Not that I’m counting.
It’s been a long week. I’m getting more comfortable with moving around, but I’m still very, very homesick and somewhat prone to burst into tears. Yesterday I had my first moments totally alone in India, and it’s honestly a little bit terrifying, and I even speak the language! It’s really uncomfortable for me not to know where anything is. Street maps don’t ever have enough detail, and it wouldn’t matter anyway because the streets aren’t really labeled. Every time I’ve been taken to school or to home the car or rickshaw has gotten lost (this includes my host family) so I honestly have no idea how to get from one place to another.
The food continues to be amazing, although my mouth burns at every meal. My family makes sure I am fed, which is good, and all my meals are fresh vegetables and beans and paneer. I’m eating very well, and interestingly enough, my daily stomach cramps that I have in the US have disappeared. My host family has servants who come and cook and clean, and it’s uncomfortable for me, but I’m starting to get used to it. I did some laundry today in a bucket and hung it in my room to dry, as I can’t send my undergarments to the dhobi (washerman) to be washed. Thankfully my house has a shower-sort-of-thing (it’s a showerhead attached to a hose, so if you hold it up it’s like a shower, but there’s no bracket to put it in). Many, if not most, of the houses the other students are in have only bucket baths–you fill the bucket, and then pour water on yourself to soap up and rinse off.
It’s still startling to see the poverty and the stench. There are a lot of stray dogs here, enough that the label “stray” seems somewhat inappropriate since it seems rare for people to have them as pets at all, so what could they have strayed from? Today we saw one dog lying in a gutter that was full of opaque, scummy gray water, with little bits of trash floating by. And the pigs! They snuffle through everything, the trash, the water, the market. Yesterday I saw a herd of goats walking down the street, followed by a rather intoxicated-looking man riding a goat, followed by an army of very angry cars blaring their horns at the goats. I couldn’t stop laughing, but I seemed to be the only one who thought it was funny.
Today we watched a Hindi film. It was classic Bollywood: a woman can magically change forms from a snake to a woman, and there is a magician, who steals the soul of the snake’s husband and puts it in a little boy, and then there are a few song and dance numbers about love, and then there’s a wedding, followed by a gang of men with swords, a fistfight, another love song/dance scene, a dramatic ending with the magician dying, and they all lived happily ever after. I probably understood about 25% of the words, which is maybe good, maybe not. Either way I’m not beating myself up over it.
But still, homesick. I’d forgotten how homesick I got when I went to Italy. And that was mitigated by staying with other Americans. This time I am not living near anyone else from the school (not that I could find their house even if I was), but at least we all have mobile phones so if I get really lonely I can call someone and meet them. This weekend we’re meeting to go to the old city (Jaipur has an “old city” and a newer part) to go to the markets. Sunday some friends and I will probably tour some forts or palaces or somesuch. I just don’t want to be home alone all day with nothing to do. Eek. My host family is nice, but they all seem pretty independent. They tell me it’s rare that they even eat meals together, let alone have the same schedule. So there’s not much company there, and I only brought two books with me, which at the rate I’m going will be done very quickly.
So, in short: I’m lonely, homesick, and wondering if this really was a good idea after all. Meh.
