Bonjour Bangalore?

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while...it's been an interesting two months between slowly readjusting to life in the U.S. and then off to India. I've been here for one month now so I figured it was time for a little bit of reflection. The distance has been harder to manage than when I was in France, between the 12 hour time difference and my schedule here. I'm still dealing with not being home for my grandpa's death a few weeks ago, something that is hard to understand anywhere but maybe even harder to accept when you're an ocean away. And yesterday there were 7 bomb blasts in the city of Bangalore. 2 people died and 20 people were injured, though we were removed from danger here at the Infosys compound. That distance makes me realize how different my life is here from the rest of India. We lived in an ordered, protected world that most people will never see. Aside from those two somber notes, my time here is passing quickly and relatively happily.

The "campus" has an oddly collegiate feel, with more people than Midd will ever have, the interns' "dorm" and various dining halls. It's a strange corporate environment with the buildings open 24/7, meant to offer a flexible work schedule but you never really leave work behind. There's a building that looks like the pyramid at the Louvre, and one that looks like the Sydney opera house. There are bamboo and palm trees all over campus, and a fountain in the center that lights up at night and the Indians all come out with cameras and take pictures. The campus changes completely on the weekends, though, with almost no one around except for Indian tourist with cameras taking pictures. Lots of pictures.

The world of campus and the world of India come to a shocking intersection just outside the gates. While we show our badges and have our bags inspected, there's a whole world out there with dogs and cows roaming free, auto-rickshaws, little road-side stands and millions of people. The interns often go into town in the evenings, though this is more complicated then it sounds. Traffic in Bangalore is notoriously horrible, and it can take up to two hours to reach anywhere. But we've discovered some nice restaurants and interesting places, and it's always a welcome break to the sometimes sterile world of Infosys. My favorite time on campus is late at night when almost no one is around and the temperature is more reasonable (or at least the humidity has dropped). But just when you think you'll get some peace and quiet, the night shift crowd appears and the campus seems even more crowded than during the day.

Driving in India probably deserves its own paragraph. I realized as I got in the cab at the airport that Indians drive on the left side of the road. Which is shocking in its own right. But even that is negotiable, as long as you put your emergency lights on. There is no concept of lane usage, turning signals or speed limits. Stop lights are jokes, often officiated by a traffic officer but really just a free-for-all. Horns replace any non-verbal forms of communication on the road, and the musical horns are my favorite. Entire families squeeze onto motorcycles and fly past our cabs.

I think I've adjusted shockingly well to the Indian prices. I've almost given up Diet Coke because it costs about twice as much as my whole lunch usually does (which, for the record, is about 50 cents). We are outraged at paying 3 dollars for something that we'd pay 20 for in the U.S. because we know that we could find it for 50 cents. I've replaced Diet Coke with fresh fruit juice, however, sold in every dining hall for about 25 cents. The mango, papaya, watermelon, etc. juice is addicting, and the orange juice from concentrate at Midd just isn't going to cut it next year. I've stuck with the whole vegetarian thing, and have happily not yet been sick from Indian food or water. It's shocking to me how many choices I have every time I eat somewhere. The weirdest is when there are separate veg and non-veg dining rooms in restaurants, which complicates eating arrangements, but I'm always impressed at how little meat even non-veg Indians eat. The veg food here doesn't center around substituting meatless options in normally meat dishes, but instead is an entirely separate cuisine. I eat piles of cauliflower, potatoes, chickpeas and lentils covered in the spiciest sauces of my life and completed by a pile of naan. Though the Indian flatbreads are delicious, I'm still craving baguettes...

Everyone has started talking about all the American foods they're missing. I don't tend to be very sympathetic but I guess I'm missing two cultures. I often slip up and say Bordeaux when I mean Bangalore (though I blame the alliteration). Many of the other interns just finished their sophmore years and are talking about their study abroad plans for next year. It just makes me sad and jealous to think about everyone who still has that ahead of them. After a year of French food, I still can't believe that people can live without bread, cheese and wine as a staple, but now those long-forgotten American favorites are starting to make me excited about being back. Maybe. I think that after a full calendar year away from "home," the transition back to Midd will be pretty shocking. Going through my third level of culture shock at the New England prep-school environment and second reverse culture shock over India with France still in the back of my mind will be an interesting way to start my senior year.

The colors here always suprise me. I could sit outside and study the womens' sarees for hours, with their rainbow of colors and patterns that are even more shocking after a year in the land of earth tones (preferably black).

