Kerala

Because my host mother is originally from Kerala, a state in south India, our family took a trip to visit her family that she hasn’t been able to see for a long time! We spent a whole seven days in south India, trying new foods, hearing new languages (Malayalam and Tamil) and of course, sightseeing!

After trying countless new foods, here were a few of my favorites:

This is halwa, a snack that we purchased from a street vendor. The yellow is made with pineapple and the reddish ones are made with red banana. I don’t know exactly what is in it, but I hope to make it someday because it is delicious.

I also tried an kheer, a delicious dessert made of milk, rice, and sugar. It was warm and served in a small dish with a few almonds on top. Loved it!

Coconuts are abundant in south India. How common are they? At a relative’s house, my host sister and I went on the rooftop and I plucked a coconut for each of us. We then opened them to drink the water and ate the white part on the inside. I didn’t particularly like the water, but the white “meat” is great!

This vendor had us try all of the fruits and vegetables in these jars here. I liked the papaya, pineapple, and mango, but many of the jars were filled with oils and vinegars that gave the produce a rather unpleasant taste.

 

Of course, I’m not just obsessed with food.  I also really enjoyed seeing the beaches, mountains, and waterfalls with my host family!  We spent a lot of time together and I feel a lot closer to them.  I’m very glad that I could share these memories together.

My oldest host sister and host mother on a boat tour which lead to the Arabian sea. We had so much fun dancing on the beach and marveling at the beautiful scenery in the backwaters leading up to it.

Of course, being along a coast, we absolutely had to visit the beach! This is a famous beach in the capital of Kerala.

In the mountains after a gruesome three hour drive, we saw a gorgeous waterfall before reaching our hotel. Of course we stopped to take pictures!

The mountains in the evening have a gorgeous view. On a nightly walk, we stopped to take photos because the combination of glittering lights, distant mountains, and clouds dipping into the land around us was simply breathtaking!

Firsts

I can’t believe that a whole two months have already passed with my host family here in Subhash Nagar, New Delhi.  At the same time, however, I can’t believe that it’s only been this long!  These months have been all about adaptation and observation, learning about the culture before making opinions about it (although opinions are inevitably always made).  Basically, this month was about first times.  As the saying goes, “there’s a first for everything,” I’ve found that here, everything is a first.  Some firsts have been obvious, like the first time seeing a particular monument or eating a certain food, but others were rather unexpected.  First times are scary, exciting, interesting, and sometimes shocking, and every first leads to a decision: do I want seconds?

A few of my firsts since July 4, 2014:

First view of New Delhi, my new home! This was taken from the airplane window seat after a long 14 hours (16 including the two hour delay) of anticipation!

First day at an Indian school! We wear uniforms, listen to lectures, and of course have fun with friends. School is very different from in the US and I’ll make a post soon about it.

My first auto ride. The streets of New Delhi are incredibly scary, especially when sitting in a small auto with open sides, leaving you quite able to touch passing cars or people.

 

First time using the Delhi Metro! Super crowded, but air-conditioned and incredibly useful.

First time seeing a camel on the street. In fact first time seeing camels, monkeys, elephants, horses, and cows on the streets.

First time to Bangla Sahib, or any Gurudwara for that matter. A Gurudwara is a sikh place of worship. This is also my first exposure to Silkism.

Finally Here

Don’t worry, I’m still alive. I wanted to make a general “I’m here!” blog post now before writing stories about my adventures. It’s been a week here in New Delhi with my host family and I’m loving it! I started school, tried new foods, and made friends.

This is my first view of New Delhi. So many lights, so many people.

Fourteen hours on a plane, not including delays due to storms, and I look out of the window to find this beautiful expanse of lights under the unseen land which is my new home. What immediately struck me was how many people must live there, and moving from Wisconsin Rapids to New Delhi will be quite a change. And change it was.

The view from my street in Subhash Nagar, New Delhi.

