Dear nations of functional universities and working bicycles,
The time I am using now to write to you, is actually time that I allocated to attend a Buddhism course, one of the many courses I have been making valiant but ultimately futile efforts to attend for the past week. I managed to find the professor for this one and write down the change in time and date of the course that he had made without telling anyone. He even gave me the building that we would be meeting in (the physics building because why would a Buddhism course meet in the Humanities building?), but alas, no room number, which led me to my hour excursion this morning. After the Buddhism department had no idea where he was, I asked a gentleman from the building the class was supposed to be held, a gentleman who spoke no English and insisted on bursting into every single classroom in the entire building to ask since he didn't understand my English suggestion that I just come back later. On the plus side, the science professors all seemed perfectly friendly and appeared to be holding class which provides me with some tenuous evidence that classes do actually meet here, so I will eventually attend one. But sadly, no luck finding it this time (much like last week when three different departments sent me on a six mile scavenger hunt to a class whose time and date had also been changed unbeknowst to the students or department).
On the way there I discovered that my awesome hot pink bicycle tire had a slow leak, making it extremely difficult to pedal and steer, so I was fortunate to have the extra time to head over to the bicycle repair tree (I say bicycle repair tree because it is literally a man that stands outside a hollowed tree with a bike pump). I was slightly less fortunate because my awesome hot pink bicycle's awesome bike lock broke in front of the science building causing the back tire to lock completely, so I actually half carried, half dragged it to the bicycle repair tree. But let's look at this from a positive perspective: that bike is pretty cumbersome. I now have full faith that no one will ever steal it. Then, the lock magically repaired itself right before I reached the tree, so really this was a positive experience that tested the stealability of my bicycle and introduced me to the bicycle repair tree. (Sidenote, dear readers, the electricity has just shorted out again, so I may have to cut this short as the battery for my computer no longer works.) Then on the way back up the hill I had yet another positive experience when my (electricity's back!) awesome hot pink bicycle chain again popped off, but thanks to the same fortunate (wait, it's out again) event happening last time I rode the bike, I am expert at repairing bicycle chains (okay, I think the electricity is back for good now). So really it was a very fortunate and productive morning. Anyway, I've just found out that my afternoon class has also been cancelled, so now that I have extra time I can write about the rest of my weekend.
On Saturday after the mock drill / super secret bicycle quest CIEE took us to this really fantastic organization called the Desire Society. It's a school/orphanage for children who are HIV positive. It was a little awkward at first because they took about 20 of us and I was worried it would overwhelm the kids having too many strangers/pretend adult figures around. But they seemed pretty excited a they had a talent show because they'd been learning dancing, and it was they were some seriously good dancers. I talked to the program director about it, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to put a video on the internet because it's a really cool thing to show off, the kids were really excited about it, and I feel like it would be great publicity for the organization to bring in money for school supplies and medical bills. It's too far away for us to go back weekly but a few of us are trying to plan to volunteer there, and there are some other closer organizations that I'm really excited to start working for (as soon as I have a course schedule).
Sunday, CIEE decided to plan yet another day long crazy secret quest (hooray!). CIEE is also really into enforcing elementary school rules (hooray?), so at 7:30 AM (8:45AM India time) we all stood with teams in a single file line (or else we lost points) wearing our matching maroon CIEE polo shirts (or else we lost points), which had just been spray painted half an hour before so they smelled like car exhaust and made us light headed (maybe that was part of the challenge?) and silently listened (or else we lost points) to instructions given to us in convoluted Indian English. Given 600 rupees, we had to race other teams to various destinations across Hyderabad using only rickshaws. This proved to be hilarious but not the most effective plan, as CIEE took away any leverage we had at all to haggle rickshaw drivers by dressing 30 white kids in matching T-shirts and making them compete for the same rickshaw. We got to see some amazing parts of Hyderabad. We went to the Safrani school, this place that employs widows and poor women to hand weave the most beautiful saris I have ever seen. We also got to visit the Salar Jung Museum, which has actually been my favorite museum this year. (Insane jade daggers, tiny paintings, elaborate scultures carved out of ivory, veiled Rebecca statue, bearded man cuckoo clock, other insane-most-beautiful-thing-in-the-entire-world-type-stuff). It was actually a little tragic because the artifacts are not well taken care of. Like one of the museum curators was beating the ornamental carpets in the carpet room, and the items in the silver room were taking part in a pollution study. An entire troop of boy scouts wanted a picture with me (still creepy. But at least no one asked for my autograph like some of the other people in my group). That paranoia everyone has in middle school, -- that everyone is watching and scrutinizing your every move so you should be super embarrassed when you trip in the hallway because obviously everyone saw and will laugh at you -- it's actually true. Everyone really is watching you in India (I have started making weird faces at people who stare and take pictures. I figure it's not as inappropriate as smiling.) We also took a boat to the giant Buddha statue, which was cool, but I enjoyed the boat ride over more because the entire time I was thinking about stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, which says that "white people love buying water front property." If a rich white American bought beautiful water front property in India, they would discover when they got here that it smells strongly of dead things.
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