Week One (written by Shalini)

Day 1: The Plane Ride

14 hours from Newark is a very long flight. It first struck us that we were going to India when we saw the number of Indians that were about to board the massive plane. Boarding the plane was not an easy ordeal. To the exasperation of the American flight attendants, Indians are not easy people to board on planes. They don't quite listen to the order of boarding, and they all crowd around the gate. In many ways, this would be our first introduction to much of how Indian society works: people everywhere without any sort of order.

The flight consisted of movies and sleep and wasn't terribly exciting, but our muscles definitely needed a stretch by the end of it.

We arrive in Delhi around 9. I go through immigration in a breeze. This is because, as I have learned to adjust to, everyone in this country thinks that I am 100% Indian, and thus I should speak Hindi and know the culture. Cait, on the other hand (my friend from Harvard with whom I am traveling), nearly causes accidents as we walk down the street and drivers peek their heads out of the windows of their cars. After some prodding, they let her through immigration.

Then there was the baggage claim. Cait, who was one of the last to arrive at the gate in Newark, was lucky enough to have her bags come out really early. After about 40 minutes of worrying, mine finally arrived on the belt--the second last piece of luggage removed from the aircraft.

We past through customs without a problem, and then exited to a ramp where a man holding an "Asha" sign greeted us. We hopped into an air conditioned Tata van and were on our way home.

The house is really close to the airport- maybe 15 minutes. It's a flat in an area called Vasant Kunj. Cait and I are sharing a room with two twin beds, but tons of room for both of us. Nandini, another to-be junior at Harvard has already been at the house for a week or two, so she explained the ropes of the house to us. The house has 3 bedrooms and can host a max of 6 people. There's AC, the cold water in the showers is actually hotter than the hot water, the kitchen's small and hot, and there's a tv and wifi.

After that, we were both exhausted and went to sleep. Cait passed out. I didn't sleep a wink all night. Oy jet lag!

Day 2: Getting Adjusted

We woke up, or in my case, we got out of bed, and then got ready. Nandini showed us around the area where we are living, and took us to an ATM, internet cafe (the internet in our house wasn't working for a few days), and then to a grocery story. The grocery store is in a big mall that has no stores and only vacant lots, save a KFC, a Subway, and this grocery store. The selection here was terrible and the prices are outrageous. I couldn't even find spices to make Indian food!

After that, we went home, and Cait and I passed out for a couple of hours. When we awoke, Nandini took us to get some clothes to wear during the week to the slums. We took an auto, which was an awesome experience, to a mall that's a 5 minute drive from our house. This mall is ridiculous. It is apparently the most expensive mall in India, featuring a Louis Vuitton, Versace, etc. We tried to find the cheapest Salwar Kameez possible and then headed home.

Delhi is certainly not the center of India's beauty, however. The city is incredibly dusty and hot and not very attractive. We look forward to seeing much of the rest of India in our travels, because we know they beauty this country has to offer.

At home, Cait and I made some pasta for dinner. We were still getting used to the gas stove, so to say the least, this pasta was kind of terrible. Also, there's no strainer in the house, so our Ragu sauce was super watery. But don't worry, our eating experiences look up from here.

Night time. Cait falls asleep quickly. I count sheep until around 6 am.

Day 3: Maya Puri

Cait wakes up at 6 am because that's when the sun comes out. I wake at 7:30. We begin our first day at Asha.

The office is great, the organization does so much and it was very exciting to begin to see how we would spend the next 8 weeks.

We met Mr. Martin, the husband of the founder of Asha, Dr. Martin. These two are amazing people. He set up phones for Cait and I, and bought us some pizza for lunch.

Cait and I will spend the summer in the Maya Puri slum, teaching english to children, watching clinical work, and helping slum students who, for the first time in history, are able to apply to Delhi Universities. Hopefully we will get to shadow a doctor too. This organization does so many incredible things. Their most recent undertaking involves the Minister of Finance. He created a special loan agreement for Asha slum dwellers, trusting Asha to ensure that the microfinance loan will be paid back. Amazing!

We then ventured into Maya Puri. This slum is about a 20 minute drive from our house and has over 10 000 residents. The building is a government facility, given to Asha to provide services. It's basically a concrete structure with 6 rooms, and some fans. We do, however, have a classroom, with a lot of Hindi books, and a white board. There's a window in the classroom which leads out to a dusty, dirty area where the children can play. The smell of the slum is indescribable.

According to Wikipedia Maya Puri used to be a major hub of small scale industries, but following recent government sanctions, most of the heavy metal industries moved out. The place is now a combination of metal factories, service stations, and the slum houses built amongst them. When you drive through Maya Puri all you see is mud, metal, and people scrapping metal to sell. Even the 4 year old naked kids are working with hammers and magnets to find nails in the sea of mud that is Maya Puri. I can't say I was surprised about the condition of Maya Puri, I knew I would be working in a slum. I can say I was confused about where the actual slum was for the first couple of days. Every morning we are dropped off at the Asha Center/Clinic and work from there. It wasn't until my third day in MP that I got to see where and how the people actually lived.