As the picture might have given away, I don’t exactly live in a rural area. In fact, the street is always bustling with people, all jabbering in Hindi, might I add. My family lives in Subhash Nagar, which is West New Delhi. There are little markets everywhere and random cows, dogs, rickshaws, and motorcycles clutter the streets. Talk about overwhelming! During this past week, I feel well adjusted to my new home despite my lack of experience here.

My beautiful host sisters on a family vacation.

Part of the reason why I feel so comfortable here is because of my lovely host sisters, Ridhya and Dhwani Malhotra. Both are gorgeous and compassionate ladies. This week, they both showed me what living as an Indian teenager is like and taught me the ways of their country. Thanks girls, love you!

Finally I am here. In India. I never thought I would be able to say those words. I am so grateful to KL-YES Abroad, all of its ambassadors, the AFS staff, and most of all, my friends and family. I love you all!

PDO Prep

All of the 65 YES Abroad finalists stand in front of the Washington Memorial after a visit to the state department.

What was once an unrealistic dream has become an upcoming reality.  For the past four days I stood beside my fellow YES Abroad finalists for a Pre-Departure Orientation (PDO for short) as preparation for our quickly approaching year abroad.  The closeness I felt between everyone there was amazing; we shared our hopes, fears, insights, research, and dreams with each other, trusting one another to help us through our exchanges despite our differences in location.  These sixty-five students of varying upbringing and appearance have created an overall feeling of excitement and determination for a successful year.  I feel incredibly lucky, not only to have met them, but to be a part of a network of intelligent and supportive exchange students around the world.

While meeting everyone once again was fabulous, the actual reason for PDO was to provide materials and knowledge that will help us with the challenging aspects of our exchanges.  Topics covered included effective communication, culture shock, religion, digital storytelling, health and safety, and assignments while abroad.  Despite the incredibly long thirteen hours of workshops, YES Abroad provided a lot of great information that applies to all countries, including India.  I am very appreciative to my group leader Zoe for discussing how these topics applied to India more in-depth, giving us tips and things to think about for a successful exchange.  The staff certainly drilled rules and expectations into our heads, which will be useful because reaching back into old, dusty files in my brain would not be convenient during my roller-coaster of a year.

After the previous long day of workshops, we woke up the next morning to prepare for a series of interesting field trips.  We immediately split into organization-specific groups and either visited our countries’ embassies or, as in India’s case, a cultural center involving our specific countries.  The group going to India visited the Gandhi Memorial Center.  There, we were informed of many Indian beliefs and spoke with two teenage girls and their mothers who used to live in India.  One of the Indian women created an impressive art gallery in which all of the paintings were based on different language present in India, from ancient and almost forgotten to presently-used ones.

These are some of the smaller paintings displayed at the Gandhi Memorial Center. Each painting is based on a different script.

The rest of the day consisted of visiting the U.S. Department of State to discuss our regions with its members and visiting a few monuments.  We spoke with Laura Brown, the Public Diplomacy Desk Officer for India and Bhutan in the Bureau of South and Central Asia Affairs.  She provided great information on India and showed much enthusiasm for our interest in global affairs.  After finishing our conversations with our region-specific diplomats, we had time to visit the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Memorial.  I had a great time laughing and taking pictures with everyone and especially cannot wait to depart for India with my “Bharat Babes.”  It has been a great few days and there are many fabulous adventures in store!  Only a few short days before gateway orientation… can’t wait!

Blind Me

हाय! कहां बाथरूम हैं? मैं तुमसे प्यार करता हूँ! अलविदा!  What does this even mean?  I am about to leap into a life completely different than mine, one that will probably confuse me at first.  In two months, I will be sitting with my host family, hopefully building connections that will last a lifetime.  Of course, that would require managing not to terribly offend them within the first couple of minutes.

After a combination of talking with my family and fellow YES Abroad-ers, I realized my ignorance of even basic Indian culture.  First thought?  Time to take action!  Another girl going to India introduced a few Bollywood films and offered to show me some Indian music that she likes, which I’m sure will give me a taste of the life.  I just spent the last half hour making note cards on the Devanagari script, one of the many writing systems in India which could help me learn whichever language my host family speaks. (Side note: over 22 languages are spoken in India.)  It is incredible how many different noises can be made by the same two letters in English!  I made up my mind that by the time I depart, I will know my numbers, how to say hello, and be able to ask where the bathrooms are.  I also want to prepare myself a little bit with Indian courtesy because some gestures or expressions may come off as rude to my host family, which I definitely do not want!

