alifay

I love American holidays.

I love the festive atmosphere. I love feeling involved and connected to other people, complete strangers, because we share this culture. I love seeing the same traditional foods prepared in different ways. I love being warm and happy just for the sake of it. I love the feeling of people coming together, of entire communities being in the same state of mind all at once.

I love being so connected and involved beyond just myself, and I love being home to celebrate with the people who mean the most.

I have already made: homemade slowcooked chili; Japanese gyudon; onsen tamago; breakfast, packed lunch, and a snack for Katie. I have beer bread in the oven at this moment, and plan to make crispy deep fried ravioli to go along with leftover pastasauce for dinner.

No wonder I lost so much weight in India! Having a kitchen is dangerous to my waistline.

Oh yeah. And I planned what appetizers/alcoholic drinks/fun dessert I am bringing to Thanksgiving dinner. I love the holidays!!

And it is SNOWING!! Did you know that I love snow? ..No? Me neither. I never knew until I was missing out on it. The snow is SO PRETTY!!! Have you seen how it dusts the ground at first? Then slowly piles up? And how it makes the needles on all the trees into something completely magical? Everything slows down in the snow. The air is cleaner, the world is brighter, everything a little cozier. I love the snow.

I love being home.

I woke up this morning feeling awful, still.  I skipped yoga class and went back to sleep, and then when I woke up I still felt in an awful mood.  I told my friend Emily to leave me alone and just sat and sulked for a while.  I was irritated and depressed and angry and ... ugggh.  It was shittastic, as I put it to Lucia later.

So I ate a little lunch and took a shower.  I did a facial mask with Jasmine and put on some pretty clothes.  Somewhere in this process, I began to feel better.  In fact, since about 4:00 today I have been downright giddy.  I have been bouncing and talkative, smiley and outgoing again.  I am not sure if I am feeling more like *me* or not, but this feeling is definitely better than the alternative.  I was even awake and participatory in my Hindi class, a little bit more like the normal me.

I am guessing that this is either post-cold-giddy, or a result of the Zoloft that my psychiatrist put me on.  We will see where this goes from here.

It is Tuesday night and that means Ladies Night at Extreme Sports Bar!  Honestly, I love Tuesday nights.  I always have a good time.

( cut for insane whiney emoness. )

I am seeing a psychiatrist soon.  Next week soon.  Woulda been today ... but it's the holidays here.

I have a decision to make.  I can sit here for three weeks to (no promises) take an early final (have to finish the class first) or I could go home sooner.

 

Sit here for three weeks:

Twiddle thumbs.  Wait.  Crave home.  Continue to try to be happy/get along here.

Harder time doing anything due to major lack of funds (which was the only thing that kept me going before, major financial freedom).

If I stay for those three weeks, it will then be just four more weeks to the Golden Triangle tour and then home … so if I stay that long I might as well stay a little over twice that.  Just typing out this option makes me feel ill.  But it can’t be denied that that is the situation I will be in.

I will get to finish the one class that might transfer back home for something that matters.  This is really the only reason to go for this option.  How much does that one class mean to me????  Enough to stay and do the work and go and try to learn something?  Enough to suffer through both staying, but also the course itself (people here pretty universally despise the courses they are taking).  Enough to go on being unhappy?  Enough to … wait … for that much longer?  I don’t know.

 

Go home soon:

THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY.

I just want to go home.  I want to be a home.  Hooooome … it’s like a mantra now.  Just want home.

I have beaten this into the ground.  I dream (literally) about TacoBell and being able to take myself somewhere.  I want to be invisible again.  I want to walk somewhere and have no one notice me.  I am tired of being in the spotlight all the time.  Please give me blessed anonymity so I can carry on with my life.

Yesterday I let myself act and feel as if I were going home next week …. And it was wonderful.  I was ME again.  I was chipper, carefree.  I made jokes, I laughed and meant it.  I had a good time with the people here, because I didn’t feel trapped anymore.  I can go home. 

*Home*.  I can’t describe any more what this means to me.  I am not worried about things I will miss.  I am not thinking I might regret it.  Quite the contrary, I worry that I will regret it if I don’t go home.  Won’t I hate it if I spend my last few weeks here just waiting to leave?  Literally just surviving until I get to get the heck out of here. 

 

I want to go home.  But I need to look at this logically …. Which is really hard because obviously my own opinion is really biased.

 

I want to clarify something – I don’t regret coming to India (yet).  I got everything I hoped I would get out of coming here.  I was challenged; I got an outside point of view of life, etc etc.  This is why I feel so confident that I can go home and not regret it.  I DID India.  It’s done.  It feels like time to go home now, and move on with life.  I had this experience, it will affect me for life, it will make be a better person.  But it is also done.

