20 march - 22 march

I'm playing a bit of catch-up first! Yesterday was the first day I had access to internet, and even now only at my internship (I haven't set it up on my laptop for home yet...) so in the interest of keeping the blog complete I'll get everyone up to speed on everything so far.

For the next 2.5 months I am interning in Bangalore and doing a bit of traveling around India with my great friend Joanna! The idea was conceived in January and it seemed so far-fetched, but two days of travel and a good heaping dose of jetlag later, here we are. Joanna is blogging about her experiences at http://joannaschneider.travellerspoint.com/.

When winter term ended I went to Boston for a few days, then back to Houston to pack hurriedly and spend some quality time at home. My uncle flew in from Dallas, and I flew with him and my grandmother to Frankfurt airport on the 20th. I spent most of the flight reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, an incredible book by Junot Diaz which I recommend to EVERYONE, especially if you liked In the Time of the Butterflies...we met Joanna right before going through security, which was great timing! I love the Frankfurt airport and got to spend some of my leftover euros on an overpriced water bottle for Joanna that is getting daily use here in India!

Frankfurt to India is always my favourite leg to fly since the view over Eastern Europe and Iran is usually spectacular. This time it was pretty cloudy and since the weather was warmer there weren't dramatic ice sheets and cliffs to gape over. But, I had my lovely Asian vegetarian meal, a welcome change from plastic-tasting plane food. While Joanna slept, I had a good chat with the German man sitting next to me, working for a large software company that sent him traveling around the world. He was a trip, this large accented German man throwing back tonic waters for a good 6 hours, with cultural commentary on every place he had visited. Talking to people on planes always reminds me of Fight Club and that whole idea of single-serving friends.

The view flying in to Bangalore is my absolute favourite, all of the sprawling city lights are so representative of the dynamism on the ground!! So we reached Bangalore (Bengaluru as it's now called in an attempt to de-Anglicize India and consequentially make everything that much harder to pronounce) at about 1:30 AM IST. The moment I stepped off the plane I could smell that sandalwood musky India smell that I always miss when I'm not here...I was so impressed with our airport experience. Indian airports in my memory have always meant massive headaches, but everything was new and clean and moved so smoothly. I had warned Joanna extensively against public bathrooms but found myself pleasantly in the wrong! We saw a group of European girls with their massive packs for backpacking about and it seemed like such a great and adventurous idea.

We had a porter help us with our massive load of suitcases and strolled out into the wonderful warm Bengaluru air! We all stood around sort of hazily as several porters packed an unreal amount of luggage in and on top of the cab and off we went. The airport is quite a distance away but that afforded plenty of time to check out Bangalore without the overpowering rush of morning traffic to detract. And then home to Kumar Ashraya Apartments...



Because the apartment has been uninhabited for a year and a half, we hastily set up the back room for Joanna and I, with a large double-mattressed bed that we covered with some definitely musty sheets from a dark corner of the cupboard. I fell right asleep, but a combination of jetlag and unfamiliarity with nighttime Indian ruckus kept poor Jo awake til well past 5:30 AM!

I woke up in the morning and she regaled me with tales of dogs fighting and birds cawing, horns honking and the muezzin calling Muslims to prayer. Jo then fell asleep while I ate breakfast with my grandmother and uncle. Our neighbors had made us food since they knew we were tired and had not bought groceries yet and upon tasting it, we realized it would probably be too spicy for Jo! A rude introduction to Indian cuisine for sure. So my uncle and I went to Adigas, a local idli-dosa shop that my grandfather used to go to to bring back masala dosa as a treat in the mornings when I had visited India in the past.

Because of the metro construction in the area, Jayanagar (our neighborhood) traffic is suffering more than usual. Roads are narrower and the sidewalks are all broken up, a nice little obstacle course while walking anywhere. Adigas is this little sort of hole-in-the-wall place catering to a clientele of mostly students attending nearby Vijaya College. A boy near the front took our order and we carried the slip back to where the food was being prepared, behind a counter.

A boy will take the sheet, call back your order and ask you "parcel?" which means 'to go'. There are metal tables where people stand and eat, no chairs, but we said parcel because we were bringing it home to Joanna. Food is prepared swiftly and with somewhat questionable sanitation, but safe enough to eat. It is packaged in newspaper, plastic and banana leaves, neatly parceled and tied with string. I love the way it looks- I wish I could pack all my food in banana leaves!

We came home, ate again with Joanna and then took her out for her first real look at Indian streetlife! We went to a small currency exchange to give up our dollars for rupees, avoiding the state bank in order to get a better exchange rate. Then we went back home- it was pretty hot and time to rest.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxing- a man came by the apartment to deliver our Indian cell phones. Which by the way, is one of the strangest parts of being in India for me. Everything seems to just get brought to the apartment! Groceries, cleaning supplies, cellular phones, etc. is all just delivered by this man or that service. It is so oddly convenient.

Joanna and I played bananagrams on the floor and in all the excitement I spilled my chai all over the tiles!!! The first Indian mess. I did some of my Rosetta Stone- French! I hope to finish it by the time I leave India...that's a big goal...

Then I napped while Jo and my uncle explored some more, and in the evening met up with Shruthi, my oldest friend in the world and our neighbour. She came over and we chatted, and she met Joanna. It is so great how so much time can pass between our meetings and nothing ever changes between us. And teenagers worldwide are just strikingly similar- parental rebellion, going out, having a good time, school and relationships. She is almost done with college, a three year program, and will then begin getting lab experience (she wants to go to graduate school for biotechnology). The typical Indian education always leads to either engineering or medicine- even to suggest scientific research is to encourage heart attacks for family members worried about your future livelihood.

This makes the people at my internship all the more interesting...but I'll get to that in a future