So, while we were waiting to be picked up, we decided to go to this cute little café two buildings down. There were two boys at the house, Syilus and Robin. They followed us and sat outside. It was so cute. The last time my grandfather was in India, the café had Wi-Fi. This time it did not. Ellie, Melanie, and I each ordered a chocolate shot there. I thought it was going to be, like, a mini cup of coffee that was actually mostly chocolate flavored or something, you know? But, no, it was actually a plastic shot glass full of chocolate mousse and chocolate crumbs. It was quite scrumptious. The café itself looked quite like a café in America, I'd say. A couple of couches, tables, a counter, even a flat screen TV on the wall playing Bollywood music videos. It was really nice.
Sarah's brother, Wete, picked us up from the café, and we took our first rickshaw to Sarah and Wete's school/church. My first impression of the rickshaw and India's traffic in general was, "This does not feel safe." Rickshaws are kind of like a glorified Indian golf cart. And they're street legal. Google it. Really, anything flies on the streets of India to be honest. Anyway, there are tons of rickshaws in India. I'd say there's a pretty even amount of cars, motorcycles, and rickshaws.
If there are physical, white, painted lanes on the street, they are not at all respected in India. All the vehicles squeeze in as tight as possible-including little streets and alleyways, which was quite annoying if you were a pedestrian-coming literally within inches of each other at any and all times. And they go fast in India. There is no speed limit. There are barely any traffic lights. Like, we might have seen twenty in the almost two weeks we were there, and actually stopped at half of them. There are speed bumps in places. And they speed right over them. They don't even slow down. That was usually painful...A whole ton of trust was required in India. You had to trust your driver not to get into an accident, to get you to the right place. We didn't speak the language. That was a huge problem.
The driving is insane, but it completely worked. It doesn't make any sense at all-a lot of things in India didn't make any sense at all, actually-but, it totally worked. I actually came to love the India traffic. I was still a little worried when we'd come inches from running into another car, but I think that's normal. The weather was absolutely perfect on the first day, but it seemed to get hotter and hotter every day, and the rickshaws were nice and breezy. The one thing I didn't like about the India traffic was the horns. There was literally always someone honking. The backs of a bunch of trucks actually said "horn please". I mean, I can see how the horn could be useful, but after a point it's just like come on. Especially when someone honks at you because you're walking in their way, you lock eyes with them, you're clearly unable to move or go any faster, or perhaps you're obviously working on it, and they just stare you down, their hand just laying on the horn. That was frustrating.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
My Trip to India Part 2
So, today is not tomorrow...Sorry about that, in case you were waiting anxiously for more about my trip.
Before I tell you more about my trip, though, I'd like to inform you that I was published in J14 Magazine! Ellie and I found my magazine in JFK airport which was so cool. Made me quite happy.
Alsoly, my book In the Heart of an Unsocial Butterfly, is now available on Kindle.
Anyway, I left off at the hotel. It wasn't really a hotel, per say. Really, it was someone's house. People rented the top floor and the owners shared their actual house with us. Ellie, Melanie, and I got this adorable room with three beds, a bathroom, and three futons...I think that's what they're called anyway. I fell asleep sometime around five in the afternoon and was awake on and off until around 7:30, just a minute or two before my grandma came to wake us up because the people of the house had made us tea.
We sleepily stumbled to my grandparents' room down the hall and sat at their little coffee table and had some really yummy tea. The food in India is quite delicious. The people of the house also brought us a bucket of hot water. For bathing.
I used my grandparent's bathroom the first morning. Thankfully the bathrooms at the place we were staying actually had toilets. We had to fill up a bucket it and dump the water in the toilet to flush it, but it could have been worse.
The bathrooms in India are called washrooms. I'm not sure if you know this, but in India there's not a whole lot of toilet paper. We'd brought our own. The bathrooms have drains in the floor, to clean (at least what I did) you have a bucket of steaming hot water, a smaller bucket with a handle kind of in the fashion of a mug, and you have two faucets on the wall. You fill the small bucket with part hot water and part colder water and that is how you rinse yourself. You just rinse and the water just goes all over the bathroom floor and eventually it goes down the drain.
The people of the house gave us a choice of hard boiled eggs or omelets. I chose hard boiled and my family ate while I was getting ready so I was also brought toast. I had time to eat about half of it before Sarah showed.
And I'll stop myself now. Tell you more soon.
Before I tell you more about my trip, though, I'd like to inform you that I was published in J14 Magazine! Ellie and I found my magazine in JFK airport which was so cool. Made me quite happy.
