"Don't Drink the Water"

Thailand

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:53:00 -0400

Highlights of Thailand so far:

- The food! You can get some really amazing soups/noodles/rice dishes for about $1-2.

- Got a food massage at a women’s prison. The money they receive goes back to them when they are released in 6 months or less.

- Temples. Okay, I have to admit that after the 3rd temple, you’re just kind of bored, but the architecture is still pretty cool.

- Markets! We’ve been to 3 or 4 different markets and they’re all a lot of fun. Cheap food, cheap clothes, etc. We just have to work on our bargaining skills.

I have to admit that being in Thailand after India is a little underwhelming. Becca and I both are excited to go home. Chiang Mai (the province we were first in) was a little annoying to be in because it was basically just a backpacker-party scene. After being in India for four months, we’re not really into that. Bangkok has been a little bit better because we’re not sharing our room with anyone and don’t have to feel weird for not wanting to go out drinking until 4am every night.

Here are some pictures from our trip so far:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150819836818142.467793.709858141&type=1&l=21f5bf6752

Last Thoughts on India

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 04:41:51 -0400

I left India a week ago, and it’s amazing how much I miss the country. I’m in Thailand right now, which is beautiful and full of culture but, to be honest…I find it a bit dull. I miss the thrill of just walking on a street in India, facing the hordes of beeping cars and bikes and buses. I miss having to avoid the piles of cow shit and cows themselves. I miss the ridiculous signs that butcher the English signs and always brought about an unanticipated smile or laugh. And, as annoying as it was, I miss being laughed at and pointed at for being white. It was like I was thrown into this incredible sensory experience, full of life and color and now I’m back to living in black and white. Don’t get me wrong, India has so many problems and my three and a half months there has taught me to be so much more appreciative of things (like constant power, safe water, access to toilets, the freedom of women in the United States, etc.), but I feel as if my perspective on life has completely changed since my time there. I can’t wait to go back one day in the near future. I had an amazing study abroad experience and am so happy with my decision to travel to India.

"It’s a bizarre scene – full of foreigners attempting to figure out India. I’m beginning to think..."

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:02:29 -0400

“It’s a bizarre scene – full of foreigners attempting to figure out India. I’m beginning to think it’s pointless to try. India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true. It’s rich and poor, spiritual and material, cruel and kind, angry but peaceful, ugly and beautiful, and smart but stupid. It’s all the extremes. India defies understanding, and for once, for me, that’s okay…now, I’m actually embracing not knowing and I’m questioning much of what I thought I did know. I kind of like being confused, wrestling with contradictions…India is in some ways like a fun hall of mirrors where I can see both sides of each contradiction sharply and there’s no easy escape to understanding.”

- Sarah Macdonald, Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure

We’ve been taking art class at this really cool art studio...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:07:00 -0400

French pastries for only 27 rupees each!

We’ve been taking art class at this really cool art studio called The Pyramids. Here’s some of my work and pictures of the area from the past 3 weeks.

From Becca’s India blog becc34: Some wildlife on India...

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 06:42:32 -0400

Scorpion from our snake walk

Red bugs we see EVERYWHERE

Frog in my room

kingfisher

Sometimes goats pass us by in herds

More goats

Cows join us in restaurants

Lizard

Hard to see but a cool spider

One of the many stray dogs we befriend

From Becca’s India blog

becc34:

Some wildlife on India pictures!

Images of Pondicherry The city is divided into different...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:46:17 -0400

French Quarter

French Quarter

French Quarter

French Quarter

Still the French Quarter...

Pondi coastline

Pondi coastline

Muslim Quarter

Muslim Quarter

Alleyway to the mosque

Images of Pondicherry

The city is divided into different quarters - French, Tamil, Muslim, etc. We mostly hang out in the Tamil section and when we’re willing to pay a little more/be more touristy, we go into the French section. The Muslim Quarter is actually really cool and has a more peaceful vibe than the Tamil section. Either way, I really love Pondi.

The last few weeks we’ve been pretty busy. We’re all...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:08:00 -0400

Pondicherry

Fishing survey

Getting a bindi drawn on by Sumathi

Wedding clothes!

The group in our fancy attire

Got there a little early....

Reception in full swing

Cara and I at the wedding

The last few weeks we’ve been pretty busy. We’re all working on our final research projects. Becca and I are working on analyzing household surveys done at fishing villages to determine the economic changes that have occurred over the past four years. We went to one village to see how the data was gathered, but knowing no Tamil, we were basically useless. The field guys from FERAL basically did all of the hard work for us. We’re hard at work on analyzing the data now.

