left from those years.  After the war the Vietnamese government raided his house because he was a photographer for the U.S.  He fled the states but in order to salvage what he had spent his life working toward he had to bury his pictures underground.  Dozens of photos that we looked at were discolored and worn down from the dirt that was left permanently stained on them.  It was sad to see his life work put into something that went unappreciated and buried for years.  Today his work was displayed in the war remnants museum.  Meeting him before going to the museum really brought into perspective how many people were affected by the war.  The sights that were seen by soldiers, locals, and photographers were gruesome.  I had never before seen even a picture of a person carrying skin by its head.  That picture is sure to haunt me for the rest of my life.  Another prime example of why I don’t believe in war.
     I will say that even though I find acts of war disgusting I still appreciate the soldiers—on both sides.  There is a faith in military men that I can always admire.  The pictures in the museum showed the passion behind their eyes.  I respect that a person can listen to an order and perform for their country.
     I guess I really just don’t believe in countries.
    --I don’t believe in sides.

I'll say it

When time is short-I miss twitter. The end.