Katie left, and I am here, left behind.

Katie had the same opinions of this place as I do.  She was chomping at the bit to go home.  She was sad to leave me here.  I am crushed to be left behind.

It was a good time with her here, as good as it can be at least.  I got really sick, but it was nice to have her here to take care of me.  I felt normal again.  Man that was nice.  I felt like Alison again.  It felt easy to smile, and comfortable just to be.  I didn't even notice how normal I felt until she left and I am alone and awful feeling again.  There is nothing here for me.  I've done the India thing, and it was everything I hoped and feared it would be.

I can't help but feel that there is nothing left for me here.  I don't have the money to travel anymore, I've done the shopping, bought the gifts, smelled the stench and gotten repeatedly sick from the food.  I have been molested and jostled. I have been begged from, and haggled both successfully and unsuccessfully with merchants.  I have been in the paper because of being white.  I have been exceedingly privileged and crippled by the same factor. I have been shocked again and again by the vast contrasts in this country.  I have bought a lot of presents.  I have gone through the motions of trying to be happy, surrendering to the misery, trying to be happy again, to just getting by. 

The only thing left for me to do is sit in the isolation that is this dorm and wait to go home.  Two more months.  Eight weeks.  Fifty-six days.  I've been counting down for three months now, two more to go.
I don't even think the Golden Triangle Tour  is worth waiting for at this point.

I miss home so much.  I miss a soft place to lay, I miss food I recognize, I miss friends I can rely on.  I miss my dog and cats.  I am missing Isabella's first months.  I miss being around sober people.  I miss that certain level of responsibility that home-life brings.  I miss adults.  I miss understanding simple things like how to return a book to the library.  I miss a kitchen.  I miss the freedom of home, I miss my car.  I miss weather that is any layer of comfortable.  I miss reliable electricity.  I miss hot water.  I miss Taco Bell.  I miss the security of being in the majority.  I miss not worrying about my breasts being touched in every crowded atmosphere.  I miss being able to go out without being gawked at, and photos snapped whether I like it or not.

There is so little for me here, and so much that I am missing at home. 

Tickets on Lufthansa are only $800.  Katie is on her way home now, on her way to all the things that I crave.  I wanted so very badly to go with her.

EDIT:
This entry was originally an e-mail to my parents that I thought was appropriate to post here as well.  My mom wrote back, she said she was sorry that I am sad and then told me all about her dating escapades for this week.  Priorities fail.  FML.

I am all set up to finally drop and rearrange some classes today.  I have looked so forward to dropping KuchiPudi because I hate that class so much.  Mostly because the teacher doesn't teach well, and my asthma works up to such great amounts that I can't stand it and I panic and there is no time to stop and breath.  On top of the rest, it looked like we were only going to learn steps rather than a routine.  What good to me is this class if all I have to bring home with me are some disjointed, funny-looking steps?  There was passionate burning hatred for that class. 

So today I am dropping off papers, getting all the right signatures, and dropping that plus one other class.  I was really excited.

Today our teacher says all the magic words.

She started talking, for the first time, about things like COSTUMES and ORCHESTRA and different ways she sees the performance happening.  WHATWHATWHAT.  This less than one month out from the SIP Culture night????  WHY OH WHY could you have not said this before?? What changed???  Why have you been holding back this glorious information?????


To top it all off, I am sick, and I can't go to class today away even if I weren't, because I have my appointment with my director to put in these papers.

FML.

It has become almost tradition to order pizza on biryani night here at Tagore.  Now, I am not against biryani all together, but I am not a fan of the stuff that is served here.  It is really hit or miss, and the hits are usually a little off-key anyway.

So, I stroll down to the mess hall and take a look at what is for dinner.  Damn.  Biryani tonight.  I take a bit to see how it is, but I know my time is limited.

See, the Main Gate on campus has this very new very retarded rule that doesn't let anyone in after 8:00.  Including delivery drivers.  Seeing how dinner is served at 7:00 here, this gives me a very small margin of error to get my order in on time.

I converse with my table-mates (Albin probably would want pizza but he is not here... no time to consult anyone else!) and quickly decide on a couple pizzas to order.  Off to my room and cell phone I go.

Once on the phone with Domino's (you know how you can hardly understand what delivery peopel say when they first pick up and rattle off some special?  Yeah, trying figuring that out in India...) I start to make my order.

( How many Domino's men does it take? )SUCCESS.

I have made my order by 7:21.  Domino's here has a 30 minute guarantee, which gives them a ten minute margin ... and this is India, so really, no help on earth* is available to make this order go through.  We must sit and pray.

