Ups & Downs.

This past week has been quite a rollercoaster of happiness and frustration. It started off on a high with my fantastic trip to Bangalore. My friend Rushi lives there and had graciously invited me down to visit. I definitely made the right move taking him up on his offer, and did it at the right time. I was hitting a sort of slump here at work and was getting a little bored with the Urulikanchan social scene. Things were no longer new and I was spending all of my days in my dingy office writing my report. So the four days I spent eating out, watching bad 80’s movies, surfing the web on high speed internet, and sightseeing with my personal tour guide in his air conditioned car were just what the doctor ordered!! Soon after arriving at Rushi’s fancy apartment (where I had my own room and bathroom complete with hot water and a SHOWER) I came to find out that Rushi and I have the same priorities in a vacation, and really in life: food. I hadn’t been there an hour and Rushi had already called two restaurants to make reservations. One wasn’t open when we could go and the other was booked, so he made a reservation for dinner three days away. I knew I came to the right place. We then went out to lunch. We arrived a half an hour before the restaurant opened, so we went grocery shopping in the mean time….ahh, eating out and grocery shopping, two of my favorite things.

In addition to eating we also saw some awesome palaces and a temple or two. I did some shopping and a tiny bit of work. All and all I really liked Bangalore. Im sure it had a lot to do with my accommodations and Rushi’s hospitality, but also since it is a city of about 7million people, me walking down the street is not front page news. Although I obviously couldn’t blend completely, I didn’t feel like the main attraction. Bangalore also has some really nice parks and it seems a little more structured and organized than Pune. There is actually a law requiring motorbike drivers to wear helmets! Of course passengers aren’t required to do so and a lot of people don’t use the strap of the helmet, but baby steps I guess. One of my favorite and least favorite parts about my trip was a ‘secret road’ we took to get to Mysore. Rushi said he had found this four lane highway that was just built that no one knew about yet, so it was very empty. And he was right. The very few people know about it is b/c they haven’t built any exit or entrance ramps to it yet. In order to get on the highway we had to turn off the city street and drive through a dirt field for about half a kilometer going over hills with the other cars coming from all sides of the field. Then you go around a huge dirt pile and a four land highway appears! On the other end it stops as abruptly as it starts, so I can imagine it would cause trouble if you don’t know that it ends and you are cruising along at 60mph. My least favorite part of this road was the oncoming traffic. On the way to Mysore all of a sudden we were in the passing lane and there were huge trucks coming at us on our side of the highway! We swerved out of the way and it turned out they had diverted the traffic to fix the road. But of course there were no signs, cones, or warnings. On the way home, at night, the same thing happened. Only it was clearly just one truck that had gotten on the wrong side of the road not knowing it was a divided. Maybe he thought it was a two lane highway b/c he almost hit us too. I took a little comfort in thinking this stuff happens all the time and im sure people know how to handle it, but the next morning in the paper it said that a family of 14 was killed by a bus going the wrong way on a divided highway (a different highway, but still scary). I think highway driving is one thing I will not get used to. It is a regular occurrence that trucks, buses and cars drive on the wrong side of the road going 50mph…and it’s just scary.

Returning from my mini vacation I was feeling good. I only had 1.5 weeks left of work and only one week until my two friends arrive. I was looking forward to having the house to myself (my frenchies are on vacation and only one returns next week)and plowing through the work that I have left to do. Upon arriving at home my dreams of quiet, alone time were dashed. While away my organization took it upon themselves to enter my house, pack up all of my things and throw them in my former roommates bed. They decided to move all of my stuff so two college girls could move into my room for the week! Errr….my good mood quickly vanished. I felt a little violated having all of my things moved around while I was away. On top of that I had two new roommates that I have to make small talk with. And unfortunately my house is no longer a safe haven from the staring. They quite regularly sit and watch me eat, follow me outside to watch me on the phone, and are constantly asking curious questions about what im doing and why. They are very nice, but it’s just a little tiring.

My frustration was elevated yesterday morning when my boss sprung a surprise day of interviews on me. I have written 3/4ths of my report and he arranged for me to make three more interviews in remote villages. His intensions were good. He wanted to expose me to a more diverse array of farmers, but the timing and lack of warning made me a slightly grouchy. But my mood was brought full circle by the time the day was over. The two villages we went to were the furthest from my town and most remote. One of the villages took about 2hrs to get to and was very different from the other’s I had seen. We drove over a small mountain range to get there so the landscape was even different. And the women I interviewed were so enthusiastic about the program and their new vermicomposting system our organization had facilitated that I couldn’t keep my grouchy face on for long. We even stopped at a quail farm (of all things) in one of the villages. The farmer had received a low interest loan from my organization to buy quails from Japan. For the past two years he has successfully sold the eggs and meat to people in his village. Pretty unusual, but they seem to be successful. By the end of the day I felt really lucky to be able to see the things I did. It would be pretty hard to see and experience these things on a just vacation to India. Unless you have a purpose to visit these villages they wouldn’t make any site seeing itineraries. I think I smiled the whole way home—partly from the awesome scenery and partly in anticipation of my quail egg omelet Im going to make for Sunday dinner!