Today, we went to the travel agent (and by 'we,' I mean Sarah and I). Again. We have two more trains booked, and two nights worth of hotels. So, for our 15 days of travel, that means we have 1/3 of them planned for. Progress!

I think we've decided not to use the travel agent to book anymore hotels... while the travel agent has better resources than we do and is more capable of finding hotels, he also charges us $6 for every booking we make. And, considering that we're paying around $5 a night for hotels, I'm not quite okay with that. Also, today, the travel agent in charge of hotels had to clarify that I am not a man, so I dislike him.

I hate booking hotels and trains. It involves multiple trips to travel agents. It involves lots of stress. It involves infinite possibilities of where to stay, how long to stay, which hotel to stay at while there, which place to go next, which train to take to the next place, etc. And Sarah and I are planning the trip for four of us, so it generally involves a trip to the travel agent to get options, a trip to ACM to get group input, a trip back to the travel agent to confirm, a trip back to ACM to collect the required money, a trip back to the travel agent to pay. For. Every. Transaction.

It's not fun. The two people in charge of trains know us by name now, though.

One of the ACM kids is in the hospital, and I spent an hour or so visiting her today. She has appendicitis or kidney stones or something like that... she's not feeling so hot, basically. The doctors aren't sure what's wrong with her. And no one speaks English regularly, so she never knows what's going on. Today, they didn't feed her. The surgeon was supposed to visit this afternoon, so if she needed surgery, she wasn't supposed to have any food in her system. However, no one at the hospital explained that to her, so she just went all day with no food and no reason why. Our resource guide who is hired to take care of the students' needs (be they shopping, directions, coordination of programs, health, or transportation) refuses to help Meghan with anything because she is afraid of hospitals. Today, Meghan had to have a CT scan, and the guide wouldn't go with her lest she get sick. So, ACM sent the non-English-speaking helper to sit in on the test. So Meghan still had no idea what was going on, but at least she had a friendly face. Note: don't get sick in India, and if you do, don't go to the hospital.

During class, we've been talking about how little Indians know about their history. That raised the question of how much we know about our own country. So, as basic review (I don't have internet at home... I have to do something), I've been seeing how much I remember. First, I tried to list the 50 states in America... I could come up with 49 of them (for some reason, Maine escaped me... I even drew it in my map, but it just wouldn't go on the list). I then listed the state capitals... it took three people to come up with all 50 of them. For some reason, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Michigan, and South Carolina are difficult. My third task: name the presidents. That's been the hardest. I can easily name the first 7 and the last 14. Then, in the middle, I can get 10-12 of them. I got up to about 35 of the 44 presidents. And at that point, I got internet, so I looked them up. Of the nine that were left, about five of them were definitely obvious ones that I would have gotten to eventually. Grant, Coolidge, etc. Then there were a couple of less obvious ones that I might have eventually come up with and at least knew of as presidents. Then, there were a couple (B. Harrison and Arthur) whose names I was kind of surprised to see on the list of presidents considering I really just don't know anything about them and I didn't recognize their names. So... how many states/capitols/presidents can you name?

My host family's son and daughter in law and granddaughter are staying a few days with us. Tonight, they asked my aai if I like the food. Aai's response: “She is not choosy. She eats everything. She always says 'khoop chaan!'”

Oct. 13

I forgot to post this this morning, so two days worth!

Not much happened today. About the most exciting thing was our Literature class. It annoyed me. I think it annoyed everyone. Coincidentally, today was the day to fill out a mid-course review on our teacher. I'm pretty sure he got lots of bad reviews.

Reason one for annoyance: We were discussing a memoir (imagine that happening in a Lit class...). It was about India being a poor country with a caste system. We got onto the topic of Americans as an audience. He told us that when Americans think of India, they think of it as a holy land of philosophy and a spiritual sanctuary. We told him that when we as Americans think of India, we think of it as a poor country with a caste system. He argued. He told us we're students, and that makes us different. We told him that most of our friends and family tend to think of it the same way. He told us that we're wrong.

Reason two of annoyance: One of the girls in the class said (and we all agreed) that the character in the book was hard to relate to because he was very flat, his character wasn't developed, and he was hard to relate to as an actual human. Our teacher told us that we were being narrow-minded and racist for not relating to a character because he was different from us.

Reason three for annoyance: We brought up Anne Frank. She went through the whole process of being persecuted for her birthright like the character in the book, and yet we can relate to her diaries. Our teacher told us that that's because she's white, so of course we can relate to her. He doesn't seem to acknowledge the fact that we aren't any closer to being Jews in Europe in the Holocaust than we are to being lower caste members in India. She's white, so we can relate.

Reason four for annoyance: Our professor writes books. We have to read and analyze one of them in a few weeks. He takes it personally and gets offended when we criticize books he didn't write, so I can't imagine what it will be like when we read something he actually wrote.