Yesterday evening our host family took Tim, Arlita and me to a spiritual talk with a famous yogi. We left the house around 5pm to drive into, and across to Hyderabad's twin city, Secunderabad. Driving here is like nothing I've ever experienced. At any moment I think I could die, but amazingly I made it. I think because there are so many cars and people and things going on when you drive, it forces people to pay more attention and so there is none of the 'spacing-out--while-changing-the-CD-while driving' that is so dangerous in the states. I'm starting to not be surprised by some of the insanity, but there are just so many people, more and more of them that keep coming from every direction, that it is absolutely impossible to get anywhere quickly or safely. My host father, Ramarasimhum made the comparison of Indian cities being like 'broken ant-hills' because you just keep seeing people spilling out from all places, going in random directions, and they are all going about their own paths and just keep coming and coming. The best part of driving yesterday was the small statue of Ganesha that sits on the family car's dashboard. Ganesha is the Hindu god who removes obstacles, which really is just hysterical to me, beyond ironic of course. Ganesha is trying his very best to make our path clear to the lecture hall, but the broken ant-hill of Hyderabad is too jam-packed that he is having a tough time of it. Each stop beggars come up to the window with babies in their arms, street vendors try to sell electric, rechargable plug-in fly swatters (random I know...) and small children come with rags to wash the windows for a few rupees. We are constantly confronted with other cars, pedestrians, bikers, motorcycles, cows, goats, dogs, beggars, children, and street sellers; at its most busy and insane, this place really does feel like something broken, unable to fix itself, perpetuating more confusion and chaos. Did I mention that people don't wait for the lights (when there is one) to change from red to green? They just go when they...want to? need to? certainly not when they think it is safe, because that never happens.
We sat in traffic until around 7pm (the lecture started at 6:45) and so luckily we only missed a bit of the speech. The speech was interesting, it was about the practice of yoga and meditation as the means to reach god/self-realization. What I like the most about Hinduism so far is how all-encompassing it is. It brings so many aspects of other religions together that is seems to teach a very universally spiritual message. The hall was full of Indians, some of which only understood Telugu (the speech was translated afterwards in Telegu), and then we had a big meal of the usual rice, daal, chipati, curries, and yogurt. It was fun to go off into the city with my host family and see what life in Hyderabad is like for someone who is not just going to school here.
On the say back we got talking about Vedic prayers and hymns and soon they were singing out the matras that my Mom used to sing to me at night when I was little. It was so interesting, hearing the words and melodies that I used to fumble along with, it was like hearing something from a past life even. It was such a flash back. Anyway they sang one that was probably about 7 minutes long, which was really amazing to me because it is all in Sanskrit, the older version of Hindi, and neither of my host parents speak it (and my host mother doesn't even speak Hindi!).
Of course, while they singing about the beauty of the universe, the creation of the world, and the unity of everything, we were sitting in a tiny red car, with Ganesha on the dashboard, being honked at, nearly crushed, tapped at, and waved at by a city that is so over-flowing with people it takes an hour and a half to go about 10 miles.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
new years!
8pm January, 1st, 2008 (!!)
Happy new year! New years was funny here in Hyderabad because life seemed to go on as usual (guards guarded, cab drivers drove, Indian men stared, etc.). Yesterday we went to a craft fair in Shilparamam which was incredible. It is really amazing to focus only on the colors of the clothing people where here. It is all so vibrant, especially at this fair, every color imaginable, all swarming around you. I bought some Indian clothes (two pairs of pants, a shirt, and a really gorgeous silk scarf). One of the pairs of pants are hysterical (imagine bright orange skinny jeans to the thigh, and then bloomers around my butt...), but otherwise it was a huge success: I now have really breezy and cool clothing to wear until I can get my own things made by the tailor on campus (this is apparently the best way to get good clothes here, exciting!). Walking through the streets here is a lot like walking around in Kenya, but we were never located so constantly in a city, and so didn't see as much of the dynamic and societal customs of city life, which I feel I will get while here. That being said, going into the city is completely exhausting and almost too intense--I don't plan on going in more than once every week at most, at least at first. Today we went to went on a bus tour of the closer towns near the university and I am really excited because they are really nice and way more manageable than the big city. It is only about 3 miles from the university.
