Important news of the day: I have a violin now. I'm excited. Now, if only I knew how to play Hindustani Music, I'd be set.
The getting of the violin, I must say, was a very unexciting experience. I called Rama, the Suzuki teacher who offered to loan me a violin for the semester. She said she had to leave her house in thirty minutes, but gave me her address and said to get there as quickly as possible to get a violin. So, I spent the first five of those thirty minutes waiting to talk to our resource person, Anju, and the next five getting directions to the address I was given.
Sidenote: I should probably explain how addresses work here in India. Think of how girls tend to give directions... you know, the whole “next to the McDonalds” or “go straight until you get to the bridge” or “the one with the red mailbox”? Well, that's basically what addresses here are like. My current address is something like “Ved Vihar Colony, near Ved Bhavan Temple, off Paud Road, in Kothrud, Pune.”
So basically, I was looking for an apartment complex across from a Yoga Institute off a big road. Anju drew me a map, so I had a basic idea of where I was going. Then, since it was a mile or so away, I had to get a rickshaw... Let's just say, that's not so easy at three o'clock in the afternoon when you're across the street from an elementary school full of kids wanting to go home. So that wasted another ten minutes of my thirty minute budget. Then, there was the ten minute rickshaw ride where the rickshaw-walla dropped me off at the Yoga Institute. So I wandered around some random Indian street for a few minutes before eventually finding the sign with red letters directing me to the right apartment complex to find Rama and get a violin.
Lesson of today: brown time is kind of legitimate sometimes.
Emily and I totaled things up this morning... we're spending about $20 a week on transportation. It's a little bit ridiculous. I think we're the farthest people from our ACM program site, and it costs us about $1.50 to get from our colony to school every day... then we have to make the same trip back every evening. I'm very glad she and I live in the same place, because at least that lets us halve the costs.
Today, we got our train tickets for our two week break. I'm currently the proud holder of four train tickets from Pune to Bangalore, four tickets from some other city to Pune, and a bill for about $80. I'm not sure exactly how all the conversions work, but I'm pretty sure that's a ton cheaper than it'd be in America. I looked at train tickets from Jefferson City to Monmouth once (that's maybe 500 miles worth of travel), and the tickets were around $90 per person. We're going to be traveling close to 3,000 km, and the total for four of us is going to be less than that. I get the feeling I'm gonna go totally broke on this trip because of all the money I'm saving.
Now, we just have to figure out how to make it from Bangalore to Ernakulam in the span of fourteen days. I'm pretty excited to travel, and I'm happy with my travel buddies. Laura, Sarah, and I are always the ones that are off climbing trees or finding the way back to waterfalls and things like that, so we're all kind of on the same page about what we like to do. And Bill's a boy who speaks Hindi... and both of those things come in handy in India. And he was planning on staying in Pune for the two weeks because he was too shy to ask to be in anyone's group, so supervising our elephant rides and tree climbs has got to be more interesting than that. Also, we all tend to be fairly unconcerned with what we're doing during the travel. There are a lot of people who are trying to fit everything they can into the two weeks... taking overnight trains and sleeping on them so they can maximize their daylight. And they're trying to see all of northern India, hitting Delhi, Dharamsala, Agra, all of Rajasthan, etc. all in two weeks. I kind of feel like by trying to see everything, they're not really going to see anything. They're going to be so busy traveling that even when they're at places like the Taj Mahal, they'll be too worried about catching the next train to really appreciate it. I mean, when you compare it to the United States, it's like trying to see the entire eastern side of the country in a couple of weeks. Can you imagine a trip where you tried to hit New York City, Boston, Washington D.C., Charleston, Atlanta, Miami, Disney World, Baton Rouge, all in less than two weeks? I can't imagine that being anything but stressful, especially when you factor in being in a foreign country and having to find the right train stations and deal with all of India's bureaucracy.
Our two week break is going to be more like spending a couple of weeks in one state (Kerala), traveling around to all the cool places in one region. We won't see as much of India, but we're definitely going to see what we see more thoroughly and less hectically. And we're going to ride elephants. We're also mostly avoiding the big cities, so that in itself should slow the rush down a lot.
After two entire weeks of our complaining that we have no idea where we live in relation to each other and everything else, ACM finally provided a map of Pune. This map has each of our colonies marked so we can see who lives near us and where we live on a map. This would be great, except Emily's and my colony is apparently too far in the outskirts of Pune to be on a Pune city map. I started at ACM and mapped our route home... Patrakar Nagar, right on some other street, right onto Law College Road, right again, right onto Karve Road, merge onto Paud Road... follow Paud Road for a while... pass Sarah and Liz's colony... go further on Paud Road............. and then there's no more map. It's like in the movies at the ending credits when you keep waiting for someone's name to show up, and it just never does. David lives off the map, too, but he at least has his name and a little arrow pointing the right direction. It's just unfair.
Cell Phone Update, Week 4:
I have my police registration.
I have my cell phone.
I have my SIM card.
I have no minutes.
For the last seven years or so, I've been keeping a list of all my favorite quotes. I think I'm gonna start ending my blog with random quotes from my list because it seems like after all these years, I should do something useful with them. And, since I have 88 more days in India and around 200 quotes, you're getting more than one a day! Lucky you! I hope everyone likes Nietzsche and Tolkien, because they're pretty dominant in my list.
When catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapults.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien,
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