Two weekends ago we went to an India wedding (a cousin of Neil’s friend from America). Not knowing what to expect, we dressed up in all of our fanciest attire. The rest of the girls wore saris while I went with the kurta (the long tunic) and salwar (baggy pants) look. We showed up a little early, but once the wedding got started, we all had a blast. We met up with some other Americans that were at the wedding and it was great to be able to get a little taste of home, even if it was just by talking to strangers. The food afterwards was absolutely amazing. It was only the second wedding I’ve ever been to, but it was great.

I can’t believe I only have two weeks left of the program before Becca and I go to Thailand! This trip has gone by so fast!

Signs of India (Are Hilarious)

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:34:00 -0400

We’ve experienced a lot of long drives along the Indian highway. When not dozing or fearfully watching our driver dodge cows and buses by going onto the wrong side of the road with 5 motorcycles headed our way (“DON’T PASS! IT’S FINE!!!”), we’ve seen a lot of strange and amusing signs. Many butcher the English language and leave us scratching our heads in befuddlement. Here’s a small collection of them for your amusement.

————

If you want to stay married, divorce speed.

Wear a helmet or become a hell mate.

Goa is like fridge: everywhere you go, you just chill.

Guess what’s coming here to quench your!!!!!!!! (Couldn’t fit in that last word I guess?)

Two wheelers for two only! (Reminder that motorcycles only safely fit two people…doesn’t stop families of 4 though!)

STATUTORY WARNING: Holidays can be hazardous to your health.

——

Plus a couple non-roadway signs….

PULL (to burn calories!) (Sign on a door at a coffee shop)

If these walls could talk, they’d join your conversation. (Chennai International Airport…still counts)

Agonda Beach, Goa Spring Break trip

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:06:29 -0500

Abba's Gloryland in Agonda

Agonda Beach (not our huts)

Restaurant we frequented

Agonda Beach in the morning

Cow on the beach...

Last night in Agonda

Agonda Beach, Goa

Spring Break trip

Panjim, Goa Spring Break trip

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:39:00 -0500

The central church of Panjim

Overlook at the church

Adventuring through the city

Getting onto Paradise

River cruise

Panjim, Goa

Spring Break trip

So everyone seems to want to more of what a typical day in India...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:42:01 -0500

Pathway to the huts (er..."capsules")

My hut!

Ladder/trapdoor

My room in the hut

The bathrooms

The back of the kitchen

Goats get in the way of science

Doing surveying on the beach

Unimpressive looking GIS work

So everyone seems to want to more of what a typical day in India is like…so I’ll do a couple of posts about that. These pictures are from the FERAL campus (my home away from home) and the Pondi coastline.

Okay - everyday life! Monday-Friday, we have classes from 9:30-4 with a break at 1-2:30 for lunch. Right now, we’re doing a course in marine GIS, so all our class time is spent on that. GIS is just a computer modelling system that combines geographic information, data inputs, and a whole lot of other stuff that people waaaaay smarter than me created. It’s incredibly useful but is definitely challenging. On Wednesday, we went to do field work at the beach, measuring the change in elevation to better understand the effects of coastal erosion. After a few hours of work, we created a rather unimpressive looking map using the data we collected. That’s the map that you’ll see above. Everyone should do me a favor and pretend to wowed but how great it looks.

After class, we either do homework, take a nap, or just hang out. FERAL can be a little isolating, but Auroville and Pondicherry are less than a half an hour away and taking a taxi is super cheap when you split it 5 ways. On the weekends, we have one class - Culture, Class, and Gender. It’s definitely a group favorite and everyone really enjoys the break from science.

I think that’s it….I’ll talk about food in the next post!

On a non-India related note - there’s a 97% chance that I’ll be doing volunteer work in Tanzania this summer from mid-May to mid-July!! The person in charge is just checking with my references and said that she’d formally offer me a position as soon as they went through. I’ll be working with 3 other volunteers to teach conservation/wildlife education to school-aged children and kids that can’t afford to go to school. I’m so excited, but it doesn’t even seem real. Here’s the website if anyone wants to check it out: http://thewildlifeconnection.org/ The only continents left are going to be South America and Australia!

Photo

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:55:00 -0500

Looking for snakes

Found them! Well...one.

Cleaning the croc pens

Close encounters

Post-croc pen cleaning

Feeding Robin!

