In the Apartment

I know I should really be writing more on the Blog. My new years' resolution is to get a new blog post out every three weeks, at most. So prepare for more soon.

So, having promised them months ago that they would all be written about in a blog post, here are my host siblings who all live in the same apartment building! They're all around the same age as me, so we've been having a good time. For all my friends in college, sorry, I really should write about you too!

Rounak is in college, working to be a Bachelor in Commerce (Financial Markets). He's pretty busy making sure that everyone around is having a good time. His ping pong skills are awesome, his omelettes are mouth-watering, and he loves to watch movies. I've seen a lot of movies with him at his house (the floor above where I'm living) and at a movie theater here. One of the cool about him, is that everywhere he goes he "knows someone" who can help him out. He's always laughing, and everything is "a good idea". Along with Andrea, below, the three of us do a lot of things together 

Akanksha is also in college, working to be a Bachelor in Management. She's teaching dance to children in two different programs. Seeing her dance, with her ensemble, is definitely an impressive performance. She's upbeat and is another person who's got a good contagious laugh. And Akanksha is the hardest worker of the people here, as someone who's very busy and never takes a brake.

Andrea is not actually Indian, but another foreign exchange student from Italy. He's from a small town near Milan. It's been good to have another 'firangi' (foreigner) here to sort stuff out. We go to the same college, so we see eachother there, and we have the same yoga class. Andrea is really passionate about music, specifically about writing electronic music, and he's ready to defend it and argue that it's every bit as good as other kinds of music. He's got very street smarts, and is good at navigating his way through whatever comes up. Just like me, Andrea is pretty fascinated and excited about Indian food, culture, art, and ideas, and I'm always impressed at the fact that his English is so good he can talk about things like Politics and Religion in it.

Anagha is in 11th Standard, same as me (or a Junior to Americans). She's smart and creative, and, like the rest, fun to be around. I think 75% of the board games I've played here (not that I've played them constantly, but I seem to be playing a lot more board games here with friends, instead of video games like in the US) have been won by, even with everyone else deliberately trying to make anyone but her win. She's a good sport though.

There. I finally did it. Now you can't all keep saying stuff like "sure sure, but I'm not going to do it until you write the blogpost about us you've been promising for months". 

Photos from Diwali: (I'm in an Indian Shirt I got for Diwali called a Kurta)

Happy New Year! 

Merry Christmas!

Dear friends and family,

Hi! Here in Mumbai it hardly feels like Christmas back in Manhattan, but the spirit of being with people I care about is the same. The air feels slightly cool (seeing people huddled in sweaters in 85+ degree weather is quite funny), and the rains are gone. 

There's so many people I want to see this, so if I can't send this to some people, could you all please show this to anyone who wants to see it? 

For most people here, Christmas is hardly a notable day, and most schools and official buildings get only one day off (and the government is even trying to remove that day as a holiday), but for the people around me, I'm working on making Christmas a bigger and bigger deal.

I've had quite the time here! Im beginning to notice more and more changes in myself as I become more and more confident as I move around here. I'm working on my Hindi more and more now, and I'm writing essays for my Hindi sir (I recently wrote my first Hindi story about my economics teacher here getting eaten by a tiger). I'm having a  great time in my school here (11th and 12th is called junior college), and I've got a lot of good friends. I'm sitting for all my lectures, and getting ok marks (grades). I'm on the college magazine committee here, and recently wrote a few articles on the stereotypes Indians have of the US. To add to more cool experiences, I'm volunteering a very low income school to teach debate to ninth standard (9th grade) and I'm busy organizing a tournament with judges next month for them to go against each other. I've asked my students to collect evidence at a local Internet cafe. I don't mean to brag, but I've seen a marked increase in English fluency and confidence in my students in the last two months (this school and my college are both allegedly English medium but teachers use quite a lot of Hindi, the national language, and Marathi, the state language of Maharashtra where I am). And finally, I'm doing yoga in the morning and I'm getting quite a lot more flexible than I was before.

Mumbai is a fantastic city! A massive city, where the roads and trains are always filled with traveled and commuters. A noisy city, caught in a clash between being an Indian city and a global one. I'm proud to call it my home. And I'm proud to feel part of a community as I meet all sorts of people walking around and trains. Sure, there's dangers to watch out for, but with some caution, one of the greatest to me is to be able to talk in Hindi with people I can't believe I'd ever have met if wasn't in India. One of the proudest things I say now (and maybe some of you won't understand this) is that I ride alone on the second class local Mumbai trains everyday.