We were told that the day would be spent meeting people and getting to know the center. I guess no one told them that. We arrived to an incredibly warm welcome of Mala's (necklaces made of orange flowers given to guests to welcome them) and '"namaste's" from the staff and to a classroom of 15 boys waiting to be taught English.

That's right, the staff all looked at us and asked, in broken english, what our curriculum for the day was. We looked at each other and decided to just see how much the kids knew.

The ages of the kids ranged from 5 to 15, which is a HUGE gap in english speaking ability, even in America. Furthermore, Cait and I know NO Hindi. These next weeks were going to be really difficult for us.

I found myself drawing extensively to teach words. And doing hand diagrams and motions with my body. The kids love it and replicate me. And I think they're actually learning something.

The girls come in the afternoon, so we would meet them the next day. Hopefully by then, we would be a little more prepared for this undertaking.

Thresi is the name of our team leader and she is the boss lady of the MP Asha Center. Under her is Reshmi and Anita, neither of whom speak english, but are full of smiles and strange tasting coffee for us, and Anoop (the theres-something-off-about-him-that-I-can't-quite-put-my-finger-on computer teacher of the center).

After this, we returned to the office, ate the pizza, went to Fabindia to buy some more salwar kameeze, and returned home, completely exhausted and totally sweaty and filthy.

Day 4: The Prince of Persia

Today, we taught class and met the kids. The girls are awesome, though they know far far less english than the boys. However, they are also really keen on trying to please us. There's this one little girl named Shalu, who, as my name sake, is adorable. She is also the brightest in the class. She listens to everything so attentively and tries things out. It's so cute to hear them speak in their little accents and then to laugh at each other.

By the end of the day we were exhausted. I still hadn't really slept at all, but we didn't want to take naps. So we showered extensively and then went back to the big mall to see a movie. The mall is actually kind of a reprieve.

Obviously, the contrast between the mall and the slums is powerful. India is a country of two complete opposites. We are so lucky to have the opportunity to actually see both sides.

This said, Indian movies cost virtually nothing and the air conditioning and big seats were so nice! We ate dinner at an Indian food restaurant (our first authentic meal of the visit) and then went to see... The Prince of Persia. It's not so much that we had our hearts set on seeing a Disney movie, it's more that most movies don't actually come out in India until a few weeks after the US. So there wasn't much of a selection.

The movie was reaching a climax, Jake Gyllenhaal had us on the edge of our seats... and all of the sudden... the lights came on and it was intermission. For a movie. At a crucial time in the plot. 15 minutes later, when Cait and I had almost forgotten what point we were at in the movie, it resumed. What a strange and cool experience.

That night, I got the most sleep yet.

Day 5: Monotony

Today we started realizing that, although teaching was amazing, it was not really what we came to India to do. We will have to talk to the NGO about doing something in addition to speaking english. The classes are great and the children are delightful, but doing the same thing every day, when we know that there's so much more for us to learn from the organization, leads to a sort of monotony that we can feel already. This is one of the inherent problems with NGOs: they always have trouble placing their volunteers.

The people at Asha are great though and we're beginning to get to know them better. When we got back to the office from Mayapuri after work, we had a chat with Arwen, who has worked at the Asha office for about 2 months now. She's Canadian and spent the last 5 years doing journalism and NGO work in Western Africa. She also told us that she had some friends from Scotland visiting this weekend and that they were all going to Agra to see the Taj Mahal on Sunday, and invited us to share a car with her. (In case anyone is confused, as I was at first, this did not mean that Arwen was going to brave Delhi's terrifying traffic and drive us herself...rather, rented cars here generally home with drivers, thank god). We told her we would definitely be up for it.

Day 6: The Elite of the Slums

Thursday began like many other days, Cait and I woke up and got ready, ate, had some tea, and then waited for the Asha driver to arrive (always late, but always punctual according to Indian Standard Time--when I come, I come) .

During our lunch break at Maya Puri, however, we were taken into the slum for our first time. Thresi and Anoop took Cait and me to see the houses of the children we teach. The slum consists of 10 000 people, so obviously, our class numbers of 40 are only reaching those within the immediate vicinity of the government building where Asha is located.

The first kids we see are Shalu, her sister Seema, and her brother Vishal. Vishal is 9, can't speak a word of english, but is the cutest kid in the entire world. His smile melts the hearts of Cait and I. He is also the only boy of 5 girls. We keep urging Shalu to teach him more english and not to spoil him! Shalu also lets me hold her little baby sister, who is adorable.

Seeing the slums was incredible. We didn't bring a camera that day, but the next day, we will definitely take pictures.