What is most interesting to me about where I am and what I see each day is the stark contrast of poverty and wealth that is literally smashed together all over this city. As I think I mentioned before, all along the roads are these congregations of blue-tarp tents, which i found out are where workers like, who are working on the giant corporate and high-rise apartment buildings that spring up everywhere. The most ironic sign in the world (which I am working on getting a photo of) is a giant billboard reading "Luxury Apartments: Live right" (or something like that) above a huge slum of blue-tarp tents all covered in dust. These people are building the new apartments, and once it is complete they will move their homes (with their families) to a new location in the city to build another billion-dollar high-rise. All over the streets are bare-foot children begging for money (who come running and screaming our way when they see a group of white, rich, tourists like us).
Yesterday I took my first rickshaw. Luckily they can only go about 20 miles an hour, so no one is really speeding super fast, however, just to paint the picture accurately: on the way home we actually drove between a person standing in the middle of the street and and sidewalk. Driving here is complete insanity, but the drivers are so quick and their reaction times are so sharp, it almost seems to work (in a not so safe, kind of insane way).
Last night we went to a restaurant in Banjari Hills, the fancy part of town, came home early and had a rooftop party til midndight when we counted down to 0, set off a some dud firecrackers, and had hand sparklers. A bunch of Indian guys came (who soon brought more, who called more of them, and more and more) who were too drunk and saw all of us hugging each other 'happy new years' and seemed to think it was license to hug us all. Normally that'd be fine, but in a culture where male-female physical contact is limited to married couples onlyd, it seemed weird so we left. It was a strange new years because I knew that no one back home at yet entered 2008--time is so weird like that--and it made me miss being home.
Happy new year! New years was funny here in Hyderabad because life seemed to go on as usual (guards guarded, cab drivers drove, Indian men stared, etc.). Yesterday we went to a craft fair in Shilparamam which was incredible. It is really amazing to focus only on the colors of the clothing people where here. It is all so vibrant, especially at this fair, every color imaginable, all swarming around you. I bought some Indian clothes (two pairs of pants, a shirt, and a really gorgeous silk scarf). One of the pairs of pants are hysterical (imagine bright orange skinny jeans to the thigh, and then bloomers around my butt...), but otherwise it was a huge success: I now have really breezy and cool clothing to wear until I can get my own things made by the tailor on campus (this is apparently the best way to get good clothes here, exciting!). Walking through the streets here is a lot like walking around in Kenya, but we were never located so constantly in a city, and so didn't see as much of the dynamic and societal customs of city life, which I feel I will get while here. That being said, going into the city is completely exhausting and almost too intense--I don't plan on going in more than once every week at most, at least at first. Today we went to went on a bus tour of the closer towns near the university and I am really excited because they are really nice and way more manageable than the big city. It is only about 3 miles from the university.
What is most interesting to me about where I am and what I see each day is the stark contrast of poverty and wealth that is literally smashed together all over this city. As I think I mentioned before, all along the roads are these congregations of blue-tarp tents, which i found out are where workers like, who are working on the giant corporate and high-rise apartment buildings that spring up everywhere. The most ironic sign in the world (which I am working on getting a photo of) is a giant billboard reading "Luxury Apartments: Live right" (or something like that) above a huge slum of blue-tarp tents all covered in dust. These people are building the new apartments, and once it is complete they will move their homes (with their families) to a new location in the city to build another billion-dollar high-rise. All over the streets are bare-foot children begging for money (who come running and screaming our way when they see a group of white, rich, tourists like us).
Yesterday I took my first rickshaw. Luckily they can only go about 20 miles an hour, so no one is really speeding super fast, however, just to paint the picture accurately: on the way home we actually drove between a person standing in the middle of the street and and sidewalk. Driving here is complete insanity, but the drivers are so quick and their reaction times are so sharp, it almost seems to work (in a not so safe, kind of insane way).