My project isn't exactly thrilling, but I'm getting to do some translation which at least keeps the French around me. I'm learning a whole new vocabulary in both languages, considering I have no knowledge of business terms. I throw in words like "sector" and "market share" just to sound like I understand anything about how this business actually runs. But more than anything I'm learning that it just doesn't appeal to me. I also often feel terribly underqualified as there are at least three native french speaking interns, and nearly everyone seems to have studied french here. I also feel terribly boring, as I am one of the few interns who is boring enough to have learned english as my native language. Between Spanish, Russian and Chinese, I'm living in a little U.N. world. If only my mom had taught me Swedish...

I wish I knew Hindi...though most Indians know English, there are hundreds of languages and dialects spoken here. My Hindi vocabulary is pretty limited to Lagaan song lyrics, though strangely the word "chalo" from one of my favorite songs is used all the time as "let's go." I'm always surprised even walking around campus at how few people speak english outside of the business environment or when they are talking to me.

There's probably a million other things that I'm forgetting but I'll try to be better about posting so I don't have to cram a month's worth of details into one entry.

I'll be back...

So, this will be my last blog entry from France. I leave Bordeaux tomorrow morning by train, spend the night in Paris, fly from Paris to Dublin and finally to Chicago on Saturday. All of the other Middlebury students have left, so it feels vaguely like the summer before freshman year when I was the last one to go to college. I've walked my favorite path around the city every night for the last 5 nights and it gets harder everytime. I had lunch with the women from the Red Cross center today, and dinner with my host family last night- it feels so weird saying goodbye to everyone. I don't think I realized until the very end how much of a life I have here. Everyone keeps telling me I have to come back, and I keep just saying, oui, I know. I would stay forever if I could.
I will miss being somewhere where everyone expects to find at least 5 bakeries in walking distance from their house. And somewhere where the afternoon snack has an official name and is religiously observed by everyone. This entry is mostly going to be my sad, rambling thoughts about france. I've finally figured out when to use the formal word for 'you' and when the informal one is ok, and now I feel so rude using 'you' for just anyone in english. I have figured out how to sound like a french teenager, using their equivalents for 'whatever' and 'like.' I know this city as well as most people here, better actually. This is the first place where I've really lived on my own (ignore the part about the host family). I feel more comfortable here than anywhere else, and I've made my own life here. I run into people on the streets that I know.
This is going to be a tricky re-adjustment. Until I move back, anyway.

It's May?

It's May. I would probably believe you if you told me it was still March, but it's actually the middle of May. Short Recap: Megan and Dad came to visit me in March. We saw everything there is to see in Paris and Bordeaux in about 5 days. Maybe not everything, but we came pretty close. We had dinner with my host family where I was simultaneously translating between French and English for three hours; my head hurt at the end but it was fun. Megan bought a beret and some 'art,' of which she left the beret here and lost the 'art' on the Metro in Paris. I managed to survive all of my classes, just barely, and now just have two papers left to write. Tricky without a computer. We've already had our 'good-bye' picnic for everyone studying in Bordeaux. That was terrifying, especially since at the time I didn't even know what day I was leaving. For the record, I'm leaving on the 24th, which means leaving Bordeaux on the 23rd. Which means I have a week and a half left of what was once 9 months. I've started making lists of everything I want to see and do here before I leave, of everything I'm going to miss, of French words I've learned, of everything I'm looking forward to doing at home. Lots of lists. A few examples...

Stuff I'm going to miss from France:

Baguettes

Pastries

Sitting in cafes for hours

Cathedrals

Mustard

Stuff I won't miss:

Strikes/Protests

Euros

Public transportation

No computer...maybe not fair to put on the France list, but still

I'm going to campus today for the last time. The campus is the ugliest thing in Bordeaux so that makes it easier to say goodbye, but it's still weird that I'll probably never be back.
I celebrated my 21st birthday in France...which is a little anti-climatic but was still fun. We went to Biarritz, a surfing/resort town near the Spanish border for the day and just sat on the beach. I think it was about 85 degrees out, and I amazingly did not get incredibly sunburned. We came back to Bordeaux and hung out at Callie's house where they surprised me with a delicious brownie cake- I'm still impressed that they were able to make it in France. The next day I had dinner with my host family which was cute, the little girls were so excited. They gave me a really cute photo album which they promised to fill with pictures before I left, but I'm not sure if that will happen. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by, and I don't know if I'll be ready to leave in a week....

Disconnected...

