Trisha’s Thoughts on India

Greetings Friends and Family!

I know many of you were very curious to see how I’d hold up in India and I am pleased to say that overall, I’ve really enjoyed my experience here. Of course, there have been some trying times but I have really felt like I’ve learned and grown more from these experiences more so than suffered from them.  I will start by telling you all the aspects that I have loved and then tell you about the not so good stuff.

THE FAMILY – Since arriving on July 6th, we’ve been staying with a family here in Chennai. We have privacy, comfort, and cleanliness in our room. As Corey said in an earlier post, it truly is an oasis. The family has had westerners stay with them before (at one time they had 14 Germans staying at the house!) and they have done everything possible to make sure were are comfortable. I have gotten along really well with Mercy, who is Roy’s wife, and Janet, who is Roy’s mother. They both speak English pretty well so I have talked with them a lot and learned many things about their culture.

THE CUISINE – I have also really enjoyed the food. It can be spicy at times but mostly it’s just really tasty. The dishes are mostly rice and some kind of sauce. I have cooked with the women a couple of times and am learning a ton. One night Janet asked me what is our main dish in America. I didn’t have an answer. Hamburgers and hot dogs are usually thought of as American food but the truth is that we eat such a diverse variety of foods. For Corey and I, one night might be Thai food, the next night Mexican, and the next night Japanese food. When we cook at home, it’s usually just pasta or fish with veggies and rice. Here at the house, they only serve Indian food. Even the restaurants we’ve been to have only  served Indian food. One day we had McDonald’s for lunch and it was great to have something different and familiar. We are getting used to this food though and it’s beginning to be more and more familiar to our palates.

THE KIDS - Another aspect of this trip I have enjoyed is the children. We have visited two children’s homes (orphanages) so far and whenever I am with the children, I feel so joyful, comfortable, and content. I can’t stop smiling when I’m around them. Last week, we made Betty Crocker brownies for 55 kids (all in a microwave oven!) which was quite fun. Today, I taught about 15 children how to do the Macarena dance. They loved it! They kept wanting me to teach them more dances but I couldn’t think of any… We played volleyball and they taught me how to play a kind of tagging game that I never really did understand. I always get so dirty and sweaty playing with them but I don’t care. I love every minute of it.

OUR HEALTH – We haven’t gotten sick! yet… So far we have only had very minor nausea and indigestion but nothing too bad at all. We are so grateful for this and sincerely thank God for this blessing. We pretty much expected to have violent food poisoning the first week we got here but now we’ve been here over 2 weeks and are still in good health. We owe a lot of this to the fact that most of our meals have been eaten in the family’s home where they are very careful to prepare the food in a sanitary manner. There have been some times when we visited a remote village and we ate the food that people prepared for us. That surprisingly didn’t make us sick either! Crazy! We still have over a week in India, 2 weeks in Thailand, and one week in China so there is a good chance it will still happen but we have counted our blessings so far that we are in good health.

So now for the not so enjoyable stuff…

THE STARING – I have to say that my least favorite part of being here is the constant staring. Oh man. It’s hard to even put how this feels into words. For the first couple days it was fine. We stayed either at the house or inside the city limits. People stared but it was minimal. Once we went outside the city, it got bad. One day we were at an amusement park with the kids from the Chennai Children’s Home (that is another story in itself). There were many people there and pretty much everyone would stop and stare at me as I walked by. And many wouldn’t stop looking until I walked out of eyesight.

So after a few hours of this, I am getting extremely uncomfortable. We had groups of men walking up very close to our group and they would just stand there and watch me. Many came up to ask if they could take a photo of me and many others would just take photos without asking. The guys that were in our group were very protective of me and would do their best to shield me from the stares of the others. They were the heroes of the day. If it weren’t for them, I probably would have just stayed in the van all day.

When the men stare at me, I feel so degraded and actually feel energy being sucked out of me. I even find it hard to smile. If it is a group of women that are staring at me, I just feel very self conscious but I can get over that much more easily. When a group of kids stare, it feels more like curiosity. But it’s when a group of men stare that I feel the worst. I try to not think about it but it’s almost piercing. Since that day at the amusement park, we have been outside the city limits 3 other times. Each time I encounter the same problem. On Thursday we leave for Delhi and I’ve heard that I shouldn’t have as much of a problem there. I’m so looking forward to that!

THE HEAT – It turns out that the worst part of the summer is over now which has been quite a relief. We were expecting the worst. Last month, we were told that the temp got up to 120 degrees! Fortunately, it hasn’t gotten up to that temp since we’ve been here but it is still very hot. Whenever we step outside, we instantly start to sweat. And when I cook in the kitchen, I am profusely sweating as there is no air conditioning and we cook next to a very hot stove. It’s been very difficult to adapt to this hot weather and I’ve been told that even the native people here even have a difficult time adapting to the heat.

THE DIRT/FILTH – Being a clean freak that I am, this has been difficult for me to get used to as well. That microbiology course I took has scarred me for life. People just don’t have the same hygiene/sanitary standards that we have been taught. Fortunately, the house we’re staying at is very clean. Right outside the house, however, it is very dirty. Trash lines the dirt road. We just found out that the trash dumpster on the street is fairly new and has only been there for the past 3 months. Before that, people just dumped all there trash on the street outside and it is apparent that people living on our street still have that habit.

The unusual thing is that it is like this everywhere. If we see one nice building, the area around it is clean, but right next door it looks like a landfill. Coming from Valencia which is the extreme opposite of this makes it stand out even more. After we had McDonald’s the other day, our driver took our trash and tossed it out the window. Corey and I looked at each other with our eyes wide open and we fought the urge to yell “Nooooo!”   When in Rome….

So that is the gist of my experience here so far. Corey is working diligently on getting photos up now and I have a feeling it might actually work this time. Yaaay!

Thank you for all your prayers. I love and miss you all!

Advertisement