The absent blogger returns, for a moment

I realized this past weekend that I have now been in India over a month (as of Friday!), and in the last few weeks I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon. Aside from the program, a great deal of my time and energy has been absorbed dealing with the, shall we say, less than pleasant aspects of traveling and life abroad - a series of problems with our host family situation, some subsequent life-together tensions, all of us being at least moderately sick at some points (though nothing serious, thankfully), coping with heat that got up to 115-117 humid degrees at some points. On top of that, our computer at home is currently chewing the dust, so to speak, though we are hoping there is a possiblity of a resurrection. Possibly the power has just gone out on it one too many times...

Certain aspects like the food and water situation and general mood at the host family's house have improved immensely, though it took some effort. And I have ventured out into the world around me step by step to have certain positive little adventures - going down to the local temples along the river by our house, walking by the river and admiring the famous play of the moonlight on the water of the Gomti, trying the famous (and spicy!) kebabs at Tunday Kebab in the hectic and narrow allies of the old city, experiencing Indian Catholicism at the cathedral in Lucknow (famous for the school it's associated with, though I had not heard of it before), accumulating Indian clothing, using my Hindi in various ordinary situations....buying things at the drug store, attempting to get rickshaw wallahs to take me to the right place, asking questions of a dressing room attendent.
It really is the little adventures that make a difference - and of course, all the little adventures together make one big adventure!

In traveling and living in a foreign country, it's the small details and differences of life that particularly interest me - trying different shampoo, seeing where people buy groceries, how they eat breakfast or tea, decorate their houses and doorsteps, act when they pass a temple. In some ways it's easier to imagine certain big differences - architecture, landscape, broad cultural divides - than little ones. I would never dreamt up the fact that our host family's car plays psychedelic ice cream truck-esque jingles every time it backs up, or that their doorbell plays about 4 different Sanskrit chants, one to every major Hindu deity. Or the way that people will die their hair in all kinds of interesting patterns with henna - only the grey hairs, so you get striped tigery hair, or men dying only the top of their hair and leaving the sideburns naturally colored...

Certain impressions may be cliched, but they still strike me - the sheer colorfulness of it all, with women wearing saris and shalwar kameezes in every color of the rainbow and a few more that the rainbow couldn't hope to invent! Jewelry is taken to a different level as well - diamond toe rings, great dangling earrings and diamond encrusted nose rings hanging precariously from ear lobes and nostrils, sindoor in women's parts and feet painted with bright red-pink dye... And yes, there are cows wandering in the street outside our house, and we often hear loud moos at all hours of the day! People do walk by singing songs from Hindi films, or with devotional chants blaring on radios balanced on their bicycles.

Tomorrow I am leaving the Lucknow vicinity for the first time since arriving here, and will be heading off to the foothills of the Himalayas for my midterm break trip. Specifics of the plans are still rather hazy, so wish me luck....