Alsoly, my book In the Heart of an Unsocial Butterfly, is now available on Kindle.
Anyway, I left off at the hotel. It wasn't really a hotel, per say. Really, it was someone's house. People rented the top floor and the owners shared their actual house with us. Ellie, Melanie, and I got this adorable room with three beds, a bathroom, and three futons...I think that's what they're called anyway. I fell asleep sometime around five in the afternoon and was awake on and off until around 7:30, just a minute or two before my grandma came to wake us up because the people of the house had made us tea.
We sleepily stumbled to my grandparents' room down the hall and sat at their little coffee table and had some really yummy tea. The food in India is quite delicious. The people of the house also brought us a bucket of hot water. For bathing.
I used my grandparent's bathroom the first morning. Thankfully the bathrooms at the place we were staying actually had toilets. We had to fill up a bucket it and dump the water in the toilet to flush it, but it could have been worse.
The bathrooms in India are called washrooms. I'm not sure if you know this, but in India there's not a whole lot of toilet paper. We'd brought our own. The bathrooms have drains in the floor, to clean (at least what I did) you have a bucket of steaming hot water, a smaller bucket with a handle kind of in the fashion of a mug, and you have two faucets on the wall. You fill the small bucket with part hot water and part colder water and that is how you rinse yourself. You just rinse and the water just goes all over the bathroom floor and eventually it goes down the drain.
The people of the house gave us a choice of hard boiled eggs or omelets. I chose hard boiled and my family ate while I was getting ready so I was also brought toast. I had time to eat about half of it before Sarah showed.
And I'll stop myself now. Tell you more soon.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Part 1 of My Trip to India
Hallo!
It's been forever again. This time I have a really good excuse. I just got back from India on...Thursday. The days have been so confusing, and they have been flying. And I'm here to tell you about them.
So, on the 31st, I packed into a car with my grandparents, Youtuber Ellie St. Claire, and a family friend named Melanie and headed to New York. We spent the night in a hotel in Queens, where I probably got about five hours of sleep, and the next day headed off to the airport. It was my first time on a plane and I was a bit nervous for the take off, but once we were in the air I was like, "Is that it?" I got maybe five minutes of sleep on my 13 hour flight and was quite restless. I did get to watch This Is Us, the One Direction movie, though, and I got my grandma to watch it so that was great.
After the 13 hour flight, we landed in Dubai, then got on a shuttle, then another two hour flight to New Delhi. I got about 20 minutes of sleep on that flight. It was somewhere around three or four in the afternoon when we got there I think. Our amazing friend Sarah picked us up from the airport and on the way to the place we were staying, I came across my first Indian beggar. It scared the dickens out of me. A woman holding her baby came up to the car and was tapping on the window and it just freaked me out. I was running on basically no sleep, and I was so far away from home, missing my family already. I had a little panicky moment when we got back to the hotel. We stayed there for the night, sleeping on and off until around 7:30 in the morning. And I think I'll tell you more tomorrow. Stay tuned. ;) If you like, there's a neat little button in the top right corner of my blog where you can put in your email address and be notified when I post a blog entry. It's up to you. Byyyeeee!
It's been forever again. This time I have a really good excuse. I just got back from India on...Thursday. The days have been so confusing, and they have been flying. And I'm here to tell you about them.
So, on the 31st, I packed into a car with my grandparents, Youtuber Ellie St. Claire, and a family friend named Melanie and headed to New York. We spent the night in a hotel in Queens, where I probably got about five hours of sleep, and the next day headed off to the airport. It was my first time on a plane and I was a bit nervous for the take off, but once we were in the air I was like, "Is that it?" I got maybe five minutes of sleep on my 13 hour flight and was quite restless. I did get to watch This Is Us, the One Direction movie, though, and I got my grandma to watch it so that was great.
After the 13 hour flight, we landed in Dubai, then got on a shuttle, then another two hour flight to New Delhi. I got about 20 minutes of sleep on that flight. It was somewhere around three or four in the afternoon when we got there I think. Our amazing friend Sarah picked us up from the airport and on the way to the place we were staying, I came across my first Indian beggar. It scared the dickens out of me. A woman holding her baby came up to the car and was tapping on the window and it just freaked me out. I was running on basically no sleep, and I was so far away from home, missing my family already. I had a little panicky moment when we got back to the hotel. We stayed there for the night, sleeping on and off until around 7:30 in the morning. And I think I'll tell you more tomorrow. Stay tuned. ;) If you like, there's a neat little button in the top right corner of my blog where you can put in your email address and be notified when I post a blog entry. It's up to you. Byyyeeee!
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