Welcome to India: a country in which being line leader was never a childhood accomplishment

You can climb the blue ladder to the top of this.
It's slightly terrifying, but I highly recommend it.

Today was the first day I woke up in Trichy, India. After two days of flights, it was about time. I broke my own rule and became essentially comatose at 7:30 last night. I am either geriatric or jet lagged, either way I woke up at 5:30 this morning regretting the decision. That was until I realized that I could go up to the roof and check it out. I took my journal and sat out on the roof enjoying the coolness of the morning and listening to the Muslim call to prayer. After two years of studying the Arab language, the call to prayer was actually a comforting sound that made me feel a little less strange in a new place. 

Upon my first asking Soloman, who is essentially our residential director/actual BHC professor/receiver of my million questions, about whether the singing was the call to prayer or not he eventually just said it's the Muslims. He then laid out the Indian religious hierarchy: Hindus then Muslims then Christians. I just smiled and told him I was Jewish and everyone should do what they liked. It didn't occur to me until later that only another Jew would appreciate that answer. My (unasked) question of most concern for Soloman however is his age. He somehow has a Masters and 6 years of teaching under his belt but doesn't look a day over 22. Magic, friends, magic. 

This is Soloman, and a lesson to never take silly pictures with Indians, because it
 will become their Facebook profile picture and it will have 153 likes. 

It is my recommendation for future travelers to India to travel by boat, I think the kids these days are calling this a cruise. You will have to leave a week early to get here and sadly there is nothing to do during the days of sailing except to lay by the pool and drink, per my suggestion, the summer appropriate Moscow Mule. I find that two days of air travel is bad on the back and makes you dehydrated and therefore puffy upon arrival. That being said, the airport, any airport, is one of my favorite places in the whole world. The people, the excitement, the matched luggage all combine to make a perfect environment for me. The people I met traveling to Trichy were interesting and impactful in their own way.

Never was the praise hands emoji more appropriate.

In Newark I witnessed how harsh we are to foreigners, or even people who appear to be foreign. I'm not sure why TSA thinks yelling at an old man about the change he needs to take out of his pockets will magically help him to learn English and therefore understand, but I saw plenty examples of the method. It should be noted that neither the Belgians nor the Indians yelled at me when I didn't understand, in fact the whole foreign and confused look prompted more than one Indian airport employee to help us even if we didn't really need help. In Newark, I also somehow became the keeper of the elderly women of Romania. The language barrier was very real for them and we were all Group 4, with a few words and plenty of hand gestures I assured them all we were now a team and would get there together. So armed with my passport and gang of Romanian senior citizens I boarded the plane to Brussels. In Brussels, I learned that they have a grade A attractive group of TSA workers and that brushing your teeth and cleaning up in the bathroom is a universal activity so no need to feel like the silly American. The flight to Mumbai brought sleep and Indian airplane food, which I was impressed by but  learned from the elderly lady sitting beside me on the flight to Chennai, was not any good, as she was assured her son that she would not eat it. Arriving in Mumbai and the actual country we wanted to be in was sublime. 

The sheer chaos of the Mumbai airport was an adventure in itself and a wonderful introduction to Indian crowd behavior. First and foremost, there is very little acknowledgement of the rules of lines in India. Why stand one behind the other when you can just walk into a part of the line and merge later? It's a free for all essentially and we learned quickly to just get into the line or we'd be stuck there forever. After making it through immigration and customs and over to the domestic terminal we felt like we could do anything, even listen to the same smooth jazz CD being pumped out of the speakers on repeat for six hours. 

When we reached Mumbai we also reached the start of the intense staring. I read in a blog somewhere that staring is a national sport in India so that's comforting. Especially because that means I can stare too. I'm not too worried about feeling awkward though because I am, by nature, awkward. So really it's just another day in the life of Emily. Packing for this trip was a surprisingly reflective activity. 

I am both the slowest and most disorganized packer that has ever graced this beautiful earth and with the added stress of being modest it took ages. You don't quite realize how immodest you are until you're going to a country where the majority of your body has to be covered. I am, in general, always in something on the verge of being too short or one button too unbuttoned so it was nerve-wracking to have to think so hard about what I was packing. In biological psychology this past semester we learned about pan cultural facial expressions, which you guessed it are expressions all people share and let me tell you, the-what-the-hell-are you-wearing expression is one of them. I would not like to be the instigator of that expression. So loose pants and high necked shirts it is.

Upon arriving in Trichy on a plane with propellers, the excitement was unreal. As I stepped off the plane the pilot commented that I was in India in the heat! Well yes.... I however just smiled and gleefully told him that I would survive. As it would turn out, as Dr. Relton,our host explained, the Indians are more amazed that we are in India in the summer more so than that we are American. The temperature here is obviously very hot, that is not to be debated, but the kind of heat is different. It's very heavy and sits on you like a blanket, it's a sort of a mix between dry and wet. I don't find it unbearable and in the morning before it's too hot, I enjoy it. 

If there's anything I learned from my casual browsing of Indian travel blogs, it's that under no circumstances do you want to ride in the front of any vehicle. Indian roads are a mad house and the things seen cannot be unseen. So of course when we load our baggage into the car and Dr. Relton says there's room for two in the back and one in the front, it is I that climb into shotgun. Super. As the car begins to move I brace myself for my certain panic attack. With a control problem and genuine belief that all other drivers cannot be trusted, I am the world's worst passenger. However, as we turn out onto the street I decide that my first impression to the very kind Dr. Relton should probably not be terrified, neurotic American, so I take a deep breath and pretend that this is fun. Dr. Relton is to be commended for his driving because the fact that we did not hit another car or one of the seemingly endless motorcyclists is a miracle that only a small mustached man in a car with a bible verse on it could muster. Driving through Trichy was very interesting. The city itself is busy and vibrant but seeing some of the structures that people live in is very eye opening. It is hard to imagine in many cases that whole families can not only fit but thrive in such an environment. 

When we reached Bishop Heber College I was awestruck. It is so incredibly beautiful. The grounds are full of trees and flowers and lawn ornaments. The buildings are a mix of new and old that still somehow all come together to make a lovely campus. The people who work here are so kind and are happy to help us or answer simple questions about flowers or food. All in all I couldn't imagine a better place to spend a month. Soloman was telling us at dinner about the things the college would like to adopt from America like a laundry service and part time employment for students. It seems like they as a whole have a grand vision for the college and pride themselves on being modern. I have no doubt they will achieve this but I hope they don't inherit the harshness of American higher education. There's something to be said for simply being in a beautiful place and learning because learning is what you enjoy doing. 

Tomorrow is my first day as a bird researcher and I am so excited. I have no clue what I'll be doing but I conveniently have a shirt with birds on it so I figure that's a pretty good start. Given India's value of nature I am very interested in observing and working with the biologists here. As you can see it's been a long few days but ones that were full of adventure.