*More on this later

8:30 rolls around ... crraaap ... maybe no news is good news?  I reeeeally don't want to call and talk to them again.... *PRAYS HARDER*

8:50 and people are coming to me asking about the pizza.  Sigh.  Can no longer put this off.  I call Dominos .... and it turns out I gave them the wrong DOUBLENINE number something-or-other.  They couldn't call me when they got here.  DAMNIT.  I want pizza.  I am so hungry.  Please to have yummy cheezies now.

But there is still hope!  What is that this hindi speaking man is saying?  The driver's number?  Sure I will take that.  Lets try this method.  So I cal lthe driver, and it is obvious he is on his motorcycle and talking on the phone ... this makes the communication issues a lot easier to deal with as you can see. 
Preeetty sure he said *something* about 5 minutes.  Okay cool, he must still be on campus then.  I head outside to sit and wait the arrival of carboveggiecheese bomb.

I get a call a few minutes later .... ... and the DAMN GUARDS at the DAMN FRONT GATE won't let him in.

"Give the guard fifty rupees and he will let you through!" I tell him.  It has worked before.  Bribery gets you everywhere in this country.  The driver doesn't seem to like this idea.  I ask to talk to the guard.  The guard won't take the phone.  I ask for the gaurd's number and HE WON"T GIVE IT.  WHAT THE HELL.  Eventually, through some act of God I must have conjured up, I get an extension that I can reach the guard on if I call from a land line in my house.

Deep breath.  This isn't going to be pretty.

( Is it something I said? )
Nothing left to do, I am at the end of my communication-rope.  I can no longer be civil enough to anyone to get anything done.  So I sit for a bit, maybe the driver will call back, maybe the guard will ... maybe I will hear *something*. 

Completely deflated and resigned to having no dinner, I head off to give people back their money.  On the way down the hall ... oh dear god, my prayers are answered ... MY PHONE RINGS.

Domino's driver: "Hello ma'am!  I am outside ma'am!  Tagore ma'am!"
ME:  OH PRAISE THE LORD HARE RAM HARE KIRSHNA KIRSHNA RAM!

I am not sure what I said, or if the driver decided to bribe the guard (when I asked, he said "'I'll see that"  ...), or what.  But the pizza finally got here.  And we ate it.  And it was beautiful.


Lets take a recap, shall we?
9double5 Misspoken phone number
3 Domino's men to place the order
2 Irritating Guards at the front gate
1 Threat to speak to supervisor, or possibly a bribe
And finally a pizza in my belly...

Now see what I meant when I said that no force on Earth could make this go right?  Pray hard people.  If nothing makes you believe in God, living in India will.  There is no other way this place has not completely collapsed in on itself but divine intervention.

Mmm... pizza.

I have had a hard time lately, no doubt about that.  These past two days have been pretty good though.  Yesterday Emily came down the hall yelling "ALISON GET YOUR SHOES ON!" -- she had called for a car, and had no idea where we were going, but it was somewhere away from Tagore and away from classes.  I approved of all of these things.  We ended up at this British style pub for happy hour -- Emily and Cecilia were persistant in trying to get free shots, but it didn't work.  Somehow, trying to get free alcohol from a Hindu is a fruitless task (they don't drink, and our server kept saying things like "Don't you think alcohol is bad for you?" and "Tequila is very dangerous you know.").  We went shoping after a few drinks, I bought some gorgeous shoes, and then ended up back at the same spot for Ladies Night.  A guy came to join us, and he was on the safer side of the Creepy Indian Man line, so we spent the evening with him.  A few hours in, an amazing huge chocolate birthday cake appeard with Happy Birthday Cecilia written on it.  We hadn't told him it was Cecilia's birthday, but we HAD told our server earlier in the evening as an attempt to get free drinks.  This AlmostNotCreepy guy was well connected.  The cake was amazingly delicious.

Today I got the good news that I might be able to re-arrange my schedule to get rid of two classes I simply loath, and that is a weight off.  Now, understand, there is no drop/withdraw option in India.  It just isn't done.  However, earlier this week I met with my director to talk to her about quitting the program early, and all the sudden lots of options appeared.  Suddenly I can change my schedule, there might be a homestay available, among a small plethora of other things.  The cat is out of the bag to several people in the house that I have been seriously considering leaving early, and the reactions are mixed.  Very few agree with me, one has said that I can't leave because then SHE will be the saddest one in the dorm (haha, very flattering), but mostly people are saddened by the thought and don't want me to go.  They don't understand why I would want to leave, and I think that is a good sign for them.  I found myself putting up with well-meaning attempts at comforting, and friendly inquiries as to why I was sad and reasons I should be happy.  It was nice, but I didn't like that I had to defend my point of view to them.  The misery I have been experiencing is not something that I want to defend, it is something I want to overcome.  So I haven't talked about it much when I can help it, that process seems to have backward productivity.