Mugger feeding frenzy

In the tortoise enclosure

Beach temple in Mahabs

ANET pictures.(See posts below!)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:02:00 -0500

Outside our hut at ANET

Inside the hut...we're a little messy

Beach walk

A mudskipper

Sunset at the dock

Indian field

Village hut

The group & Tara (program coordinator)

Boat ride in an Indian dunghe

ANET pictures.
(See posts below!)

Photos from Barefoot Scuba Resort (See post below!)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:13:49 -0500

The huts at Barefoot

Market in Havelock

Corinne, Becca, and me by a hut

Beach No. 7 group picture

Forest at Beach No. 7

Beach No. 3

My weird study abroad group

Inside an auto-rickshaw

Chiton!

Cara playing in the intertidal zone

Photos from Barefoot Scuba Resort
(See post below!)

The Andamans & Croc Bank (For the Second Time)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:39:50 -0500

The Andamans were absolutely amazing. It made up for all the failed beach vacations I’ve experienced in the past (and there’s been a decent amount of them). After some early morning travel on the 7th, we arrived at Port Blair. From there, it was a rush to make the ferry in time. Thankfully we did, and two hours later we arrived at Havelock and Barefoot Scuba Resort. We were staying at the more economical resort at Beach No. 3, so we were living in tiny huts that only had room for a mattress and a mosquito net. I believe they only cost something like $4 a day. The mattress was comfortable enough and who wants to hang out in their room when they’re in paradise anyway?

I could only do 4 out of the 8 dives that the group did at Barefoot because of sea-sickness/mild food poisoning. The four dives I completed were pretty great though. The visibility was far better than the quarry in Pennsylvania and needless to say, much warmer. We could’ve dived in just our swimsuits and would’ve been comfortable, but we had to wear the wet suits to protect from jellyfish stings, coral, and equipment chaffing.

On the second dive day, the day that I got incredibly sea sick, I fell off the boat. The boat was moving. The boat had to turn off the engine and come pick me up. It was, in fact, a rather large boat that I fell off of. I was just trying to go to the bathroom. I had actually made it to the door of the bathroom and was trying to slide the door open when the boat rocked and I slipped and apparently barrel rolled off the side. It might have been the most graceful-clumsy moment of my life. It actually wasn’t that bad to fall off the boat. The water was nice and warm. The worst part was that I couldn’t even pee once I got into the ocean. Luckily, my great friends were there to support me in my time of need. And by that, I mean that they started heartily laughing as soon as they realized I was safe. Possibly even before they knew I was safe. The rest of the passengers thought they were crazy. I did receive a nice round of applause when I got back on the boat.

The rest of our time at Barefoot was spent doing minor research projects. Cara, Becca, and I worked on measuring the size and population densities of chiton (marine mollusks that look like rocks). The whole group also did an afternoon of data collection in the mangroves, determining species abundance of mudskippers, mangrove crabs, and snails. After a great 10 days, we said goodbye to all of the people we met and left Havelock to board the ferry back to Port Blair.

Once we arrived back in Port Blair, we took a 45 minute ride to ANET (Andaman Nicobar Environmental Team). They have their own dive shop (Lacadives) and it functions as a research facility. We stayed in two different huts – Cara and I were in one and Neil, Corinne, and Becca were in the other. I could actually stand up and walk around in my hut, so that was pretty great. The food was also amazing. To be fair though, the food everywhere has been great.

At ANET, we had one day of diving. I think it was the best day of diving we’ve had. Both of the dives were shallow – we didn’t go deeper than 10m and visibility was amazing. We even saw a sleeping nurse shark! All in all it was a fun day. The rest of our time at ANET was spent collecting data. I worked on mudskipper density and behavior. This basically meant that I followed one mudskipper around for 12 minutes at a time. Mudskippers, for those of you that don’t know, are amphibious fish that are actually pretty territorial. It wasn’t really thrilling work, but it was interesting enough at times.