Last night we went to a restaurant in Banjari Hills, the fancy part of town, came home early and had a rooftop party til midndight when we counted down to 0, set off a some dud firecrackers, and had hand sparklers. A bunch of Indian guys came (who soon brought more, who called more of them, and more and more) who were too drunk and saw all of us hugging each other 'happy new years' and seemed to think it was license to hug us all. Normally that'd be fine, but in a culture where male-female physical contact is limited to married couples onlyd, it seemed weird so we left. It was a strange new years because I knew that no one back home at yet entered 2008--time is so weird like that--and it made me miss being home.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Koti
Sunday, December 30th, 2007
Today we finally got off campus! In groups of 5 we went by bus with an Indian student from the University into the actual city of Hyderabad. We are living about 24km away from the center of the city, which, I'm feeling is actually really a good thing. From today's ride into the city I can say that this country, well at least this city, is just as jam-packed and overcrowded as everyone says it is. Each morning we take a taxi from our home to the university and pick of the other people living in home stays. On our way we see rows and rows of tarps-tents crowded together, where families are living in extreme poverty. Late at night you can see the road sides lined with people sleeping, and going the 24km into the city took at least 45 minutes one way, and nearly an hour and a half coming home. Today was so intense. The streets are so crowded with people who are selling used books, fresh fruit (which I can't eat of course because it is all washed in bad water), clothing and shoes, everything you can image. This place is so interesting because in it everything is recognizable to things at home, but are so radically different from how I'm used to them!
We went into a part of the city called Koti today. It was so packed and insane, and hot! It is around 90 F here and I just learned that come April it will be around 120!! Today was nearly unbearably hot at times, the sun just bakes you, and I honestly can't imagine what I am going to do when it gets really hot. I'll get used to it though, so they say at least.
More later, tea now.
lots of love,
Sophie
Today we finally got off campus! In groups of 5 we went by bus with an Indian student from the University into the actual city of Hyderabad. We are living about 24km away from the center of the city, which, I'm feeling is actually really a good thing. From today's ride into the city I can say that this country, well at least this city, is just as jam-packed and overcrowded as everyone says it is. Each morning we take a taxi from our home to the university and pick of the other people living in home stays. On our way we see rows and rows of tarps-tents crowded together, where families are living in extreme poverty. Late at night you can see the road sides lined with people sleeping, and going the 24km into the city took at least 45 minutes one way, and nearly an hour and a half coming home. Today was so intense. The streets are so crowded with people who are selling used books, fresh fruit (which I can't eat of course because it is all washed in bad water), clothing and shoes, everything you can image. This place is so interesting because in it everything is recognizable to things at home, but are so radically different from how I'm used to them!
We went into a part of the city called Koti today. It was so packed and insane, and hot! It is around 90 F here and I just learned that come April it will be around 120!! Today was nearly unbearably hot at times, the sun just bakes you, and I honestly can't imagine what I am going to do when it gets really hot. I'll get used to it though, so they say at least.
More later, tea now.
lots of love,
Sophie
I am here...
Last night, 10pm Saturday, December 29th, 2007
It is 10pm on Saturday December 29th and I have been in India for 2 days. It feels like it's been at least 2 weeks. It's amazing how emotions change from morning to night: during the day it seems fine, certainly strange, but come the night time and I am an absolute wreck. India is intense; really intense. I am living in a home stay with a family that has a father, mother, and a daughter--but the daughter does not live with us. There are two other CIEE students living with me here: Arlita who is from Maine, and TIm who is from St. Louis. The father of my family, whose name is Ramanarasinhum (no abbreviation allowed, always the full thing) is a teacher of Telugu (the language spoken here, yes meaning my Hindi is literally useless), and the mother, who we call Amma (meaning mother in Telugu), speaks no English or Hindi--only Telugu. The daughter's name is Srilakshmi and she recently got married. The family has had CIEE foreign students for the past two years straight, and they are excited to have us.
However, the experience so far with the family has not been exactly what I expected. The father is leaving in 2 weeks to go teach in Chicago for the rest of the semester, and the mother is following him there in February. Their daughter and her husband are apparently going to come live with us when the mother leaves, which I am hoping will be okay. It is really too bad that they are leaving because they are both really nice: the father has been telling us about Telugu, Hinduism, Advaita, and eating etiquette (if you can call it that at all). It is strange because Amma stands around us at the table when we are eating and just serves us food and urges more and more on us, but I have yet to see her eat herself once. They have a servant who washes the floors and does house stuff i think and will do our laundry (we have to pay her of course) but we were never introduced to her (as though she isn't really a person with a name).