Just when I thought that I couldn't go any longer between blog posts, I broke my record. This time I have a better excuse: my computer's been broken since sometime in February. I'm working on it, but customer service is even less helpful in France. The new semester is underway: I'm taking Translation, Literary Art and History (if you understand what that means, you'll be better off than most of my class) and General Sociology. I also have an internship at a Red Cross center for young mothers. The center officially opens this week, so I'm excited to see how it actually works after the weeks of preparation. I'm by far the youngest working at the center, most of the women have kids or are already retired, but they are all very nice and love talking to their little American student (me). I'm suddenly speaking a lot more french in my everyday life since the internship is a lot more interactive than classes.
My supervisor, Isabelle, is very nice and has asked me to help teach her son English. So for one hour a week, I speak nothing but English with Pierre, which is a lot harder than it sounds because I keep trying to switch to French. Last week I babysat for her youngest son, Eduard, and we watched Harry Potter. He kept telling me what was going to happen just before it happened. He also was fascinated by the fact that I'm American. He kept asking me how I had learned English, and if I spoke English at home and if my family understood me. It was pretty funny trying to explain that it was just like French for him. Also, he asked me if I believed in Santa Claus and the Loch Ness monster. He isn't sure about Santa but he knows Nessie exists. However, he was a little shocked when I told him that if she does exist, she's in Scotland. I told him I wasn't sure about Nessie but I knew Santa exists.
I'm hoping Megan and Dad are coming to visit soon, but I suppose I won't know for sure until the day before. I'm excited to be able to show them around Bordeaux, now that I actually feel like I live here. I'm actually dreading leaving here; as much as I would like to be home and see everyone, I'm not ready to leave Bordeaux, especially since I don't know when I'll be back. I have a café that I go to nearly everyday with Callie and the waiters all know exactly what we order. Today I went alone since she's gone for the weekend and they asked where she was.
These next few months are going to fly by, between work and visiters and traveling...and it's already time to start thinking about housing and classes for senior year at Middlebury. That's even more shocking.