We finally left ANET after another 10 days and made our way to Madras Croc Bank, this time to learn and do some work. The group was all pretty tired by this point, but Croc Bank was definitely an experience. On our first full day, we did minor and major pen cleaning. Minor pen cleaning meant picking up crocodile poop. Major pen cleaning was collecting all the mud that made its way into the ponds in the crocodile pens, after the water had been drained of course. After we scooped out all the mud, we rinsed off the pond and then refilled it with water. Did I mention that the crocodiles were still in the pens during the cleanings? During the minor pen cleaning, I was in an enclosure with about 400 crocs. During the major pen cleaning, there were probably about 300 crocs. My favorite moment was when a croc was about 4 feet away from me and I was shoveling mud out of its water channel and it hissed at me. I felt (relatively) safe though. The keepers were there with their large sticks that they whacked the crocodiles with to get them to move. We also fed the crocs that day. The first enclosure was the gharial crocodiles. We hand-fed the male (well, we had a small stick) because he broke his jaw in a fight and had trouble catching the fish. The next enclosure contained the mugger crocodiles, the same species we worked with earlier. Since there were so many crocs, we just dumped buckets of fish over the side of the wall. They then proceeded to run towards the food and land on top of each other, snapping their jaws and hissing to get the fish first. It was pretty impressive to see.

After all the crocodile stuff, we went on a short walk at dusk to see Indian flying fox bats emerge from the banyan tree they inhabit. This is where we met my spirit animal. Our group has had an ongoing joke about finding our spirit animals. For example, Corinne’s is a goat since she loves climbing basically everything. My spirit animal is the flying fox bat. It doesn’t use echolocation so it runs into trees all the time and it has problems getting off its branch initially. This is the clumsiest animal we’ve encountered and is thusly my spirit animal.

The next day at Croc Bank we handled some snakes (rat snakes, Indian rock pythons) and fed and washed the Aldabra tortoise, the second largest tortoise in the world. They’re great and love eating. We then fed some of the smaller turtles. We also had a few lessons on turtles/tortoises and snakes. We left Croc Bank the next day and spent the afternoon in Mahabs.

And now we’re back in Pondicherry and at FERAL! I had an amazing time in the Andamans, but I have to admit that I’m happy to be back at FERAL and not living out of my duffel bag anymore. Now I just have to do laundry…

We’re heading to the Andaman Islands tomorrow, so...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:23:04 -0500

Elephant pants!!

My side of the hut at FERAL

The whole group

We’re heading to the Andaman Islands tomorrow, so I’ll be without internet until the 25th or something like that. I’ll be taking tons of pictures in the meantime.

Here are a few pictures of the aforementioned amazing elephant pants, my awesome hut, and our study abroad group.

After a long day of travel, several books read, and one game of...

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:19:00 -0500

Room at Madras Croc Bank

Gated entrance to Croc Bank

At the stone temple/park in Mahabs

Streets in India

Vendor in Mahabs

After a long day of travel, several books read, and one game of Bananagrams played, we arrived in India safely to celebrate the New Year in style…at Chennai International Airport baggage claim. Because of the cyclone that hit Pondicherry, we stayed at Madras Crocodile Bank for a few days until the whole group flew in – minus Cara who arrived at Pondi before the rest of us. Croc Bank has literally thousands of crocodiles and a handful of tortoises and some poisonous snakes. We’ll get to handle them when we come back to stay at Croc Bank later in the term.

After a day of rest, Becca, Corrine, and I went to Mahabalipuram (a.k.a. Mahabs) with Dr. Pelkey. We went to the stone temples and saw some amazing Indian architecture. Afterwards, we did a little bit of shopping and all bought these awesome elephant pants. Greatest. Purchase. Ever.

Today we travelled to Pondicherry and met up with Cara. We’re on the FERAL (Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy, and Learning) campus now. It’s awesome out here – ignoring the cat that keeps sneaking into my hut that I share with Cara.

"There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it."

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:05:06 -0500

““There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.””

- Charles Dudley Warner

Like most people, I hate packing. Packing for weekend trips,...

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:09:00 -0500

Roo(cifer) dominating my suticase

Hello headache!

Note the toilet paper & scuba equipment

Catnap in my luggage

Like most people, I hate packing. Packing for weekend trips, packing for Thanksgiving break, etc. It all sucks. What’s worse is packing for 4 months in India. I finished packing today and was very successful (i.e. my mom and sister did it for me). My suitcase is 2 pounds too heavy unfortunately…we’re just going to hope they ignore that. Maybe. Or perhaps my scale is wrong? Let’s hope for either of those options.

I’ll be flying out of Pittsburgh to Philly tomorrow and then my aunt is driving me to Newark the next day where I’ll meet up with my professor and Becca. Newark to Frankfurt to Chennai to Pondicherry.

New Years in India? I’ll take it.

"[India is] the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would..."

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:53:00 -0500

“[India is] the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined.”

- Mark Twain