12/30/11

Today marked the beginning of class time and started off with an intriguing combination of urban and rural travel. We visited the Laurie Baker center and were introduced to COSTFORD. The nonprofit organization has built over 20,000 buildings (primarily homes) in India. The Laurie Baker Center was an interesting piece of architecture that was made up of red bricks and concrete. It was all open air, much like the rest of the forest located campus and full of interesting brick designs and even empty multicolored bottles imbedded in concrete to serve as decoration and the function of letting light in. The first speaker was P B Sajan who was very close to the late Laurie Baker, almost like a son. He discussed the various functions and jobs of COSTFORD and its purpose within Kerala. He also described various aspects of Kerala that separate it from the rest of India. The second speaker was Dr. K P Kannan who talked to us about the history of India and COSTFORD which I found to be very thought provoking and revealing. While they were both difficult to understand at times I enjoyed both presentations and still am interested in learning more. The last place that did was go on a tour of another campus that Laurie Baker had designed and built with COSTFORD. This university was very large and even included places for students and guest lecturers to stay. The architecture was very similar to that of the Laurie Baker Center and implemented many construction techniques that I remember using when I was a big builder of Legos. I took a ton of pictures and loved the setup of this place. Throughout the day we were provided with tea and fried bananas. This was not a new thing to me but the fact that the tea had milk in it and the bananas were fried with a batter kind of caught me off guard. Another thing that I found to be a little off about today was the snake pit in the middle of the campus that the Laurie Baker Center was located. This pit was just above the place where we ate lunch and was a little nerve wracking considering a campus building was only two feet away. Needless to say, India is home to a variety of poisonous snakes and I could not tell if Professor Jerry was joking or not when he mentioned that we should keep an eye out for them. 

Hopefully I survive and there will be more updates soon! The internet is inconsistent and I still lack the ability to charge my own computer so I'm going to be a day behind on posts until then.

The First 48

I'm really tired and a lot happened to me on the first day so I'm going to try and summarize everything as best I can without leaving too many details out. Here we go....

Having never left the country before and developing a fear of flying, the first of two flights seemed to be the most daunting. One 14 hour flight followed by a much shorter 4 hour flight are all that stood between me and India. The first thing, or the last thing, I did was leave the terminal for the food court to purchase a Big Mac. My last American burger would prove to be well worth the extra 50 minutes going back through security and almost missing my flight. Oddly enough, this would not be my last Big Mac over the course of these nail biting 18 hours of flight. In Abu Dhabi there would be a McDonalds and a plethora of things not seen in my day to day life. From a man washing his feet in public restroom sink to the call to prayer to the readily and legally available “Cuban” cigars, this airport would also be the cleanest I have seen up to this point.

The flights themselves were not that bad. The food wasn’t spectacular but it was free. The personal entertainment system placed on the back of the seat in front of me was a nice and distracting touch though. Completely forgetting about the book I had brought I would spend the rest of my time airborne watching Community, the Simpsons, Stupid Crazy Love, Super 8, playing checkers with Lizzy and sleep. Despite all these wonderful distractions I still found myself tensing up and thinking about Final Destination during takeoffs and landings.

I would like to add that I wore the compression socks that Mrs. Beemsterboer had purchased me for Christmas and avoided blood clots and death as a result so thank you very much!

While looking for the cowboy hat that would help identify professor Jerry,  Lizzy and I agreed to start taking pictures of the otter (professor Ripple Whiskers) to create a blog for him which will most likely be up shortly.

The arrival in India was similar to my arrival in Puerto Rico being the only thing I have to base my new surroundings on. There were hundreds of people waiting outside to provide various services, armed guards inside and dozens of cars from the 50s, trucks, and rickshaws. The professor had three taxis take us to the Grand Days Hotel. The traffic at 3am in India isn’t that bad but the driving was a new thing altogether. I quickly dropped my belief that if you can drive in Puerto Rico, you can drive anywhere. At first, my heart dropped as the taxi driver proceeded to nearly hit oncoming traffic while driving on the left side of the road until I realized that the left side is the right side.

When we arrived at the hotel I was impressed by its size compared to the surrounding buildings and the Christmas tree with fake presents in the lobby. I would be assigned to room with Logan, a guy who I had previously discussed various video games with, he seems really nice so no worries about us trying to kill each other by the end of the trip.

When we finally get settled in it is about 5:30am and breakfast is apparently served at 6am so we decide to go down and wait on the 2^nd floor for it to open up. So 6:30 rolls around and it turns out that the 2^nd floor is no the floor above the ground floor, but the floor above. Breakfast is ready and there are omelets, tiny pancakes, various breads, baked beans, chicken sausages, ham-like stuff, cereal, juices, milk, coffee, and many Indian dishes I have never heard of or seen before.

Logan had this idea that it would fantastic to go to the zoo after breakfast instead of going to sleep. After a few cups of coffee I agreed and so did many of our classmates. We took rickshaws there and got ripped off because of the color of our skin but we didn’t mind because it ended up being somewhere around 75 cents. Upon arriving we were introduced to the park where there were many people working out and running. There were also dozens of depictions of Santa, all of which were white, some even making him into some sort of wizard. The zoo itself was closed until later so we just walked around and admired the sights of the park.

Being that Lizzy and I had no Indian currency and felt that the zoo would have nothing that we hadn’t seen at other zoos, we decided to head back to the hotel and catch up on sleep and figuring out how to get our computers to work. Only, after leaving the group we realized that we didn’t have any idea of where to go. We found a tourist information center that provided us with maps and vague directions. After an hour of aimlessly wandering around lost and asking for direction we  decided to just throw money at the situation and visit a bank because by then it was 10 and all the banks were open.

No rickshaws or people knew where our hotel was until we stumbled upon a row of rickshaws and the last on we asked finally knew. He too, ripped us off but it was not an issue because we were just so happy to be back at the hotel. It was quite the adventure and we learned a lot about how the streets work here.

There was a brief lecture that seemed to drag on with questions (which were to be expected half way across the globe) and finally went to lunch at a local vegetarian restaurant. I was eager to try new things but ended up going with tomato soup, naan, and Indian fried rice. All of these things, with the exception of the naan were fairly spicy but it was clear that my classmates had ordered far spicier items. Especially those who ordered the sample platters.

After lunch, jet lag finally hits and despite the will and option to go shopping I figured that there would be other opportunities to shop and sleep would be far more beneficial at this point.

Keep a look out for more updates friends and family who are reading this! Thank you for the support and I hope to make it back in one piece!