Despite my goals to inform myself, I want to embark my journey “a little bit blind,” as one of my YES Abroad friends put it.  Respect for a culture is one thing, but trying to cram a life’s worth of tradition into a few months of research is like skimming through an untouched book before a big test; it isn’t effective.  I would love to learn a new language, try new foods, listen to different music, and wear new clothing; but as part of my Indian experience. My great grandma often said, “I see, says the blind man.”  Sometimes the over-prepared understand less because they assume more.  So what if I’m a little under-informed?  That is exactly the point of the program.  Now all I have to do is keep myself sane for the next two months while I wait for departure day.

The Start

Where did this all start?  How did I, a sophomore from Wisconsin, find myself embarking on a year-long exchange program in India?  It all occured so quickly; how could this be happening to me?

The Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange Study Abroad program, YES Abroad for short, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.  It offers full scholarships for 65 high school students from the United States to study abroad in countries with significant Muslim populations.  I applied online, not expecting to become one of the 120 semi-finalists yet daydreaming of such an amazing experience.  Upon hearing of my status as a semi-finalist on my phone’s email, I danced around my living room and nearly shattered my phone’s screen.  I was officially part of the YES Abroad program.

The next phase of YES Abroad selection included IPSE, the In-Person Selection Event.  This lasted three days in which students ages 15-18 flew from across the country to Chevy Chase, Maryland’s 4H Center.  There, each student participated in an individual interview, two group interviews, a workshop, and for some a French interview.  While the schedule included these major events, we had a lot of free time to talk amongst ourselves.  Instead of a cold and competitive atmosphere which I anticipated, all of the semifinalists were kind, talented, and interesting people.  I met so many amazing friends; I made deeper connections over the course of three days than with people I had known for years!  It was a great experience; I felt lucky simply to be a part of the YES Abroad community!  That Sunday’s departure was incredibly sad for me because I had no idea if I would ever meet these people again.  Reluctantly, we took our buses to our designated airports and said our goodbyes.

Of course, with the end of IPSE came the countdown: finalist notification emails.  We assumed that the emails would be sent out on Friday, April 11th judging from previous years’ dates, and the YES Abroad Facebook page obsessed over that day for an entire three weeks.  When Friday rolled around, every email on my phone gave me a heart attack, and I probably mentioned YES Abroad every five minutes.  The day could not crawl by any slower.  In addition, right after school my family and I drove to Minneapolis for a morning flight to Florida.  That meant an entire four-hour car ride of constantly checking for email notifications on both my mother and my phones.  After a long day of school, traveling, and a stress-relieving run, I checked the clock.  11:30.  My heart sunk.  Why did we all assume that it could only be on Friday the 11th?  It’s not a rejection, I told myself.  It will be soon, no worries.

The next day, I woke up, ate the continental breakfast at the hotel, and prepared for our flight to Florida.  While heading out the door, I checked my phone which I had been avoiding all morning due to my disappointment from the previous night.  On my Facebook notifications, a boy posted that he received a rejection email: and thus the process began.  My heart raced.  I talked my mother’s ear off the whole way to the airport, through security, and waiting for the flight.  Over the next two hours, I spent what seemed an eternity of wasting my phone’s battery from checking for email notifications. Waiting, waiting, waiting.  As my mom, sister, and I sat on the plane, the captain announced, “Please turn off all electronic devices or apply the airplane mode setting.”  No no no.  I had to keep checking my email.  In that moment, my mom received an email on her phone.  She gaped at the screen and simply handed the phone to me, but I had already opened my own email account.

YES Abroad Program- India.  NO WAY!  My mom and I exchanged eye contact: this was the start of a whole new adventure. 

Celeste is going to India.