Walk Like an Egyptian

Hello everyone, I know it's been awhile. I'm now done with my exams. Finally. Having exams stretched between the middle of December and the last week of January really makes life complicated and continually stressful. But I'm done. Like everything in France, my exams were nothing like I expected. Some were shockingly broad- one political science exam included no actual questions but simply phrases that I was expected to respond to. Others were pleasantly shorter than we expected- my linguistics exam was seemingly missing the first section, and luckily that was the section I didn't know. Now, though, it's time to dive right into the second semester. Still trying to figure out my schedule, especially because I'm hoping to get an internship and that will change the number of credits I need. We will see...
I went to Egypt. It's okay if you didn't know, I didn't tell my parents until just before I left. I figured it was less time for them to worry about it. Egypt was incredible, frustrating, amazing, and sad. Possibly some more adjectives that I can't think of right now. I've never been anywhere that created so many emotions. So many conflicting emotions. I want to go back. And I want to go to Morocco, and South Africa, and everywhere else for that matter. But it was hard. I went with Sean, a friend from high school. I don't think you could really see Egypt if it was just a group of girls. I hate saying that. It bothers my feminist instincts. But so does Egypt in general. I brought a scarf with me, not sure how many women would cover their head. I would say less than 20 % were uncovered, so I felt painfully obvious walking down the streets uncovered. But I felt like a fraud when I wore my scarf. Everyone still knew that I wasn't Egyptian, or Muslim. And I couldn't decide whether it was more appropriate to cover my head when I didn't believe in it or to obviously defy their customs. Still, I tried, and I wore long sleeves and long pants everywhere. Which is more than I can say for the hordes of tourists at the main sites, who saw nothing of Egypt that didn't require an entrance ticket. Our hotel was right in downtown Cairo. Which can be terrifying, certainly at least just crossing the street requires a blatant disregard for your life, or as our guide book told us, "just use one of the locals as a shield. they usually don't mind." We were in the middle of Egypt. And in the middle of millions of Egyptians. Every time we stepped out the door. Of course our hotel was on the 8th floor of an old appartment building who elevators stopped working the second day we were there. So stepping out the door was more of a process than what it sounds. We tried to really explore the city. It's overwhelming, though, with the traffic and the locals. In Italy, there's also people selling things and calling out as you walk down the streets. But not to the same extent as in Egypt. Egyptians are friendly, but taxi drivers, tour guides, papyrus makers are everywhere, just waiting to sell you something. Most often we heard locals offer a quiet "welcome" as we walked by, though I was also complemented on my eyebrows, hair, etc. One man told me to call him after I took my black nail polish off. Everyone assumed we were married, because I don't think many Egyptians travel together as friends. After we explained that we weren't, most of the men offered to marry me themselves. One man who ran an alabastor factory gave me "his heart." I walked away with a few souvenir pieces of alabastor, and in fact a carved alabastor heart. Does that mean we are married now? Probably. The obvious parts of Egypt are as incredible as expected. You can't hide the immensity or the grace of the Pyramids. Or the Valley of the Kings. Or any of it really. There were times when it felt a little too touristy but the ruins spoke for themselves. There are a million Egyptians at every tourist destination willing to give you the back tour or point out an extra hieroglyph for a few extra Egyptian pounds. There are separate tickets for nearly everything, as you can pay one price just to walk around the ruins, another to actually go in, probably another to take pictures...you never know. We hired a taxi for the day and traveled to the first pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Saccara. Then we stopped at Memphis, the old capital. And finally, the Pyramids of Giza. We rode a camel for a short trip from one pyramid to another, literally using the last of our money. That's always an effective bargaining tool, when you really have no more money. I enjoyed the ride between destinations almost as much as the destinations themselves, sitting in the back of a dusty taxi listening to Egyptian music and driving through the countryside of Egypt. Our driver stopped so we could eat oranges that his sister sells by the side of the road. My first impulse is to call Cairo dirty. But I think it's really just dusty. Understandable, considering the desert and the age of everything. It's loud and dusty, but surprisingly more charming than expected. We were invited by several people on the street to go to a coffeehouse and drink "shai" with them, Egyptians drink tea maybe 10 times a day and it's such a social activity. We met a surprising number of Egyptians who had lived in Minnesota. Everyone associates Chicago with Al Capone. I was so impressed with their English. Not just those in the tourist industry, but many of the people of the street spoke near perfect English. I want to learn Arabic.
We took the night train down to Luxor, which is where the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Colossi of Memnon, etc. are located. We ended up joining a small tour organized by a hotel owner which took us to all of the spots we wanted to see. I have no pictures of the mummies or the inside of the tombs, as you're not allowed to bring your camera inside, and I don't know that I can even describe them. But they are incredible. The officials had only recently returned King Tut's mummy to his tomb, so we saw both the outer sarcophagus and his mummy inside. Most of the spoils are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which is an incredible maze of discoveries. But the tombs themselves retain an almost austere glory. Hatshepsut's Temple seems nearly untouched as you first approach it. Up close, sure, there's fallen columns and destroyed paintings. But still. It's incredible. The Colossi of Memnon are, well, gigantic. And I made the tour stop so I could at least get a picture from the side of the road of the Ramesseum, which has the fallen statue of Ramses II that Shelley wrote about in his poem 'Ozymandias.' No one else understood why I wanted to see it. After our tour, the hotel owner appeared and invited us to his home to see the real Egypt. Although we were both a little nervous, I'm so glad that we did. He lives with his sister and her husband, and their four daughters in a small house near the Colossi of Memnon, in the middle of a small farming community. His sister kept bringing dishes out of the kitchen, and they were all delicious. I hated that she didn't just sit and eat with us though, although I don't think she spoke any English. The four daughters were adorable and hilarious. They loved our digital cameras, chewing gum and tried teaching us a little bit of Arabic. But you could already see the difference between the oldest, who was about 9, and the others. She came into the room with her head uncovered, but quickly left and returned with a scarf. Her younger sisters tore off their scarves as soon as they were in the room. She tended to stand off to the side, waiting for her uncle to tell her what to bring him or where to go. After a while, she started joining in on the fun, but it was sad to see how much more reserved she was. It was an incredible afternoon, though, relaxing and an amazing view into Egypt that I never expected to get. After our late lunch, we headed to the banks of the Nile where we took a 'felucca,' or basically a sailboat, ride. It was so relaxing and beautiful. And incredible to be out on the Nile. Luckily, I saw no crocodiles. We returned to Cairo that night, and the next day we explored Coptic Cairo. Ten percent of Cairo is Coptic Christian and their quarter contains some amazing buildings. We saw the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest in Egypt and supposedly where the Jews gathered after escaping Nebuchadnezzar. Just around the outside wall is the spring where the Pharaoh's daughter supposedly found Moses in the reeds. We also saw the Hanging Church, from around the 6th century. By the end of our time in Cairo, we had nearly mastered 'Gad,' the Egyptian fast food restaurant that our hotel recommended. Everything was in arabic so we learned just to ask for some kind of sandwich and take what we got. One day we got four falafel sandwiches for about one dollar. One day I might have gotten pigeon. We're not sure.
It's hard to love a city where you don't feel comfortable. And I don't think that I could ever really feel comfortable in Cairo. Certainly not by myself, and not entirely even with anyone else. But I want to go back. I want to explore it again. I want to see more of "real Egypt." But that will be later. My next goal is Morocco.