My closest friends live in my apartment building in an extended joint family. I'm with another AFS student (from Italy) and four host siblings roughly the same age as me so there's lots of people to do things with. We've got a small Christmas tree set up, and the lights that were never taken down from Diwali (a much much bigger holiday here) and still up so we can turn them on.

Last night I saw a Marathi Kirtan, a sort of group prayer session and story telling for Hindus, and later in the night went to Catholic Christmas Eve midnight mass. This morning Andrea and I are cooking western food for a big meal of quite a few people we know.

I'm on the opposite side of the world for most of you, but I've the same side of a great holiday and hopes for a new year. Merry Christmas! I love you all and I'll see you in a few months!

-Sterling

Sajjangad

I had another chance to travel outside of Mumbai, this time to a little hill fort in the countryside from the 1600s that has been turned into a an ashram. This is the furthest off the beaten path I've been in my life. I saw an amazingly quiet and serene monastery, nature, and some more parts of India that took my breath away.

Here I am trying to look dignified and serene just like all the Brahmins that are here and all the paintings of gods, priests, and warriors in buildings here.

It was really cool to see the monkeys up close here.

When India was ruled by a Muslim people called the Mughals, one Hindu king named Shivajee helped kick them out of Maharashtra. Sajjangad was one of his forts, and after creating an independent kingdom, he gave it to his guru to make into an ashram. Shivajee has a big presence in Mumbai too; both the airport and the central railway station are named after him, and one Maharashtriyan Nationalist political party calls itself 'Shivajee's Army'. This painting I took a picture of inside one temple.

I saw a lot of water buffalo and cows. We even had to stop on the highway due to a cow in the road!

I got yelled at for taking photos of cows and told that I was "disrupting the ghee-making proccesses". Ghee is an indian butter I eat daily in almost everything.

I got to sit in Sajjangad's library which was fun too (reading the small English section).

 I'm on a boat!

This is an area where three rivers combine, very far off the beaten path, like the rest of this trip. 

Mosque and Mandir

I got to go see more religious buildings. I've now been to five Hindu Mandirs (temples- well one of them was a Hare Krishna so I don't know if it counts as Hindu), one Christian church (the same church many times though), two Jain Mandirs, and now one Islamic mosque, in Mumbai.

This is the first time I've been to a mosque anywhere in the world. It was a fantastic visit.

These are prayer rugs laid side by side.

Women are not allowed to enter the mosque. Men can only enter with these special Islamic hats on. For people like me that don't own them, they leave plastic hats by the side of the entrance. And of course, like all religious buildings in India, you have to take your shoes off when you enter.

I do live in one of the suburbs very close to the edge of Mumbai, so although it is insanely crowded to me (or was when I first came here), it's very quiet and calm to Mumbaikars (people who live in Mumbai). This mosque was only a 40 minute bus ride away.

It felt very strange to see an Islamic neighborhood. The street signs made by the government are of course in English, Hindi, and Marathi just like everywhere else in Mumbai, but everything else was written in Arabic and Urdu. It was strange to see flying flags of the crescent and moon, and the entire place had a very strange feeling of being in a different country. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims seem very high here.

I also got to visit another Jain Mandir (Mandir is the Hindi word for temple).

Jainism is an ancient Indian religion, separate from Hinduism and Buddhism. The Jains I've met either believe in a universe that itself is god, or that all people are part of god but fail to realize that they are just single cells of a vast multicelled god. At least that's the best way I can describe it. Almost every time I ask Jains to explain their religion they end up arguing amongst themselves and accusing each other of saying incorrect things. So they should get that sorted out amongst themselves.

This temple they let us take photos in, but it felt wrong to do so. Some of the worshippers seemed to glare at our cameras, so I stopped taking photos. Because of this, I don't happen to have photos of the big gold marble statue at the center of the temple.

This reminds me- awhile ago, during Ganpathi festival I got to see 17 foot tall idol. Most people in Mumbai keep 1 foot tall ones in their homes, but they are a few super famous ones that are even as tall as 60 feet!! Here's the largest one I saw: