As I meandered, I stopped to take many photos along the way.  Inevitably kids along the road ask me to take their photos as well and I’m usually always pretty happy to do it.  Sometimes, adults ask me to take their photos as well, so I wasn’t all that surprised by one 20-something guy slowly walking along nearby me.  I also noticed that the straps on his sandals dragged on the group with every step and served no visible purpose.  Eventually this man rallied the courage to approach me.  Instead of immediately asking me for a photo, he proceeded to have a conversation with me entirely in Hindi, despite my insistence that I didn’t understand anything.

I welcomed a bicycle delivery man’s interruption and saw it as a chance to get on with my photo walk.  The young man caught back up and eventually understood that I was just walking around taking photos.  So he motioned for me to follow him to a good photo location.

So I did follow him.  And he did take me to a beautiful place.  I’m not so good photographing landscape, but the field and the houses beyond were definitely a beautiful sight.  I looked at him to show my appreciate for the scene, but he gestured to the kid pooing in the outdoor toilet behind him.  Yuck! He wasn’t taking me to the field, but to the Indian portapotty.

By this point the guy was my friend.  I used my two Hindi sentences on him and impressed him thoroughly.  The only problem was he couldn’t get my name right for the life of him.  My name is Lizzie.  Raji?  Li-zi.  Liji? Li-Zi. Lisi?  As we walked further I would sometimes hear him say something quietly like Raju or Ruji, then I’d correct him again and we’d repeat the conversation.  (Truth is, I can’t remember his name either.  It was something with an A, so lets just call him Ameer for the rest of this post.)

You can see the toilet gutter behind him.

Mostly I was just walking along and he and a few kids were following me.  That’s really quite normal in India, so when he suggested a second place to go, I didn’t mind acquiescing.

The next place Ameer took me was to a house and he immediately ran inside and motioned for me to wait outside for a moment.  Before I could even look at my surroundings at least five new kids ran up to me and wanted me to take their photos.  The older girls knew a few English words and told me they were his sister.  They pulled me over to the adjoining house and dragged a woman, who was sewing, outside to have her photo taken as well.  I supposed that it was the woman’s husband who came home in that minute and told me No, thank you.  The girls pleaded and he conceded, so I took a few photos of their entire family.

After the photo session, I said goodbye and started to walk away.  As I walked by the house where Ameer was, I saw him next to the water pump very intently grooming himself.  He was still clothed, but he was most definitely washing his entire body, completely sudsy, and washing as fast as he could.

The girls insisted I take their grandmother’s photo, and that I sit down to do so.  They pulled up a red plastic chair and I sat down, snapped a couple photos and immediately Ameer came over sporting a new shirt and shoes.  He gave me a How do you like me now? look and then the entire family encircled me with expectant eyes.

They want me to marry this man!!! The thought screamed through my head as I quickly stood up and made my escape.  To my dismay, Ameer followed me and continued walking with me.  My pace was brisker this time, but that didn’t deter him any because now he was wearing polished white sneakers!

Even as we walked away from his home, he continued offering me chai and coffee because he realized they were two words we had in common.

Then, all of the sudden out of NOWHERE, Ameer knew a phrase in English.  “Kiss me,” he said.  Ick, no way.  I sternly told him no and even glared at him, but he continued to walk with me, even singing as we walked.  You wouldn’t believe it, but he had another phrase tucked away.  “This is my girlfriend,” he said to me, about me.  This time I stopped and looked directly at him and said no.  I stepped up my game and I said “I am…” and then I pointed to the center of my forehead (the dot) and indicated a line just above that where my hairline meets my forehead. (The combo of the two indicates that a woman is married.)

Victory! He understood!  We continued walking, my destination in sight.  He asked if I had a baby and when I said no baby and not pregnant I think I lost all credibility and he didn’t believe me anymore.  No matter because we reached my destination.

Had I been interested, I am certain I could have had a second husband.

On one of our first days in this new town, I wanted to buy some bananas.  I know that a banana costs about 2 rupees each, but they are generally sold by the kilogram and they are usually sold on push carts scattered around the city.  So I approached the first banana man, a youngish man probably around my age and asked how much they were.

Banana man: 12 banana, 40 rupee.
Me: That’s a little pricy.  How much for one banana?
Banana man: One banana, 2 rupee.
Me: Hmm.  Not 12 banana, 24 rupee?
Banana man: 12 banana, 40 rupee.
Me: I guess I’ll take two.

It was kind of funny, but the next time I wanted to buy bananas, I couldn’t immediately remember who I had wanted to go to, and I wound up at his cart again.  His prices didn’t change, but this time I offered him, “5 banana, 10 rupee.”  He was visibly puzzled and said, “6 banana, 20 rupee.”  And for me, the situation went from comical to sad.  He so clearly couldn’t figure out the math, it made me feel really bad for him.

Later, I told the story to a Dutch woman who lives here and she said that most of the people who sell fruit are completely illiterate and dependent on the wholesaler.  They’ll ask the wholesaler how much they should sell each item for, and they trust whatever he says with no way of reasoning how to negotiate prices with customers.

My next story isn’t sad!  Our second day in this city was a kite flying holiday.  Silhouettes  of children lined the sky, as they stood on rooftops piloting their kites as high as the kite could incline.  The next day was Sunday and when we went to church, one amazing little girl, Mercy, gave Burke a kite!  Burke was so happy, but when it was time for lunch, he asked the rickshaw driver if it would be safe to leave it in the rickshaw.  The driver said, “I’ll take it, and if something happens to it, I’ll get you a new one,” and then he carried it into the restaurant with us.

How many kites can you spot in this tree?

After lunch, when we were ready to go, the kite was nowhere to be seen.  Burke asked the driver where it was, and so he went back into the restaurant.  He was gone for a l.o.n.g. time.  I thought surly it was thrown away or destroyed and now our driver was on the road somewhere trying to buy a new one.  Five to ten minutes later when he came back he not only had Burke’s kite, but a second kite too!

We actually went to another church service that day, and again Burke left his kites in the trusty care of our driver.  We didn’t realize until we got home, but somehow, the driver turned Burke’s two kites into three!  Naturally, Burke thanked him profusely, but the driver never really said how or why he kept getting more kites.  We look forward to the next time we use that driver again, hoping he’ll have even more!

Leaving the Taj Mahal, camera still in hand, I was ready snap photos of the monkeys and goats along the sidewalk.  I squatted down to take one monkey’s photo who was hanging out on a bench, and he immediately went from cute to angry!  He slapped both his hands on the bench and fake-out started at me.  He didn’t actually get up, but he really wanted to make me think he was going to.  So I decided I would be a little more careful when taking photos of monkeys.

Check out the angry face on this guy.

When we got home, I went into our hotel room only to find a giant lizard on the wall!  He scurried from near the head of my bed to behind our non-functioning television.  I only caught a glimpse of him before running out of the room, but I saw that he was definitely about six inches in body length plus another five or so in tail length.

You can see how close they let us get!

Now onto the real monkey story!

We were at the train station and walking to our platform.  I was carrying the team fruit- two papayas in a plastic bag and a dozen or so mandarins in another bag.

I pointed out to my friend Nicholas all the animals on the platform, “Dog…. dog… monkey.”  And as we got closer to the monkey, he started to walk towards us.  He was big.  And then he ran towards us… no, he ran towards ME.  And he was screaming!  If you didn’t know, monkeys totally scream and he wasn’t definitely wasn’t holding back.

Standing and screaming he stretched his claws out at me and grabbed the bag of papaya.  I was still holding on and I remember distinctly that he was pulling so that the bag was at about a 45 degree angle.  He was really tugging.

It happened very quickly but I remember wondering if I should let him have it.  If he was so angry, I didn’t want him to bite me or scratch me over a papaya!  Fortunately, an Indian man coming in the opposite direction knew what to do.  He stomped a few times and made some loud sounds and scared the monkey off.

Not exactly a near death experience, but it definitely shook me up.  One of my very favorite animals turning vicious on me!  We continued on and walked up the stairs and over the rail to the third platform where we were supposed to board our train.  I declared forgiveness because my love for the furry little people-like animals was greater than my fear of that one monkey, but, sadly, it wasn’t true.

About ten minutes later we were all standing around and I saw another monkey walking towards us.  In the second I saw him I gasped, and then disappointedly thought hmm maybe I’m scared of monkeys now.  While otherwise non-threatening, this large monkey sat down near where we were and just looked at our group…. and then he singled me out!  It was the SAME monkey! And he was staring me down!!  I wasn’t holding the torn fruit bag anymore, but it was clear to me and everyone standing with me that this monkey had his eye on me!  And then he started to make his move!  Slowly this time he started walking towards me, about the same time I shrieked and moved to the comfort of the center of the group.