The house is neither small nor large, but there are all these little rooms that are for prayer only. It is also dirty; though they seem to wash the floors almost everyday, and yet the sinks and covered in dirt and plates only get a quick luke-warm rinse! Food is There are no utensils at all. none. not for soup, not for rice, not for curry, not for yogurt. We sit down for our first dinner last night and all stair at our plates not knowing what to do. So our father shows us: you pile your rice in the center, and with your right hand ONLY you mush one kind of curry or whatever it is up so it is like a paste, then you take little chunks in your fingers and scoop them into your mouth, flicking it with your thumb. This is the process for all food. With yogurt--apparently an Indian meal is not complete with your portion of yogurt and rice (!!). Anyway, the food is interesting because it all has some strange taste to it--like it is almost really good, but they added one too many spices or something. It all has this bitter taste to it, that I think is the Southern Indian flavor. Not nearly as good as North Indian food (which is what we eat in the States at an Indian restaurant).
So the hardest parts are the eating and the living situation, but amazingly they are both also pretty cool because they are teaching me things about Indian life that I would not have learned, living in the dorms or the American students house. It is definitely harder to be here, but we are three of us and we have our own floor in the house and each with our own room. Our rooms all open onto a terrace-hallway thingy that has a wicker chair hanging from the ceiling. At the moment it is all under construction and they say it will be done in a week, but I don't know If i believe them. We'll see how quickly it gets done..as in, if it's ever done before we leave.
It is 10pm on Saturday December 29th and I have been in India for 2 days. It feels like it's been at least 2 weeks. It's amazing how emotions change from morning to night: during the day it seems fine, certainly strange, but come the night time and I am an absolute wreck. India is intense; really intense. I am living in a home stay with a family that has a father, mother, and a daughter--but the daughter does not live with us. There are two other CIEE students living with me here: Arlita who is from Maine, and TIm who is from St. Louis. The father of my family, whose name is Ramanarasinhum (no abbreviation allowed, always the full thing) is a teacher of Telugu (the language spoken here, yes meaning my Hindi is literally useless), and the mother, who we call Amma (meaning mother in Telugu), speaks no English or Hindi--only Telugu. The daughter's name is Srilakshmi and she recently got married. The family has had CIEE foreign students for the past two years straight, and they are excited to have us.
However, the experience so far with the family has not been exactly what I expected. The father is leaving in 2 weeks to go teach in Chicago for the rest of the semester, and the mother is following him there in February. Their daughter and her husband are apparently going to come live with us when the mother leaves, which I am hoping will be okay. It is really too bad that they are leaving because they are both really nice: the father has been telling us about Telugu, Hinduism, Advaita, and eating etiquette (if you can call it that at all). It is strange because Amma stands around us at the table when we are eating and just serves us food and urges more and more on us, but I have yet to see her eat herself once. They have a servant who washes the floors and does house stuff i think and will do our laundry (we have to pay her of course) but we were never introduced to her (as though she isn't really a person with a name).
The house is neither small nor large, but there are all these little rooms that are for prayer only. It is also dirty; though they seem to wash the floors almost everyday, and yet the sinks and covered in dirt and plates only get a quick luke-warm rinse! Food is There are no utensils at all. none. not for soup, not for rice, not for curry, not for yogurt. We sit down for our first dinner last night and all stair at our plates not knowing what to do. So our father shows us: you pile your rice in the center, and with your right hand ONLY you mush one kind of curry or whatever it is up so it is like a paste, then you take little chunks in your fingers and scoop them into your mouth, flicking it with your thumb. This is the process for all food. With yogurt--apparently an Indian meal is not complete with your portion of yogurt and rice (!!). Anyway, the food is interesting because it all has some strange taste to it--like it is almost really good, but they added one too many spices or something. It all has this bitter taste to it, that I think is the Southern Indian flavor. Not nearly as good as North Indian food (which is what we eat in the States at an Indian restaurant).
So the hardest parts are the eating and the living situation, but amazingly they are both also pretty cool because they are teaching me things about Indian life that I would not have learned, living in the dorms or the American students house. It is definitely harder to be here, but we are three of us and we have our own floor in the house and each with our own room. Our rooms all open onto a terrace-hallway thingy that has a wicker chair hanging from the ceiling. At the moment it is all under construction and they say it will be done in a week, but I don't know If i believe them. We'll see how quickly it gets done..as in, if it's ever done before we leave.
