Weekend Trip: Kerala!

During November 7-10, the ISP group headed out on the train to Kerala, the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. Kerala is nicknamed "God's Own Country" and is known for being predominantly Christian, which they credit to the fact that the Apostle Thomas traveled to India for the Great Commission and stepped off the boat right in Kerala. The state is also unique because its government is  democratically elected communism.

After leaving at midnight to catch an eight hour long night train, we arrived at our accommodations. They were really nice, other than the fact that the beds were like rocks and Johanna and I found a spider in our toilet that was the biggest I'd ever seen in my life. Seriously, it was like the size of my hand. Pictures didn't do it justice, so I'm not even going to bother posting any of them here. But take my word for it, the beast was huge.


Most of our time in Kerala was spent taking classes about economics, but we did get to do some really cool things, like go for a boat ride on the Backwaters, which is all these canal-type rivers. It's actually called the "Venice of India." We saw the sun set over the water, and it was the first time in India that I got to see what I pictured as a classic "Indian sunset" before I got here.

We also got to wade in the Arabian Sea! It was warm and lovely! Other than the fact that in India, women go to the beach fully clothed. It was pretty icky to pull off all our wet, sandy clothes in the dark. Not to mention the cafe bathroom we were going to change in was locked, so we girls just held up a towel and changed in the back corner of the complex in the dark. It was really crazy and felt daring. Kirk stood guard for us though! What a guy.

We visited Amma's Ashram, a holy place where people visit to be devotees of Amma (meaning "Mother"), this woman who is the "hugging saint." Amma's whole shpeal is that she hugs people and alleviates some of their suffering or whatever. Amma herself wasn't there while we were visiting because she spends the majority of her time traveling the world and hugging people everywhere. But her mission also donates tons of money to relief after disasters and helping people and all sorts of stuff. It was a pretty interesting thing to learn about and her group does good work throughout the world. Unfortunately, she is doing all of these good things in the world, but people are worshiping her. It was kinda hard for us as a group of Christians to get behind her work. It seemed rather false prophet-ish to us.

During our last day, we visited several small churches and sites around Cochin. We got to see that site where the Apostle Thomas supposedly stepped off his boat (although, like everything in Jerusalem, it's rumored to be the site and who knows what is really the case...). And then we headed back again, on another train to Coimbatore.

Packing Up and Shipping Out.

At this point (as I sit on my bed in a hostel in Kathmandu, Nepal) this post is pretty late. But during my two and a half week trip through north India I didn't have internet access at all, so I never got a chance to post it. Better late than never, right?

With my friend Kairos on my last day in Coimbatore.

For the past week or two, I have been organizing, purging, and packing all of my possessions from the past three months of my life. Three months isn't that long, but since I didn't bring many possessions to India with me, I have accumulated quite a few things to fill up my room, my closet, the apartment in general. So I started early; cleaning out all of the folders from my classes, ditching the loose papers that I didn't think I'd ever look at again. It was a process. Not to mention, I had only one suitcase, limited to 50lbs, a backpack and a tote bag in which to fit all of my possessions, gifts, and souvenirs. The task seemed daunting.

Our little balcony, where we hang laundry.

What has really struck me though, is the perspective I've had packing. Now, if I were packing up from my apartment in Raheja Enclave and immediately boarding a plane back to New England, I think I would be totally geared up for going home. But in my case, for this trip, I am leaving Coimbatore, my home for the past three months, for two and a half weeks of traveling within India to places I've never been and one week to Nepal. Instead of feeling like I was leaving India for home, I packed up feeling as though I was leaving home to be a tourist, a nomad.

Isn't it interesting how one's perspective on home changes, just based on the next destination?

The gate of Raheja.

