After spending two months in the U.S. trying to get a new Indian visa, I finally got the correct one just after Christmas. It was so nice being home for the holidays, but it was also stressful not knowing if I would make it back to India to finish my Fellowship.
My first week back there was a holiday celebrating the birthday of the Maharaja who started the university, so we got a day off. Some of the teachers in the Environmental Science department planned a picnic outing and invited me to join them. We left in the morning and stopped along the way for some fried street snacks. It was a busy stall and the food came out fresh, so I didn't worry too much about getting sick (and I didn't, thankfully).
We kept driving for another hour or so and reached the Namada River. We wandered around for a while and then took a small ferry boat to the other side and back. It was really nice to get out of the city and see some nature.
I had always assumed that the burning of the bodies only happened at the Ganges but apparently not. On the shores of this river there was a metal pyre set up for the cremation of the dead.
There were also a lot of little scraps of clothing and trinkets strewn about along the banks. I bent down to look at them closer and one of the teachers told me, "Don't touch that. People put in their wishes and prayers for both good and evil, and you never know what type of spirits the item might have attached to it." What I thought was just careless trash was actually a part of someone's way of worshipping. It reminded me that there are probably many things in India that seem to be one way on the surface but actually have deeper meanings I am unaware of.
We left the river and stopped in a town where there were a lot of monkeys. There are monkeys in Vadodara, too, but I don't usually have the chance to get pictures of them.
In the town one of the teachers bought the supplies for our picnic lunch. There were no sandwiches or chips on this picnic. We made chicken korma in a pot slow-roasted over the fire. I watched as they added the spices. There were multiple types of chili powder that went into the pot. A few times they said, (in English for my benefit since most of the conversations were in Hindi) "Don't put too much in. We don't want to make it too spicy for Alana." Then when it was ready they asked me to taste it first to make sure it was Ok for me. It was, of course, too spicy so when I hesitated, they thought it would be a good idea to add a bunch of water to the pot. I stopped them because underneath the spiciness it was delicious, and adding water would not have helped with the spice level. I assured them I would be fine.
I enjoyed helping them build the fire. The other teachers told me I should just sit back and relax, but I told them how at home, my husband and I like to go camping and make campfires. I hope that their acceptance of me helping indicated a little bit of the transition from 'visiting teacher to be treated like a guest' to 'she is now one of us'.
A few days after the picnic it was my birthday. I don't normally like to make a big deal about birthdays, but it's tradition that the teacher who has a birthday should provide lunch for the teachers and staff in the department. Somebody will then provide a cake for the birthday person. I found a restaurant nearby that I had been wanting to try and ordered enough food for 20 people in advance. I got some different types of breads and a dish called Dal Makhani, which is lentils in a smoky dark sauce. It's supposed to be less spicy than other dishes, but you know how that always turns out for me.
During class in the morning I let it slip to my students that it was my birthday, and at break time one of the students mumbled some excuse that he had to go take care of something. He came back a little while later with a birthday cake for me! Instead of calling their teachers Mr. or Mrs. and their last name to show respect, they use the teacher's first name with ma'am. So, I am called 'Alana ma'am'. Or in this case, 'ALANA MAM'.
I then learned that in Indian culture when someone has a birthday, after singing and blowing out the candles, the birthday person is supposed to cut a small slice of cake, hand it to a guest, and the guest feeds it to them by hand. I also learned that some guests will take the chance to smear the cake in the person's face (the way we do at weddings). Luckily, my students informed me that they would not be doing that to me. However, I was then informed that I had to cut a small piece off for each student to each feed me a bite one-after-another while they individually gave me their best wishes for a happy birthday. I'll admit it was pretty awkward and funny at the same time.
After being hand-fed many small pieces of cake in my morning class, it was then time to have lunch with the teachers. After lunch they brought out another cake and I was happy to see it was at least a different flavor, and a relief to know I only had to be fed by one of the teachers instead of all of them.
I was happy it was successful, especially after how many times I have been provided lunch on all the other teacher's birthdays. The following week there was a festival called the 'kite festival' where people fly kites all over the city and in competitions. I didn't see as much of this as I wanted to, but I did see some kids practicing flying their kites the day before.
Around the same time I started preparing my students for some project-based learning. In the previous unit I had them write an essay that answered the questions: 'Why should people care about the environment, and why do some people choose not to care about the environment?' Since many students said they felt it depended on a person's education level, I told the students we would do a project to survey the public to find out if there really is a correlation.
I prepared them by discussing qualitative and quantitative data. Then I put them into groups to create surveys on Google Forms together and designated a day that we would go out into the city to ask members of the public to take their surveys. I coached them on how to approach strangers and what to do if people say no or ignore them. We also divided up the areas around campus so that different groups wouldn't be asking people in the same areas. I accompanied some of the groups and watched as they started out very nervously trying to talk to strangers.
When we gathered back together at the end of the class, they were all excitedly talking about the people they had met and how friendly they were. One student said his confidence grew and grew with each new person that he asked, and when he would get rejected he remembered my advice to not take it personally and just move on to the next person.
They discovered that people are more aware of environmental issues than they had realized, and many people do make an effort to recycle and reduce the amount of plastic they use. It was amazing to see the students grow in confidence and better understand how knowledge is gained, and I was happy to help them acquire some of the skills I learned at their age as a missionary many years ago.
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