Anyway, back to my good mood.  One of my very good friends here, Jen, made an offhand comment about Top 20 Best Things About India list.  I think that this could be nothing but beneficial, and there are so many things here to love.  So I am going to put down as many as come to mind here, so that I have it in writing.

( Best Things About India )

I need a homebase. Those of you who know me well, know how important this is.

I have to spend time at home. It is a basic need right up there with sleeping for me. It can be denied longer than the rest, but to remain healthy, I need to recharge at home. The sensation of it is very interesting. I will get tired, from stress, from doing too much, from all the things that are keeping me from home to begin with. I will think I need to just sleep for a while. But once I get home ... all is calm, and lovely. I don't really need to sleep. I just need to sit and be a little still at home for a while. It is literally as if a charger cord has been plugged into my body and is fixing all the wrong, reorganizing my mind, and healing minor stress wounds.

I don't have the right kind of home here.

I have tried to create it. Everyone who comes into our room comments on how nest-y or lived-in it is. I bought a pretty rug, a comfortable mattress, pillows to line my bed, a small blanket from home. Getting internet in the room really helped, it feels like a connection to the world. There are days when I don't move from this spot on my bed at all, trying desperately to recharge. To get that "home" feeling I need so badly.

It just isn't here, though. I don't know what to do. I think this is also a reason I am always tired here. I don't have a place to plug into and feel better. Sleep alone isn't enough. I have never had this problem before, because I have always had a space I could go to. Something in me for so long thinks that I am tired because India is hard, and it is. Because I am traveling too much, and I am. But this goes beyond that. I can't leave my room, because it is the closest thing I have to a homespace here. I go to the common room to read, and find that I am suddenly about to burst into tears for absolutely no reason, and get up irritably to leave back to my room, where I can fall apart in slightly more privacy.

I keep meaning to make entries about all the cool things I have been doing on my travels, but I can just barely find the energy to post the pictures and a couple videos before I retreat into myself. I am missing classes. I am dreading weekend travel. I am missing Katie and home more than ever. My anxiety level has risen in the past two days to an almost unmanageable level. I don't know what to do. So I just sleep. And hope it will get better ... but so far it all just stays the same.

The Chief Minister of Andrha Pradesh disappeared yesterday morning. This is like the governor of my state. It is a huge deal. His helicopter was leaving Hyderabad (the city I live in) and couldn't be found. We are told to sit tight on campus, because there will likely be riots, etc. There are several very strong opposing political parties here, and the end of the Ganesha Festival has people a little more excited than usual. Campus is very safe though, and my dorm is even safer (with guards 24/7, and keycards, and security cameras, it seems excessive at times).

It was released this morning that they found the helicopter, surrounded by 5 dead bodies. It is being said that the CM is dead. Take a look at Andhra Pradesh on a map ( http://www.solarpaces.org/_Libary/india_map.jpg ) -- that is a huge chunk of this country that just lost its local governmental leader.

There will be grieiving and closeing of most things in the city to grieve. There will be the regular riff-raff that show up whenever there is trouble anywhere to cause chaos. My yoga teacher rushed home after class to avoid the streets which she said would be getting bad soon. We are still advised to stay on campus.

It is a sad, and difficult political time on this side of the world today.

Street snacks on Saturday consisted of coconut water, soft sweet coconut (omg so good), and corn from a street vendor :)

My first time in an auto! It was mostly uneventful, and surprisingly comfortable. Right after this video these two guys on a motorbike rode up beside us and asked where we were from. We thought it was odd,but told them we were from the US just as they slipped backwards into traffic. They reappeared again, yelled "We're from BOSTON!!" and rode off. Small world.

I have taken several videos since coming to India. Most of them in the first week when EVERYTHING is new. Now that I have internet access in my room, it is possible to upload them! Horray!

I will be sporadically catching up on video posts, and will probably eventually post a video of me practicing Hindi XD.

For now, this is my favorite. We are walking up the stairs of the Charminar, a very popular site in Hyderabad. The view is incredible, and I think it gives a good insight into India.

Contact
with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is. While you are
still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to
prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of
secondary infections, some very simple steps – not fully highlighted in
most official communications - can be practiced (instead of focusing on
how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).
2. "Hands-off-the-face" approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part
of face (unless you want to eat, bathe or slap).

So some girls here get love poems from guys they either voluntarily gave their phone number to, or guys who steal their numbers through various means.

One such poem follows:

"A smile costs less than electricity
But gives more light!
So always keep smiling.
prove that u are best TUBE LIGHT"

...How does one respond to this?


Seriously ... tube light?