India, What I did. Not what India did to me.

(thats for the next post)

Day one:
I left the ship in the early afternoon to go shopping with some girls, mostly to take photos and make sure they didn’t get harassed. After plowing through the first wave of rickshaw walas, we hopped on a rickshaw outside of the port. We were supposed to go to Spencer’s plaza. We never actually got there; we ended up going to all the shops that the wala wanted to go to for about two hours, before going back to the ship. I hopped back on the ship and grabbed a bite to eat before heading back out with another group who was just wandering the area outside of the port area. The area outside of the port area was poor, and was the first real shock I had in India, but more on that in the next post. We walked around while a local Indian man followed us and was sort of our unofficial tour guide. He took us by a temple and a few stores, we then stopped watched and made a pathetic attempt at playing cricket with some local kids. Everywhere we went there were kids playing cricket.

Day Two:
At 11am, I boarded the bus and left for the shady cricket stadium to meet my home stay family. When we arrived and they called my horribly misspelled last name (Mishler) I stepped out of the bus and was greeted by Avinaj, the son of our host. First, he took us the beach, which evidently is a big deal to them because it is the second longest beach in the world. (I have 5 Indian Rupees for whoever can tell me what the longest beach is.) From there, we toured his medical college; saw a bunch of hands, fetuses and other random things bottled in formaldehyde. There were also a few cadavers, nothing worse than any of the stuff I’ve seen from classes at school, except for the fact of how skinny they were.
From there we went back to the Mahender family’s house, had lunch which was amazing, and then went to an art gallery. From there, we went to the Rotarian meeting. After that was all said and done, we went out to dinner with another one of the families.

Day Three:
We had to be at the cricket stadium again at 7:30am to catch the bus to the temples at Mahabalipuram. After a spending some time there and then buying a painting from a local artist we headed back towards Chennai. Along the way, we pulled the bus over and Matt, Ashley, Candice, and I hopped of. We were greeted by Dr. Mahender who drove us to their beautiful “beach house” which is not near the beach at all, but has a very cool swimming pool. There things got interesting. We started talking about family life and such, eventually marriage came up, and the fact that they estimated 70% of marriages is arranged. They were shocked at the divorce rate in the US and the fact that we practically have utter freedom in who we chose to marry. What was even more shocking to them was that sometimes people marry against their parents wishes, or the fact that we don’t live at home until we are married, or sometimes after. The topics of conversation for that night went round and round. From American movies (which they love) to censorship. The conversation that hit me the most was the one in the car ride home, but that’s not suitable for the blog. To sum it up, they believed that pickup lines like “girl you must be a traffic ticket cause you have fine written all of you” actually work. (I have another entry drafted on that and will post it at a later date.) All I know, is I crawled into bed that night, realizing how lucky I am to live where I live and how much I have taken my freedom to live my life the way I choose for granted.

Day Four:
We were awoken at 8:30 and told we were leaving in 15 minutes for a Rotary meeting. At the meeting, they served some traditional food and we met the Rotary Governor again (and the way they treated him, you’d think he was the actual governor). From there, we headed to a Hindu temple and we met up with Candice and Ashley along the way. After the Hindu temple, we went around shopping and then returned to the ship. We were allowed to take our host family onboard and show them around. They were really impressed by the ship and the fact that we could fit so much into our cabins.
All in all the home stay is one of my best experiences yet, but India in and of itself has challenged the way I think.

Day Five:
There was a SAS trip to the disabled children’s home I had been trying to get on for days, finally at 3am the night before I bought a ticket off of one of my neighbors who wasn’t feeling well. The trip was the most overpowering experience of my life, it makes you sit back and think about all that you have and take for granted, the fact that if I chose I can climb a flight of stairs, or even just stand up. However, all of that is a topic for another post. Which is why this one is going to be so brief, it is near impossible to separate the overwhelming emotions from the events of the day.
We left on the bus for the children’s home first thing in the morning, and upon arrival, we were given a tour of the facilities. They train the older people there (some who reside there some don’t) to have some basic work skills, we saw some women using sewing machines, some men making paper cups, and then some computer training. They even made a welcome SAS PowerPoint that had things in it I didn’t know PowerPoint could do. After that we toured and talked with a few of the children who ranged from what seemed to be 4/5 or so to 18 or just beyond. They all loved to have their picture taken and then see it on screen. Then we went outside and did some general cleanup of brush and stuff, until lunch. Lunch although delicious is I am sure what made me sick two days later. After that, we spent almost three hours just playing with kids who ranged from 5-19. All of which had different disabilities. Some had mental problems, some had polio, and some had other debilitating problems that didn’t allow them to even stand. Many of them could not walk. There was one kid, who was older, I think he said he was 17, who had his leg crushed by a bus and lost it. He now lives at the home.
After we finished at the home, we returned to the ship with 12 children following in their bus behind ours. After carrying some of them up the stairs, we gave them a tour of the ship. Sashia and I ran ahead of the group on the sixth deck and quickly each bought a few packs of starbursts and passed them out to the kids. Eventually we toured the entire ship, and I had to carry one girl with polio around for quite a bit of it. We took them down to my cabin to show them were we live, and I let her rest on my bed for a minute so she would be able to make it to the gangway. She pointed to the picture of Sam and Sarah that’s on my wall, and said “your child?” it probably took 5 minutes to explain they are my niece and nephew.

India in an of itself is overwhelming, seeing the poverty and the beggars the first day was beyond what I expected, it was intense. The home stay was eye opening. The children’s home has made me sit back, and rethink almost every perception on life that I hold. They said India will have an impact on you. They said nothing of how much one country, one port, and five days out of one hundred can really change the way you look at everything.