How odd, how time can pass so quickly, when looking back to the beginning uncovers many more happenings than two months should normally contain. Here I sit, digesting a final dinner of North Indian sabji and chapati, on the last night of my homestay in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Tomorrow I’ll catch a plane to Kerala, a southern state, for a month-long independent study project centering on small cocoa farmers and the organic certification process. An independent study period (or ISP) is the capstone of most SIT study abroad programs and is also a chance to dive head first into the deep end of a foreign culture, search along the murky bottom with water-filled goggles for a while, and emerge victorious back on the surface with an original 30-page research paper. However, right now it just feels like I’m flying a bajillion miles away from everything and everyone that now feels familiar. I’m a little nervous, but a little more thrilled. Here’s a visual for tomorrow’s journey:
Since I’m all packed and a bit of a nostalgic mess, I think it’s about the right time for some reflections on living as student, a daughter, and a temporary guest in the Pink City.
Sometimes things were weird. Like the time some friends and I got into a rickshaw at night with blue moodlighting and Punjabi dance beats blasting through two huge subwoofers in the back. Actually, that was fantastic.
Often things were comfortable. Like when I would come home everyday and exchange the same Hindi greetings and questions with mamaji and papaji. Around five, like clockwork, and we’d make chai and drink it on the porch.
Once in a while I felt not-foreign, like while playing cricket with my 10-year-old host sister and her neighborhood friends on our street.
Increasingly, I felt capable, like when I realized I could navigate my way through several areas of the city on foot, or have a whole (but very simple) conversation with a shopkeeper in Hindi.
Occasionally, things didn’t go as planned. Like the time some friends and I, after a weekend trip, tried to get on a sleeper train back home at 10:30pm only to discover that our tickets were booked for two days later.
Almost always, things worked out. Like how our suave program coordinator (think Indian Dennis Quaid) sent his two cousins to us within minutes to make sure we got on the next train before class the next day. That was the first, but hopefully not the last time I’ll have a phone conversation that contains the phrase, “Wait there. I’m sending a man with cash.”
Usually, I felt like a spectacle. Like today when I had to leave the park I was strolling in because of the mob of kids I was attracting who wanted to practice (?) shouting English at me and repeating back whatever I said. Or the dozens of times I’ve found myself being stealthily (or blatantly) photographed from afar or up close.
Probably every day, I felt so lucky to be living in a country that at different times feels both like another plant and not so different from home. Once while running in the morning (normal) I stopped to pet a cow chewing some trash on the side of the road with a sweater on (not). Another time while cruising home from the bazaar through rush hour traffic (normal), I looked back to see the silhouette of several elephants following us over the bridge (definitely not).
Overall, the host family experience was one that I’m so grateful to have had and so wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who’s considering it. For all the times I felt like a weirdo American who would never pick up on how things are done in India, there were more times that I felt unconditionally welcomed. Having a family to tote me around, eat dinner with, show my endless pictures to, and explain the plot of the nightly Hindi soap operas to me provided invaluable normalcy and closeness to my cultural adjustment process. Now it’s time to leave the nest and test out my water wings.
Okay, enough premature reminiscing. Eye candy of the week:
