My Life Is My Message

Another week here has come and gone and I can’t even believe that means that I am officially in my last week and come home in less than a week. Way too many mixed emotions still about my return home so I’m going to continue putting off thinking about it and get back to that later in the week. 

This last week seriously just flew by. Another volunteer (a fellow Big Ten girl from Penn State!) and I made a plan for our last two weeks to make sure we did and saw everything we wanted to before we left so we’ve been pretty busy trying to go to all the little sights around the city and get back to those we didn’t feel like we really soaked up! 

Well of course things don’t always go according to plan. Monday night India finally got the best of my stomach and I got sick. I really thought I was going to defeat the “you will definitely get sick in India” statement that everyone told me, but it just didn’t happen. I remember the first time I got sick at OSU and just crying to my mom on the phone that I just wanted to be in my own bed with her there to take care of me. Well I was feeling just like that only I was half way around the world this time. Being sick sucks, being sick in a foreign country REALLY sucks. I didn’t eat for like two days, I missed a day with my kids and really just couldn’t move off my bed. No fun. The saddest part though? My love affair with Indian food has come to a screeching halt. Just the smell at the moment makes my stomach churn. My bread and rice diet isn’t really my style and I’m hoping to try and slowly work a little real food back into my diet this last week. Besides the food though I feel a million times better and survived Indian Illness without too much damage. 

This last week at school was a good and bad one continuing with incredible highs but also some really sad and frustrating lows. I have a couple kids who have just come so far with their english and are doing so well. They couldn’t even identify letters well when I started and within the last two weeks have just taken off and were sounding out words and writing them like champs on Friday. With the staff changes I’ve talked about I feel really good that when I leave this will all continue too with new volunteers that come and these kids english will only continue to get better! I haven’t had success everywhere though. At some points I’ve gotten thrown in front of 10-15 kids who speak zero english, have never been in a classroom before and don’t know anything and am just told to teach them. Most seem to have no interest in what I am saying and are laying on the ground or crawling on the table. The language barrier makes it impossible to control them and its really frustrating and just not fun to sit there and scream A, B, C pointing at letters when you feel like none of them even care. It makes it even harder to know that they will probably never actually learn english, or Hindi for that matter. Some of then were nine or ten years old and had never been in a school. Its really hard to think about that sometimes and take in how common this is all around the country and all around the world for that matter. I could just go on for days about how these kids break my heart every single day. I just can’t even wrap my mind around what I’ve seen here sometimes and what these kids lives are like. I have been avoiding the thought that this is my last week. I have no idea how I’m going to say goodbye to these kids who have gotten to know over the last 6 weeks. Not surprising, they have taught me ten times more than I could ever teach to them. 

My India trip was complete this weekend when I finally got to go Gandhi Smriti (In memory of Gandhi) yesterday. It is the place where Gandhi spent his last 144 days and was assassinated. Most of you probably know that this was an absolutely amazing moment for me. I got to walk where Gandhi walked and be in the room where he slept and worked and fasted and prayed. I was probably more in awe and amazement being there than any other place I’ve been in India. There was a pretty elaborate museum also connected which kind of disappointed me. It had some cool things but I found it pretty sad that such an expensive, extravagant thing was built in honor of a man who built his life around living simply and with only what he needed. But walking around the grounds was just amazing. Gandhi quotes were everyone (so clearly we all know I was happiest girl alive) and signs and pictures about his last few days alive. I know none of you will but if you ever get the chance I would really suggest his autobiography “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”. It’s long and a little boring at some points but totally worth it. Like I’ve said, my Gandhi fascination really started my India fascination and landed me here in this amazing country all summer! The title of the post is another very famous Gandhi quote that I think is a good thing for everyone to try and life their life by :) 

Hope everyone in all corners of the world is having a great week. I can’t believe how soon I’ll be home and especially how soon I’ll be starting up school again!! I’m so proud of so many of my amazing friends doing amazing things this summer and this upcoming year. From Grace and Steph playing with kids in Africa all summer to Carley on clinical in Belize. Lainie will be off saving the world in Bolivia, Kara in the Dominican while Mary Rose and Ryan stick to the good old USA to make a difference. I am so proud of all of you and am so lucky to have you all in my life!! (for some lighter reading besides Gandhi read up about Steph, Carley & Lainie's adventures here!) 

One more week of running around India until I must return to the real world! Love and miss you all :) And I promise pictures next time, the internet just isn't loving me today! 

Quiet Weekend at "Home"

After going back and forth a few times and thinking about leaving Delhi again for the weekend I decided yesterday to stay instead of go. Today I am at the house by myself. One of my good friends left this morning (having to say goodbye to people every single week is not fun!) and everyone else is at Agra seeing the Taj Mahal which I already did. So that leaves just me!! Five weeks ago when I got here the thought of an entire afternoon alone here would have literally scared me to death but last night I was actually really looking forward to it. I took as long as I wanted to shower and do my laundry thing morning without the pressure of 11 other girls wanting to be in the bathroom, I organized the mess that had become my suitcase and am just enjoying some time chilling out. I am going out to see a few things later this afternoon and sometimes really like traveling around by myself. It makes me feel less like a tourist and more like in a small way I can sort of call Delhi “home”. 

I am shocked when I think I only have two weeks left here before I have to go home. Though there are a few things I am looking forward to when I get home, in general two weeks DOES NOT seem like enough time. Some of you are probably laughing at that statement since I have yet to really feel comfortable with the amount of time I had left since arriving. No matter how many weeks passed, the time I had left still felt overwhelming. I have never necessarily felt that homesick and never wanted to go home in the moment but sometimes thinking about how much time I had left made me feel anxious. Well, now with just two weeks left I want to stand still and last as long as possible!! 

The saddest part is the thought of only having ten days left with my kids. My placement has been quit the up and down experience. While I have been there they have gone through some major staff changes (for reasons I don’t understand: I am not told and I don’t really want to get involved and asked!) which has made things hard for the rest of the staff, the children and myself. It was especially hard when the coordinator left because she was the only person who could really communicate in English. My partner for the first three weeks and this coordinator all left at the same time and I was left with absolutely no one to hold an English conversation with. It was really hard and the first few days this week seem long. Wednesday though a new woman came and is exactly what this place needs. She sat with me (she can speak English and has saved my sanity!) and asked for my honest opinion about the way things were done and we came up with a plan for my last two and a half weeks for what she wants me to teach. Her methods and plans make a lot more sense and I really think the kids are going to be able to learn so much more not just from me but hopefully in the long run this way. 

The major issue i have seen is that kids can do things like count to 100 and say their ABCs but when I show them a word and ask them to tell me the letters they have no idea. Same idea with numbers. A girl counted to 100 for me last week and I showed her a card with a 3 on it and she had no idea what it was. When it comes to letters they also have no idea what sounds any letters make and can often only relate the letter to the certain que word. So I show them an R and they have no idea, I say rabbit and they know that “r is for rabbit”. When asking them to say letters they often say the related word instead of the letter. So when going over months of the year on Friday someone spelled May ‘M-A-Yo yo”. Who knew yo-yo had become a word!! With some practice though I have some kids (I think!) starting to understand the sounds. Friday was a huge day for me where I really felt like I got through to a lot of them. A group was sounding out the months for me, a little girl I have been working on writing with (everything from Hindi to English to numbers) wrote some flawless 5s and 6s for me and one of my little math boys who I taught to identify 1-10 the first week I was there was able to give me numbers in the 100,000s. I usually leave around 5 and after already skipping lunch I looked at my watch and it was 5:30. Oops!! 

It was days like Friday where I see God looking down on me saying “See, you can make a difference”. My time in India has caused me to feel every emotion I can think of in the strongest way possible: fear, excitement, anger, happiness and everything in between. I am used to my service trips making me feel so close to God. I truly believe their is no greater way I can serve my God than by serving his people. We are His hands and feet here on earth and it is our responsibility to help those around us who have not been given what we have. Being in India has challenged my faith more than I ever imagined. It doesn’t seem far that I have been blessed with so much and these people seem to be given so little. My first few weeks I felt so angry and confused. And everything in my head still isn’t perfect. I still am questioning so much that once seemed so easy for me to believe. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to be so extremely uncomfortable I thought I couldn’t do it. I wanted feel like I couldn’t deal with everything around me and make my only choice turning to God. It was easy to say I wanted these things. It’s a lot harder to actually have to live through these experiences. 

 Austin (our amazing youth minister at Newman) always tells us on retreats, service trips, etc. to “be where our feet our”. It is something that I have always struggled with. I let my mind wonder to school, friends, boys, to do list and so many other things besides what I have come for. I feel like I have never felt more “where my feet our” than here. I am doing perfect. I still let my mind wonder back to Ohio more than I want. I check my email and facebook more than I want. Even my dreams wonder back to old Columbus town almost every night. But Monday-Friday from 10-5 I am here. In India. With my children. Every ounce of me. I realize how in the zone I become and sometimes get the chills, smile and close my eyes and just thank God for this experience. It’s hard. Really hard. But when I look back on my time here I know I will be much more likely to remember the laugh of a child and smile on their face when something clicks than any of the hard moments. 

Every prayer, e-mail, facebook message and thought means more than any of you could imagine. As always, I could never have done this without every single one of you. Keep changing the world everywhere you are, love and miss you guys! 

Overdue Post!

So sorry that I really suck at this blogging thing. I have written a couple post that I then go back and read and realize that they are better as diary entries than for the view of everyone I know. 

The last week and a half since I update has gone by so, so fast. Two weekends ago I was in Manali which was about a 14 hour bus ride from Delhi. It was in the middle of the Himalayas and just absolutely beautiful  We went paragliding, rose horses up the mountains and did something called zorbing (everyone look it up on line except for you mom!) which was just nuts. We got lucky that the weather stayed mostly dry, though they had already gotten too much rain for us to whitewater raft. It was fun to wonder around the town. It was filled with backpackers who were headed up farther into the mountains. The road were so steep and the town was literally just built into the side of hill. 

i feel like i am cheating on the beach with the love affair i am having with the mountains 

paragliding totally kicked skydivings butt 

pictures just don't even do them justice 

We got home on Tuesday morning and had just enough time for a quick nap, breakfast and headed to work. I really wish I could describe a “normal” day that I have but no two days are ever the same. Its hard to feel like I don’t ever really know what’s going on since all the other teachers around are talking in Hindi and then we just kind of follow what we are supposed to do. Last week I feel like I am making strides in what I am teaching though and really making connections with some of the kids. I have a group of three boys that just love to learn so much and grab me and have me teach them something at any chance they get. Last week some of the kids started school away from the center so I don’t see some of the kids except for the afternoon but that helped the problem of kids being on such different levels since most of the really advanced kids miss lessons in the morning and just come in the afternoon to hang out. A few of them still love for me to practice spelling and identifying big numbers is also a favorite among a lot of them. Some of them had trouble doing 1-50 when I got there and now they can identify numbers all the way through 999,999. I was stopped after this because apparently millions is done differently in Hindi. 

Last week was my partners last week so on Friday we had a celebration in the afternoon. The best part was they let take a few pictures! I only managed to get a few but I’m just glad I at least have a few with the kids and might try and sneak some more in my last couple weeks! I was originally told that I would get a replacement and wouldn’t be by myself but as it turns out I will spend my last three weeks alone! I was a little nervous about it at first but today after my first day I’m not worried at all. Catching the very busy bus alone is kind of rough and eating lunch alone kind of makes me feel pathetic (though I go to the same restaurant the server is just adorable) but I think it will be nice to have a little time by myself during the day. I love how full the house is and all the friends I am making but sometimes having twelve screaming girls gets a little much! The house will stay full until my last week when it will just be me and one other girl. 

Bharat in the strip shirt really wanted a picture by himself and was not pleased with the other kids jumping in

Rahul and Bharat my little geniuses. 

they just love to dance!

and are pretty darn good at it! 