This time, my friend John scared the monkey away with his makeshift monkey weapon (which he proudly refers to in his version of Dutch as an oppen wopen).

Baby monkey at the Agra Fort

So that’s the end of my monkey story.  It was pretty scary and I’m glad there aren’t any monkeys in the city we’re in now because I may or not be afraid of monkeys forever….

We had a drab little room, which we were very grateful for, included in it was even a bathroom with a western style toilet!  Yahoo!  Here is our bathroom.  Maybe you wonder what the bucket is for… Well, in some bathrooms you have to fill the bucket and dump it in the toilet to flush it, ours actually has an official flush so that’s not what it is for.  Instead, the buckets are filled with water, and we use those smaller scoops to dump them all over our heads and that is how we shower!  Burke and I had the very rare water heater in our bathroom- it worked about half the time- the other half we joined the ranks of the rest of the group and delivered our empty buckets to the kitchen to acquire boiled water and then transport it back to our shower space.

Remember, we were the lucky ones.

From about 6:45- 8:15 every morning, there was no power in our bathroom.  There were a couple mornings this didn’t effect us, but mostly it would.  That played out in the form of a small station set up near the hazy window- contacts, make up, hair was done there.  I had a two inch compact so I could kind of see myself.  It was when I wanted to see the back of my hair that I got creative.  I received a flashlight-keychain for an early Christmas gift and have found in incredibly useful.  I took it into the bathroom, shone it on the back of my head, which was facing the big mirror, and stood facing the opposite wall with my compact in my other hand, positioned just so that I could see a couple inches of my hair at a time.

When we first arrived, we were told that the staff at our location would do our laundry for us.  Then we saw what hard work it was for them, and most of us began to do our own.  The most commonly sold laundry soap is in the form of a bar of soap.  It is held with one hand and rubbed against clothes, and then the clothes are scrubbed on a giant smoothish rock.  Cold water is poured on the clothes to rinse them.  Once they are all rinsed, they are whipped against the side of the slate to get rid of excess water before being taken to the clothes line.

Here is the kitchen.  You might be a little fearful of the food that comes out, but it was delicious!  In India, you have to take major precautions of the food you eat- the biggest warnings are against street food, raw vegetables, and “cold” diary.  So naturally, when we arrived we assumed they were preparing our vegetables to a standard that our western digestive systems could handle.  In only took a few minutes in the kitchen to see that they certainly were not.

Sometimes we "helped" make dinner; I think we slowed them down.

It is very common to cook/ store pots with food in them on the floor!

I made sure to document the making of naan bread.  It’s way more work and way less common than chapati (Indian tortillas).

When we first arrived, we were woken up by a pack of roosters. Our last week there, there were no roosters to be found... These skewers are put into the tandoor.

Naan dough, the best tasting, least healthy of the breads.

They make a ball and spread it over this wet cloth-covered rock and then push it against the wall of the outdoor oven.

It just sticks up against the side for a few minutes as it cooks. The oven has to be the perfect temperature other wise it doesn't come off.

They fish it out with these spears when it's done and then it is ready for dinner!

These are just a few of the menial things we did daily.  It was really fun to be in this position where we could laugh at our situation, yet fully, truly appreciate what we did have.  This blog couldn’t be complete without a couple pictures of the dogs at the location.  Towards the end I took these dogs on a daily walk and I am certain that they miss me already.

Rachi... maybe she is a little special.

This one on the left is Boyfriend. He may or may not have been the father to the babies on the right. That's Mama on the right.

The puppies!

Baby Taj

The Botanical Gardens.

The Agra Fort.

The Taj Mahal.

The Agra Bazaar and this fun little outdoor restaurant.

This is me with the neighbor kids on our last morning in Indore

Like Slovaks, one of the first things they ask is how we like their country.  More specifically, they want to know how we like the people in their country; strangely, they always seem skeptical when I tell them its all good.  They also really like to know the details of where we are staying- we don’t usually share them.

When they ask about my feelings on India, I always tell them that one of my favorite things is that just going down the road, we often see monkeys, camels, and elephants and I love it!  (Often, more common than those animals we see cows, boars, dogs, goats, and donkeys, but you know, a cow on a big city street is just common place now!)  The guaranteed response to my statement is something like this:  Oh! You know where you should go then… We have a zoo!  As if the novelty is in the animal itself and not the fact that I can reach out and touch it (or better, take it home!:)

—UPDATE: Scary monkey story coming soon!—

In Indore, people just loved us.  They aren’t really used to foreigners there and so our white skin sometimes brought them flocking to us.  One day as I was just killing some time in the mall, I was approached by a young man and we became fast friends.  We were chatting about all sorts of America/India things and he especially wanted to know the following, I’ll give you a rundown….