Monday, November 19, 2007
let's try this again...
I'm leaving for India on December 26th to study at the University of Hyderabad for the spring semester. I'll be back May 5th (maybe)....
Thursday, July 06, 2006
back in NYC
I am back in the real world. And the last two days were the longest in history.
On Tuesday morning I woke up around 7, in my bed with my mosquito net and no covers in the Karibu hotel in the heart of Stonetown, Zanzibar…wow it already feels worlds ago and away. We took a taxi to the airport for our noon flight to Dar Es Selaam, which is the capital of Tanzania. We had a close call with our bags: when we last minute decided to go check on them to make sure they were still on the plane, only to see them going around and around on the baggage carousel. Basically if we hadn’t checked, our bags would still be Tanzania. Got back on a plane to Arusha. We got into Arusha around 2pm and our next flight wasn’t until 9 that night. So we just camped outside under a tree and read books and ate our mangos. Around 7 we went inside and then we met Greg. Greg started talking to us by commenting on the tons of crushed peanut shells that were strewn all over the floor near us. They weren’t ours. He was basically just really friendly and such a character. He seemed slightly paranoid about the flight, ie he got up every 10 minutes to go check the planes progress and how much longer till we got to board, etc. But he was really funny and we made a bet with him about our flight. Loser takes winner out to dinner. We are taking him to John Jay dining hall at Columbia.
We took a 777 airplane from Arusha to Amsterdam, but since the Arusha airport is so small there aren’t any tunnel terminals. By that I mean that you walk on the pavement outside up to the steps and then get on the plane that way. We had done this plenty on all the smaller flights, but this time it was a 777. It was completely the biggest human creation I have ever seen. I have no idea how it actually gets off the ground. It was incredible. We actually had to fly right back to Dar and then we went to Amsterdam. Our flight left Arusha at 9pm and got into Amsterdam at 7 the next morning (with 1 hour time zone difference). We immediately left the airport (after some serious difficulty with reading the signs in Dutch) and took a swanky train into the city.
I walked out of the train station and felt something that seems nearly impossible to describe. I’ll try tho. The world is huge. The western world is even bigger somehow. To go from Stonetown and Nanyuki to Amsterdam is such a huge, cataclysmic change: everyone is white, everyone is walking fast, everyone is dressed soooo trendy (it made me sick). Everyone is white here. Duh soph, I know but it’s true. I am just another person, another white girl among hundreds and thousands. No one stops to talk to me on the street, no one calls out to me; the girl sitting next to me at Nussbaum this morning didn’t even look at me, let alone want to start a conversation. No one wants to talk to each other here. Amsterdam was this huge shock I was just walking around in a complete daze I could barely see straight. It doesn’t even make sense to me now because I’m separated from the feeling, but at the time it was the strangest sensation of my life. Life is just totally different in a western country. Everything is clean, everything has soap, and a toilet seat. Everything has toilet paper and a toilet! We were lucky to get a long drop in most of the towns we visited. There’s running water. There’s about 10 different muffin choices at each bakery. There are 5 salads on menus. Food doesn’t give me the shits. What am I saying, I know all this was here, I knew it was different when I was away from it. But it’s completely incredible how easy it was to forget it all existed and to just get used to not having a toilet, or running water that I could drink, or trendy clothes and fast walking people. Going to Africa was easy somehow. I think it was because I was going from big to small. Somehow going the other way is just really trippy. I thought about this for a while and realized that what is the strangest part of the whole thing, or maybe the best way to describe it is this: the strangest thing in life is when the familiar suddenly seems foreign and the foreign seems familiar. I expected Africa to be different and it was. What I didn’t expect was for NYC to feel like a foreign country does.