This past weekend after about a hundred different changes in my plans I ended up back north in Shimla. It was also a beautiful mountain town. It was the summer capital for the British when Delhi got too hot so it was a cool combination of Victorian style houses and more traditional Indian looking houses. The views are amazing. I literally took hundreds of pictures. The two girls I came with left to go off traveling for two weeks and I came back to Delhi on the overnight bus again. I was pretty proud I did it all on my own! 

the city was just up and down a mountain side. amazing. 

pretty great view i had enjoying dinner before i caught my bus back to delhi 

I am coming to a point where I am admitting life in Delhi will never feel easy, comfortable or simple for me. I can honestly say most days I hate this city. It is dirty, it is overcrowded, it is loud, busy, people are always pushing you and yelling at you and trying to take advantage of you. Life here has been hard and my anxiety has not always been coping well with it! Everyday though that I hate day to day life here I think of my beautiful kids. They can’t escape the city on the weekends like I do. They aren’t going to fly away in a few weeks and go back to living a comfortable life. This is a really hard pill for me to swallow. I wish I could take pictures of the beautiful views I have walking to work or of around the city but their just aren’t any. This past month has been the biggest challenge I have ever faced and I have had so many highs and so many lows. One particularly bad day for me another volunteer said to me “an experience is an experience, whether it is good or bad, and you are going to grow as a person because of it”. I don’t know if she quoted someone on that or totally made it up but it’s really stuck with me. I know the moment I step off the plane back into the US I will be relieved and be happy to be home but I also know how much I will miss India. This country is unexplainable and a very common saying is “only in India”. Things often just don’t make sense. I see no logic in how so many things work and never will but I am doing my best to let go, let God and see where else I am led on this amazing and eventful journey. 

Love and miss you all, hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and enjoying their own adventures no matter what they are! xoxo 

God Bless America

So I’ve been thinking a lot about being American since I have been in India. Not only because of how obviously different Indian culture is from my own back home but because of all the amazing people I have met from all over the world. I’ve been told a couple times now “You aren’t like most Americans, but that’s a good thing!” and I never really know how to take it. I mean obviously I am pleased they like me unlike other Americans they have apparently met but I feel very uncomfortable with the fact that being American has a negative connotation across the world. When I told my coordinator at my placement I was American his comment was “Ahh American, you must be so rich!”. Yeah I obviously let out a classic awkward Jaclyn laugh and avoided the comment. 

Yesterday I drafted a pretty downer post about how Americans are selfish and ignorant and don’t know anything about what’s going on in the rest of the world and we really shouldn’t be “proud to be an American”. Though being here hasn’t always made me proud, I feel good I have the chance to prove people wrong. I know I can’t explain reasons why we aren’t as bad as people think but maybe if I can break the stereotype than they can at least remember that one really tall blonde American who wasn’t that bad. 

Every day here though and every interaction I have with the children gives me such a weird feeling of being happy and sad at the same time. As I sat in a room today with a crying baby on my shoulder and three little boys at my feet spelling out body parts for me I got the smack in the face of “Holy cow, this is what you have spent the last six months waiting for”. I was so extremely happy and so extremely sad all at the same time. Pinki, the little girl on my shoulder wears a pair of pants almost everyday that have a huge hole right on her butt. Her face is covered in some sort of rash and she takes naps on the cement floor while the other kids run and scream around her. Bharat, Acosh and Rahul sat on the floor and soak in every word I say and thirst for knowledge. They want to learn english so bad and love nothing more than showing me they can spell words right. 

It kills me I can’t get to know them better. I want to understand the stories they try and tell me. I want to know about where they live and what has happened to them and what they are struggling with. Hugs and smiles and laughter go so far but they have a point where it doesn’t feel like enough. I am learning how much a smile and a simple look of affection towards this kids means though. I never thought kids would love the hokey pokey so much and be on the floor laughing with me about “shaking it all about”. 

More stories on the kids soon and hopefully I can sneak some more pictures as well. I am off to Manali this weekend which is a city up north near the Himalaya which I am so excited about. The craziness of Delhi can be overwhelming at points to say the least and I am excited to get out for a few days. The weather will be a little cooler (down to the double digits which I haven’t felt in three weeks!) and not so chaotic. Hope everyone at home had a wonderful and safe 4th!! As always sending India love back home and to all the travelers around the world :) 

We went and saw the "light show" at Red Fort the other night. Total fail. It was an hour long history of the fort. I took a really great nap though. 

We had way too much fun dressing up for a night and pretending to be real Indians. We put makeup on for the first time in three weeks. crazy I know. Then we went for dinner and ended up at a pretty Western place where all the Indian women had shorts and skirts on. Oops, at least we had fun!