Sameer: So if I come to Australia, will you show me around.
Me: No, I’ve never been to Australia, I’m from America.
Sameer: Oh, so will you show me around America?
Me: Yeah, sure.
Sameer: Okay, what’s your phone number.
Me: No phone (true story).
Sameer: (shock, some conversation about how it is possible, back to the story) Okay so the number to your home, or your family?
Me: Well, it doesn’t really work that way in America.  I don’t really live at home anymore.
Sameer: And your family agrees to this?
Me: Well, yeah.  After University, most people my age just don’t really go back to their parents.
Sameer: (again, shocked) So after you graduate, you make some agreement with your family and if you both agree you no longer live at home?!  And they agree to this… hmm.

Basically, I blew his mind and apparently in a way that made us best friends because a few minutes later, he told me that he wants to marry his girlfriend, but she only wants to be friends.  Then he very bluntly asked me, What can I do about this?  How can I change so that she would want to marry me? Is there something wrong with me? Am I not nice?  So that was fun.

Last thought, these are Indians that we did get to build relationships with, and they are great!

This is the sister who tied the girls' saris and laughed at long fingernails!

We are often laughing at our differences, but it is extra funny when they laugh at us!  One thing that they laugh at guaranteed is when some of the girls from our group wear the saris they bought.  They meet my approval, but there are intricacies to tying them on that need years of practice, so the Indians always giggle at the sight of them.  The other thing that makes them laugh is long fingernails- how impractical!

Let’s start with a recap of what we did do!

We went to 13 countries, only 3.5 of them were new though.

Turkey

It was Burke's first time to Italy!

(our other new countries were Bulgaria and India:)!

Our neighbors

I did run 100+ miles during more than half of the months this year!

I didn’t make it an official goal, I didn’t really have a reason to, but I decided to be alcohol free for the year, and I did that with only two small special occasion exceptions.

As for goals we didn’t complete…  I never got to run in any races, we didn’t go on a bicycle tour and Burke is still working towards 100 consecutive pushups.  Those can be our first three goals for 2012!  (update: I also didn’t compile recipes!)

Other goals/ New Year’s Resolutions:

Get a good summer/permanent job.  Just like last year, we will go home upon completion of our program, but aren’t yet sure what we will do, and whether we will stay with it or return to Europe again.  Either way, I’d like to be as productive with my time (specifically in regards to my college loan) as possible.

I want to make a new friend.  Honesty at the undoubted risk of sounding pathetic.  While I love the life that Burke and I are living, it can certainly be lonely at times.

Exercise.  I’m good with exercising, but I really like to have goals.  I’m going to keep my 100 mile/month goal, but I already know that won’t happen until we return from India.  So during India, my goal is just to exercise 3+ days a week.

Ukraine. It’s Slovakia’s only neighbor we haven’t been to, so it should be an easy goal.  Yet it hasn’t happened during the last 2.5 years… (I’d also settle for Slovenia, Albania, Kosovo or Belarus.)

We went to Prague for our third time:)

I promise my next post will be about our daily life in India!  I’m really excited to share it, but if you want more of an update on what we are actually doing here in India please go to our the members only section of our website!

I’ve learned 4 phrases in Hindi! I can say Thank you, My name is…, I am from…, and What is your name? All of these phrases are met with giggles (perhaps due to horrific mispronunciation?), but it worked once on our neighbor- his name is Amos.  I often sit outside during quiet times and he comes over and sometimes we play together.  Yesterday during my quiet time, I was braiding my hair.  A group of girls approached me (I have NO idea where they came from), and said “Beautiful!”  As they stared, I finished braiding my hair.  Once it was done, they promptly took 2 photos with their phone.  They said “beautiful” and “goodbye,” before walking just 10 meters away from me and then gathering around the phone to look at the photo.

Usually on arrival, we are welcomed with a flower, lei or bouquet of some sort!

I’ve said this a few times before, but I really need to make a bucket list.  Not because I want the list, but because when something happens that surely would have been on the list, I can cross it off.  The other day, one of those things happened!  We were walking through a small village and we spotted monkeys!!  Tons of them- parents, babies, monkeys of all ages.  It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.  They were jumping on top of a couple of rooftops and into a tree.  I was so close to them- definitely less than one meter.