Back to the story. We left the train station in a daze and went pastry shopping. They have the most amazing pastries there all over the city. We basically had the plan to walk all day and see as much of the city as we possibly could. We had 12 hours between our two flights. Everyone in Amsterdam rides bikes everywhere. Seriously, there are possibly more bikes than there are cars. Instead of car garages, there are bike garages; there are lanes on the roads just for bike. Anyway, we decided to rent bikes for a few hours. Best decision ever. Just biking around this city neither of us had any idea about was so much fun. It was so weird to be in Europe with all the expensive fruit, expensive clothes, expensive trains that don’t bump you once…
We biked for about 3 hours all over the city, through a little park and along all the beautiful canals. Amsterdam is laid out in a really neat way. I don’t really understand it, but there were all these rings of streets all circling around the center of the city. And there were canals and little bridges to cross the canals at each ring. It was so beautiful. We stopped to buy some peaches, which I had completely forget even existed. I knocked into an entire display of blueberries in the process. I think buying the fruit was the first time I realized just how different it all was. In Africa people are so on top of you to buy what they are selling that you actually cannot walk down the street without being pretty much attacked by people selling you things, like I’ve said so many times. But here there’s nothing like that. I was buying a book today on the street here in the city, and I caught myself walking by the tables of books and, though I wanted to look at what they were selling I had this feeling inside that I wasn’t allowed to stop and look because if I did, then they would pounce on me and I’d end up buying something I didn’t want or need. That is what would have happened in Kenya. Then I realized that it wasn’t like that here. First of all, the guy selling books wasn’t saying anything to me, and second of all it wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t bought something. So I stopped and looked and asked how much a book was. He told me it was $4 and I was about to bargain with him and pay $3, when he told me he would give it to me for $3 before I even got the chance to banter with him. That was really funny and made me smile. I told him the whole story actually. So when I picked another book out and asked how much he said $4 and then he let me bargain with him just for fun.
New York is huge. And it doesn’t end. And I know that. And I knew it. Maybe I just forgot just how big it all really is…
I think this is the final, final entry. I am so glad I wrote all this. I was reading it over the other day and it was such a great way to relive the whole experience. I’ve been back in the states for less than a day and the entire trip already seems ages ago and it seems like so far away from me. Last night was the first night I spent away from Lauren in 6 weeks. I miss her. Not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do without her by my side experiencing everything along with me.
Hope to see anyone who has read this at my house on Saturday. We’re having a party. And Lubin party’s rock.
Love to everyone,
sophiebess
On Tuesday morning I woke up around 7, in my bed with my mosquito net and no covers in the Karibu hotel in the heart of Stonetown, Zanzibar…wow it already feels worlds ago and away. We took a taxi to the airport for our noon flight to Dar Es Selaam, which is the capital of Tanzania. We had a close call with our bags: when we last minute decided to go check on them to make sure they were still on the plane, only to see them going around and around on the baggage carousel. Basically if we hadn’t checked, our bags would still be Tanzania. Got back on a plane to Arusha. We got into Arusha around 2pm and our next flight wasn’t until 9 that night. So we just camped outside under a tree and read books and ate our mangos. Around 7 we went inside and then we met Greg. Greg started talking to us by commenting on the tons of crushed peanut shells that were strewn all over the floor near us. They weren’t ours. He was basically just really friendly and such a character. He seemed slightly paranoid about the flight, ie he got up every 10 minutes to go check the planes progress and how much longer till we got to board, etc. But he was really funny and we made a bet with him about our flight. Loser takes winner out to dinner. We are taking him to John Jay dining hall at Columbia.
We took a 777 airplane from Arusha to Amsterdam, but since the Arusha airport is so small there aren’t any tunnel terminals. By that I mean that you walk on the pavement outside up to the steps and then get on the plane that way. We had done this plenty on all the smaller flights, but this time it was a 777. It was completely the biggest human creation I have ever seen. I have no idea how it actually gets off the ground. It was incredible. We actually had to fly right back to Dar and then we went to Amsterdam. Our flight left Arusha at 9pm and got into Amsterdam at 7 the next morning (with 1 hour time zone difference). We immediately left the airport (after some serious difficulty with reading the signs in Dutch) and took a swanky train into the city.
