well hello everybody! nomoshkar - that's a Hindi hello
our trip to India was amazing. i had a wonderful, wonderful time. i know i was happy to be in fresh air, doing outdoor activities. i think i was also very happy to be with a peer group (the other teachers) who i like and could get to know a little more, treat as friends. (i sometimes feel in a rut here, with family and close friends so far away. i really do miss you guys.)
but on this trip we were one big 70 person family. i kept thinking we were at summer camp. also thought often that this was a taste of parenting... because there were a million and one rules to enforce and questions to answer at all times of the 24-hour day. and even though i wanted to set an example of good demeanor at all times, that was impossible to maintain always. i had my good moments and uglier ones too. the kids were appreciative and forgiving.
the kids were great on the whole, and rolled with everything. they never complained, really. they had to travel for hours upon hours every day, and had to wait in some sketchy dirty places - there were no complaints or upsets. impressive travelers, and good people generally - but they have so much to learn about about life. the trip had a big overarching purpose, to teach the behavior expectations and personality dispositions that the middle school values: safety, curiosity, collaboration, perseverance, open-mindedness, empathy, responsibility, etc. every day we chose two values and looked for examples in the group's behavior, and around the lunch table and around the campfire we had big whole-group talks about how the kids had stretched themselves to be better people that day. it was a nice element of a trip which also included....
rafting on the Ganges! (the beautiful clean, clear, icy cold Ganges so high up) jumping from a 30 foot cliff! open-jeep safari (we saw elephants, monkeys, peacocks, flocks of parrots)! biking - WOW, this was the hardest for the kids (piles of our own corpses in the ditches. one kid even crashed into a monk). hiking (which in Asia they cool-ly refer to as trecking).
we did a couple of Hindu cultural things. we went to visit a big Ashram, and attended an Artii ceremony at dusk (prepared flower offerings to float in the Ganges). while we were in India it was the day of Holi which is the Hindu folktale that ends in a color fight. So we bought color (in the form of paint dust) and let the kids "play Holi" in the traditional way. we set up paint balloons and paint water guns and let them have a huge war in the creek at camp. this was all great, it felt very special to be part of. our Indian kids led the way and made sure we partied right.
as for India, it suprised me in a couple of ways. i was expecting something more developed, along the lines of rural China - which is clean and upcoming. i've learned that South Asia is VERY different from China. India is colorful (clothing), but filthy. it is as dirty with pollution and trash and sewage as is Dhaka (in fact, on return to Dhaka, I think Dhaka looked better then Delhi). homeless people everywhere. India is dusty, seriously dusty especially at this, the end of dry season,
I think India has a stronger middle class than Bangladesh has, so more people have some basic level of education. for me, this meant that interactions with everyday people were much more normal - less fragile and dependent, less "help me Madame" "Madame baksheesh" - less begging, less awkward asymmetrical interactions. more treating you like any other person, and with basic dignity for self.
also, the visible male-female ratio in India (the ratio that you see out and about on the streets) is WAYYYYYYY closer to 50-50 than what Bangladesh has. Bangladesh frustrates and disturbs immensely for the fact that the women of the country are sort of invisible. sometimes i can walk blocks, pass hundreds of men, and see no women - this in my own neighborhood, in any neighborhood, on busy streets. and the men really stare at you. all this of course has something to do with Hinduism in India versus Islam in Bangladesh and the way they are interpreted - and i should note that i'm making generalizations.
in sum, India was not developed as I expected. but it was somehow more culturally close to normal for me (more English, more colonialism here). at the same time, after seeing India, I had appreciation for what Bangladesh (Dhaka in particulalr) has accomplished.
so many pics! i'm going to divide them up. here are some, and more to come...