Monkeys

Only a few days later, we saw an elephant on the side of the road!  He wasn’t wild; it may have been for a wedding, but he was just hanging out there in all of his hugeness!  And just yesterday we saw CAMELS!  They were so majestic and bigger than the ones I remember from Jordan.

One of my favorite things to sneak in during he day is visiting the dogs on the property.  I’ve been heavily warned against pursuing wild dogs, but the dogs of the house are okay to befriend.  So that’s what I’ve been doing.  The first group I’m still working on winning over, one of the dogs is downright vicious and isn’t chained up so it’s a little daunting (update: totally my friend now!), but the other dogs are amazing!  One just had a set of five puppies and they don’t even have their eyes open yet!  I visit them about as often as I can.

Burke & Janko sporting their stylish Indian outfits!

Last thing, quick story- Toilets here are just crazy. (I still plan to have an entire post about daily living here, but I ran into a camera battery roadblock so it wasn’t possible for this week.)  So toilets.  If there is a toilet, you are lucky.  If it flushes, you are incredibly lucky.  When we first arrived, I had heard that flushing is usually to be done with the pressure from a giant bucket of water.  Fortunately, the first night, Burke discovered that our toilet flushes!  A few days later, I was talking with one of the girls here and I mentioned something about the flush.  She was shocked!  She didn’t realize that her toilet could flush too, but it does!  It was a little humorous that she was doing something the old way when she didn’t have to.  What’s funnier though is that I mentioned it to another girl yesterday and didn’t know either! The kicker is that the two are roommates and the first roommate just didn’t tell the other!

Our group rides from where we are staying to the center of town every day, usually twice a day, so we are quite familiar with the route already.  We ride in a van, which makes us one of the biggest vehicles on the street.  Rickshaws are very common, but just because they only have three wheels, doesn’t mean they don’t carry a big load.  Maybe even more common are scooters.  I’m on the hunt to see how many people I can spot on a single scooter- so far I’ve seen four adult men.

Family of four on bikes!

I want to reiterate is the multitude of dogs, cows, and pigs in the streets.  It is insane!  They teem along the country roads, but they’re also resident on the busiest city streets.  Yesterday I even saw a pig and dog playing together!  In addition to the wild dogs, it appears every building has its own set of guard dogs.  Our establishment has three, and the neighboring building has two.  I know the other two well because twice I’ve attempted to exercise by running outside.  Running in this country is even more foreign to residents than it is in Slovakia, so that and the fact I’m a lone woman, its not the best idea to really venture out.  What ends up happening is that I run in a giant L shape down two driveways.  I ran early this morning so a couple times I looped the driveways with a small bit of road so I had a football field-sized track, but the dogs got increasingly more vicious with every lap so I went back to the L shape.

Cow crossing!

This is downtown.

The last thing I want to say is that I’ve seen so many open fires here.  It appears that almost all families or business right outside of downtown have a fire in the evening.  The last couple nights have been chilly so I think it’s partially for heat, but it is also definitely for cooking.

This is our neighbor!

Be sure to check out the other post about what we’re doing in India!

We arrived in the evening last night and drove in a large van holding 12 people to the place we are staying.  They said it would take an hour but it was only 10km; the main road was busy because there was a Muslim festival, so we took the back road which was hardly a road at all!  It was amazing!  I don’t know if they can be called potholes because they were the size of sinkholes and looked like waves of an ocean.

As we drove it was impossible to ignore the incessant honking.  Start the car, honk; turn, honk; pass a car, honk; see a friend, honk; drive straight, honk; see a cow, honk.  While driving today, it was pointed out to me that there are often a few simple words painted on the back of the cars, something to the effect of, Honk if everything is okay.

We are staying just outside of a 2.5 million people city.  As we drove towards the city this morning, we saw so many animals!  Along the sides of the roads (and sometimes in the roads) every five meters or so there is a cow, another cow, dog, cow, dog, cow, goat, cow, dog, boar, cow, dog.  It’s amazing.  As for buildings, the city is mostly 3 story buildings, but on the way into the city I’d say there were more storage-type living spaces and shanties rather than western-style, stand alone buildings.

Last few things before my this small bout of internet is up- the head bobble is so prevalent and I am LOVING it.

The place we are staying welcomed us with Indian food- western style.  They heard a lot of people in our group don’t like spicy (hot) food, but instead they left out all of the spices (flavors).  It was still amazing, but probably the most bland food in all of India.

That’s the end of my internet time!