I walked out of the train station and felt something that seems nearly impossible to describe. I’ll try tho. The world is huge. The western world is even bigger somehow. To go from Stonetown and Nanyuki to Amsterdam is such a huge, cataclysmic change: everyone is white, everyone is walking fast, everyone is dressed soooo trendy (it made me sick). Everyone is white here. Duh soph, I know but it’s true. I am just another person, another white girl among hundreds and thousands. No one stops to talk to me on the street, no one calls out to me; the girl sitting next to me at Nussbaum this morning didn’t even look at me, let alone want to start a conversation. No one wants to talk to each other here. Amsterdam was this huge shock I was just walking around in a complete daze I could barely see straight. It doesn’t even make sense to me now because I’m separated from the feeling, but at the time it was the strangest sensation of my life. Life is just totally different in a western country. Everything is clean, everything has soap, and a toilet seat. Everything has toilet paper and a toilet! We were lucky to get a long drop in most of the towns we visited. There’s running water. There’s about 10 different muffin choices at each bakery. There are 5 salads on menus. Food doesn’t give me the shits. What am I saying, I know all this was here, I knew it was different when I was away from it. But it’s completely incredible how easy it was to forget it all existed and to just get used to not having a toilet, or running water that I could drink, or trendy clothes and fast walking people. Going to Africa was easy somehow. I think it was because I was going from big to small. Somehow going the other way is just really trippy. I thought about this for a while and realized that what is the strangest part of the whole thing, or maybe the best way to describe it is this: the strangest thing in life is when the familiar suddenly seems foreign and the foreign seems familiar. I expected Africa to be different and it was. What I didn’t expect was for NYC to feel like a foreign country does.
Back to the story. We left the train station in a daze and went pastry shopping. They have the most amazing pastries there all over the city. We basically had the plan to walk all day and see as much of the city as we possibly could. We had 12 hours between our two flights. Everyone in Amsterdam rides bikes everywhere. Seriously, there are possibly more bikes than there are cars. Instead of car garages, there are bike garages; there are lanes on the roads just for bike. Anyway, we decided to rent bikes for a few hours. Best decision ever. Just biking around this city neither of us had any idea about was so much fun. It was so weird to be in Europe with all the expensive fruit, expensive clothes, expensive trains that don’t bump you once…
We biked for about 3 hours all over the city, through a little park and along all the beautiful canals. Amsterdam is laid out in a really neat way. I don’t really understand it, but there were all these rings of streets all circling around the center of the city. And there were canals and little bridges to cross the canals at each ring. It was so beautiful. We stopped to buy some peaches, which I had completely forget even existed. I knocked into an entire display of blueberries in the process. I think buying the fruit was the first time I realized just how different it all was. In Africa people are so on top of you to buy what they are selling that you actually cannot walk down the street without being pretty much attacked by people selling you things, like I’ve said so many times. But here there’s nothing like that. I was buying a book today on the street here in the city, and I caught myself walking by the tables of books and, though I wanted to look at what they were selling I had this feeling inside that I wasn’t allowed to stop and look because if I did, then they would pounce on me and I’d end up buying something I didn’t want or need. That is what would have happened in Kenya. Then I realized that it wasn’t like that here. First of all, the guy selling books wasn’t saying anything to me, and second of all it wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t bought something. So I stopped and looked and asked how much a book was. He told me it was $4 and I was about to bargain with him and pay $3, when he told me he would give it to me for $3 before I even got the chance to banter with him. That was really funny and made me smile. I told him the whole story actually. So when I picked another book out and asked how much he said $4 and then he let me bargain with him just for fun.
New York is huge. And it doesn’t end. And I know that. And I knew it. Maybe I just forgot just how big it all really is…
I think this is the final, final entry. I am so glad I wrote all this. I was reading it over the other day and it was such a great way to relive the whole experience. I’ve been back in the states for less than a day and the entire trip already seems ages ago and it seems like so far away from me. Last night was the first night I spent away from Lauren in 6 weeks. I miss her. Not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do without her by my side experiencing everything along with me.
Hope to see anyone who has read this at my house on Saturday. We’re having a party. And Lubin party’s rock.
Love to everyone,
sophiebess
Monday, July 03, 2006
last real day
i am back from the ocean. it was too beautiful to describe. i don't have the words. i am all dried up of words. i am fully spent and over saturated and cannot wait to come home. that being said i continue to see things that i cannot beleive each day and that take my breath away. it is hard because i am still living here in africa even though it is so close to the time when i will be home. it's a real state of limbo between home and here. i am trying to live still in the amazingness that is all around me each day, but it is hard when i know home is so close.
coming back from the beach up north i find that the combination of writing so much about my experiences and the unbelievable beauty of this beach, also combined with the fact that i am totally wiped at the moment...is making me unable to describe just how gorgeous the beach really was. it was like a postcard...i have pictures.