That being said, I am pumped for going to real home, a place where I have a culture in common with the people around me, where I don't automatically stick out because of the color of my skin and my knowledge of only one language instead of the average Indian's proficiency in two to five languages, where I can cook the food I like and know how and where to shop (usually, everything is available in one convenient location--how novel!) and can DRIVE myself there! It will be great. Aside from the fact that I'll be so cold that I'll probably never leave my bed.

Thanksgiving, India style.

On Thursday, everyone in the India Studies Program had to go to their internships for the last time. In case any of you were wondering, there is no Thanksgiving in India. It's a purely American thing. (Actually, Canada has one too, but it's a different day...)

We wanted to have a Thanksgiving meal with our neighbors, but we knew we wouldn't have time to do all of our cooking if we had internships all day. Instead, we dubbed Saturday our official Thanksgiving celebration and called it good. I mean, our neighbors didn't care! So yesterday we cooked all afternoon and had a delicious feast with seven of our neighbors, one friend, the program assistant, and the seven of us ISPers.

The challenge that remained was how to cook Thanksgiving using almost exclusively stovetop. We had long since given up the idea of turkey because you can't even buy them here, not to mention non of us has ever cooked one. And some of our neighbors and Hannah are vegetarians. But we still had to look up lots of versions of recipes to be cooked on the stove. We had a stovetop stuffing (no, not the brand; it was cooked from scratch in the wok), mashed potatoes, honey glazed carrots, and apple crisp (that's what I made!) all prepared exclusively on the gas burners. Additionally, Kelly made a green bean casserole that utilized our neighbor's microwave oven and Morgan made biscuits in the McClelland's oven (which is only about the size of a small microwave and sits on the counter in their kitchen). Morgan's family is Southern and she had a different biscuit recipe than mine. I still prefer my Bakewells, but hers were really good in their own way and I was impressed because she hasn't made them very much before and she had to modify the recipe for what was available here!

To make my apple crisp, I cooked oats, chopped almonds, brown sugar, and butter up in the wok til it was crunchy (basically, a stovetop granola), and cooked apples, raisins, sugar, and cinnamon in the wok separately. The recipe tells you to put the apples in a pan and then put the crunch over it, but because I made such a huge amount, we didn't really have enough space for that. So instead, I left them in their separate bowls and we put them together when we served them onto everyone's plates. It came out pretty well for what it was.

Since there were so many of us that we wouldn't really fit into any one apartment, we had a picnic on the roof. We spread sheets out and lit little Indian lamps and had all the pans of food up there. I bet none of you have had a nighttime picnic on the roof for Thanksgiving before! But it was like the perfect temperature up there and it was really lovely!

I think for me the most memorable part of the Thanksgiving time though was when I talked to my family on the phone. They all got together for desserts at about 5 pm EST, which is 3:30 am for me here.I wasn't planning on staying up to chat with everyone, but I ended up being awake until after 7am my time because I was working on a final project anyway, so at 3:30 I called them up. It was really nice to have a few moments talking to everyone individually, but the most impactful conversation was the one I had with my brother, Zac. Honestly, our ten minute conversation was probably the longest that I've had with him in a few years. At one point in the conversation, he commented that it's weird because I'm here living in India and he has literally no idea what that's like, no idea what India is like at all. That was the first time anyone acknowledged that verbally to me before, and I know it's something that the other members of India Studies Program have been dealing with, too. Most of us called home or skyped for Thanksgiving, but a lot of people felt more distant after skyping than they did before. It boils down to the fact that even though it's kind of a better glimpse of our lives here, skype will never do justice to our lives in this place. Even when we go home we'll never be able to fully articulate what we've experienced so that our friends and families will understand everything that's happened here. Several of my fellow participants have expressed their frustration with attempting to explain things to their families and not getting what they felt was an appropriate reaction. So we all thought it was neat that Zac took the time to verbally acknowledge that he literally has no clue what it's like for me to be here. After that fact was established, I explained a few small things so that he might have some kind of picture, but it was nice to have it out in the open that he didn't, couldn't and wouldn't fully grasp what I've been up to.