The saddest part of the slums is actually that we know that who we are meeting are the slum elite. Though their housing areas are only 10 by 10 living spaces, some of these people have electricity, and one of our students' living space even had a tv! The kids also live near a train track, they cross it in order to use the bathroom. According to Paul, our coordinator at Asha, this has led to many casualties.

We visited a couple households, talked about the problems in the community and what Asha was doing to help, and got to know some people. To my surprise, Asha had eradicated most health issues and had empowered the women's group (termed the Mahila Mandal). Asha requires that each slum create a women's group (Mahila Mandal) and a children's group (Bal Mandal). Each group holds elections and has a defined board of leaders (President, VP, etc.). They meet every week and discuss community issues and how they can be solved.

We moved to another household and met one of the eight CHV's (Community Health Volunteers assigned to a lane of houses to keep tabs on). She explained her work and how she checked on each household frequently to make sure everyone was healthy. She had a small shop that sold juice and fruit.

That night, we went on an adventure to find more clothes and get more groceries, and then I made chicken curry, and taught Cait how to cook Indian food!

After we had just gotten in bed, the 4th resident of Vasant Kunj Sector C Pocket 9 Gate 6 Flat 9896 arrived. Felix will be a sophomore at Harvard, and he's from France. The poor kid was totally beat by his long day of travel, but we made him feel welcome and showed him around the house.

Then, to bed.

Day 7: New Friend!

Friday morning: same routine of cold showers, tea and breakfast, and donning the salwaar kameeze. Only this time, there's a new face around! We explain a little more about what goes down at Asha to Felix, and hear a little bit more about him. He definitely seems like the adventurous type-- he tells us that he went for a walk around the neighborhood last night when he couldn't sleep, only hours after arriving in this country. While the wisdom of his choice is debatable, at least it seems that Felix is eager to sink his teeth into India. Mr. Martin picks us up this morning and takes us all to the Asha office.

This was another day at the slum, and another day of what has become the usual. Next week, we will have another class, and this will consist of university students. The Indian system of college admission is kind of ridiculous.

The past two years has been a joyous time in Asha because it is the first time in Delhi history that slum children were accepted Delhi universities. India is very different from the US when it comes to applying for higher education. In the states we have entrance exams, extracurricular descriptions, recommednations, etc. whereas in India you are only accepted based on your entrance exam. 4 lists come out with names of accepted children, each list accepting a certain range of percentiles on the entrance exam. The first list names all those who got over 90th percentile on the test. After those students have accepted spots in the numerous colleges, the 2nd list (80-90th percentile) is released and so on until the 4th list of 60th percentile and above is released. Everyone at Asha was hoping we'd get some kids in on the 4th list and to our surprise many of the slum kids were on the 2 and 3rd lists. 30 children from Asha slums got in, one girl scoring in the 90th percentile on their entrance exams. Asha is paying for their schooling, books, and clothes and after 20 years of working in these slums is seeing unprecedented educational success.

To get into college after living an incomparable lifestyle, is mind boggling. These students are amazing individuals, and we're excited to get to meet them and to teach them what we know.

That night we were beat so we just hung out at the house and went to sleep.

Day 8: Delhi

We slept in for the first time in India! It was so nice. And then, Cait and I ventured out into the main part of Delhi for our first time. This 100 rupee rickshaw drive to the Lodi Gardens confirmed our beliefs that Delhi is not the prettiest city in India. The gardens were by far the prettiest thing we've seen yet, and the tombs were awesome, but we can't wait until tomorrow when we see the taj mahal.

We then got into a rickshaw that we quickly learned was commissioned by the Central Cottage Industries Emporium. He took us to an area where we could eat: that was great, and the food was good. But then he took us to the CCIE. We were really suspicious of him and glad to finally be in the center of Delhi, called Connaught Place. This store was super targeted towards foreigners, and we tried to convince them that we really aren't rich haha. However, though we felt betrayed by our autorickshaw driver, we both ended up buying beautiful saris!! This is something we're very excited about. Mine is royal blue and Cait's is turquoise. We'll have them made by tomorrow, and pick them up during the week. Cait has a wedding to go to in Mumbai (I'm hoping to tag along), so she needs one. I just really wanted one! And I hope my family will enjoy it when I arrive in Bangalore!

Everyone today spoke Hindi to me, and then stared in disbelief that I couldn't speak a word, except to count to ten. They then asked me why I look so Indian. I explained that my father is from Bangalore. "Oh, very very nice place", they replied. So I'm excited for the last two weeks in Bangalore!

Cait and I then shopped around a bit more and bought a lot of cool stuff, hopped on a bicycle rickshaw to get back to an area without commissioned autorickshaws, and then were on our way home!

Now, as I sit here, there's a lightning storm outside our window. Really cool, we just hope we don't lose power. Tomorrow: Agra and the TAJ MAHAL!