yesterday we drove up to nungwi, which is the northern most point of the island. we checked into a little hotel for $25, walked around and relaxed. we went to the local grocery store and got these little ice creams that were the best ice cream i've had this whole trip; fell asleep at 8 and didn't wake up til 8 this morning. had a really strenuous time of lying on the beach for a few hours and then our friend Fasel came to meet us (it's his day off today). he drove us to membwe where his brother is in the process of building a hotel. the beach was, if possible, more beautiful. the best part of the whole excursion was when we decided that we wanted lunch so Fasel walked down to the beach and asked this guy for a few fish. the guy gutted them right there and Fasel brought them back to his brother who cooked them and they were soooo good! talk about fresh!
so now we are back in stonetown and we just watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean for the last time. we were talking about how crazy this trip has been and all the poeple we got to know. starting when we got off the plane we met eston and louisa and steve mcqueen; then we met nancy and tony. then we flew to the farm and met suzanne and randy, hamish, the dogs, cecelia and wanjoi. then we went on our hike up the mountain with grandpa and smelly (christopher and james). met cameron on the mountain, and the french people, and uncle and his nephews, and of course jan. came down the mountain and went to the ball, met derek and all the weird poeple at the ball. saw jan again at the airstrip. then we went away to lake turkana and met bev and lee, helen, jim and jeff, caroline and dani, bosco and kamunge. the annoying guy in the matatu back from tfalls. back on the plane to nairobi to louisa's house. saw derek again and met RK at casa blanca. Onto the bus to arusha with jan! hotel night in arusha and then flight to Zanzibar. Met Fasel and since then we’ve been living on paradise island.
The last stretch starts tomorrow: flight at noon to arusha, wait there til our 8pm flight to Amsterdam. Then we have 12 hours of fun there. Back on the plane to new york to arrive in the city at 8pm on Wednesday night…that’s a lonnngg day.
I don’t feel like writing more right now. Maybe I’ll write from Amsterdam, otherwise this might be the last entry ever…try not to die without me.
sb
coming back from the beach up north i find that the combination of writing so much about my experiences and the unbelievable beauty of this beach, also combined with the fact that i am totally wiped at the moment...is making me unable to describe just how gorgeous the beach really was. it was like a postcard...i have pictures.
yesterday we drove up to nungwi, which is the northern most point of the island. we checked into a little hotel for $25, walked around and relaxed. we went to the local grocery store and got these little ice creams that were the best ice cream i've had this whole trip; fell asleep at 8 and didn't wake up til 8 this morning. had a really strenuous time of lying on the beach for a few hours and then our friend Fasel came to meet us (it's his day off today). he drove us to membwe where his brother is in the process of building a hotel. the beach was, if possible, more beautiful. the best part of the whole excursion was when we decided that we wanted lunch so Fasel walked down to the beach and asked this guy for a few fish. the guy gutted them right there and Fasel brought them back to his brother who cooked them and they were soooo good! talk about fresh!
so now we are back in stonetown and we just watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean for the last time. we were talking about how crazy this trip has been and all the poeple we got to know. starting when we got off the plane we met eston and louisa and steve mcqueen; then we met nancy and tony. then we flew to the farm and met suzanne and randy, hamish, the dogs, cecelia and wanjoi. then we went on our hike up the mountain with grandpa and smelly (christopher and james). met cameron on the mountain, and the french people, and uncle and his nephews, and of course jan. came down the mountain and went to the ball, met derek and all the weird poeple at the ball. saw jan again at the airstrip. then we went away to lake turkana and met bev and lee, helen, jim and jeff, caroline and dani, bosco and kamunge. the annoying guy in the matatu back from tfalls. back on the plane to nairobi to louisa's house. saw derek again and met RK at casa blanca. Onto the bus to arusha with jan! hotel night in arusha and then flight to Zanzibar. Met Fasel and since then we’ve been living on paradise island.
The last stretch starts tomorrow: flight at noon to arusha, wait there til our 8pm flight to Amsterdam. Then we have 12 hours of fun there. Back on the plane to new york to arrive in the city at 8pm on Wednesday night…that’s a lonnngg day.
I don’t feel like writing more right now. Maybe I’ll write from Amsterdam, otherwise this might be the last entry ever…try not to die without me.
sb
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