two weeks in the Middle Kingdom

The past two weeks in China have been a blur of language instruction dangerous bicycle rides and holy taoist mountains. Two weekends ago I went with a few friends to Tai Shan a mountain which is a seven hour train ride from Beijing. After the overnight train ride which compared very favorably to Indian trains we started climbing the mountain. It sounded easy enough with steps leading the whole way up and a hotel for tourists on the top of the mountain (There is a cable car to the top) but it turned out to be a reasonably difficult climb. Along the way we saw ancient Chinese Charachters carved into the rock face and stunning scenery. The trees were all bare and it was still fantastic so I can only imagine what it would be like in summer. The mountains had the famous white rock faces and the rolling hills nearby were stunning. There were also several temples at the begginnning of the climb and one at the top. In fact every Emperor used to climb Tai Shan and Mao even climbed it himself.
The other day I rented a bike for my stay in Beijing and biking around the city has been a lot of fun although there have been some close calls with other users of the road. It's great to wander by bike around and see the sights and all of the massive construction that is going on. I read that there are more construction sites in Beijing than in all of Europe and I beleive it. They are knocking down a lot of the old hutongs to make room for the new buildding which is unfortunate.
Life in my hutong has been great however. There have been some miscommunications. Last week my host mother asked what I ate for breakfeast in the U.S. After failing miserably to describe the concept of cereal with milk I was greeted the next morning with a bowl of plain milk.
Yesterday we moved out of the hutong so we could focus on our case studies. A group of eight students including myself are working on a project to examine the role of NGO's and the government in combating AIDS in China.
That's all for now. I'll write more when I get a chance

Begginnigs of China

To start describing my experiences in China I figure I might as well start describing the internet cafe where I am writing from. It is called an "Internet Coffee" and I'm not sure if that is a joke kind of like how I am not sure about most of what is going on around me. The room is completely packed with probably 100 people but is amazingly well-organized although dimly lit.
I've been in Beijing for three days now and literally everything is in Chinese. I find myself suddenly empathizing with immigrants to the U.S. who are forced to learn the language on the spot. In India I could always find someone who spoke english and even the rickshaw drivers know a handful of phrases. Now in China I am completely dependant on my Chinese-speaking friends and when I had to take a taxi someone had to write the address for where I was goiong in Chinese to the cab driver and then we sat in absolute silence for the entire cab ride.
As for my accomodation I was one of the few students randomly picked to live in a traditional hutong house. The hutong's are alleyway neigborhoods that were originally constructed so workers could live while building the forbidden city. They are all over 100 years old and the ones in Beijing are slowly being demolished in favor of more modern high-rises. The house is interesting as their are several dwellings intertwined and the kitchen and the mother and fathers room are seperated from the room where the son and the two americans are living. We have to walk outside in order to go to the kitchen for dinner.
The family I am staying with is really nice. The son Jack knows english pretty well from school and the mother Amy has been studying English for the past 6months and is amazingly conversational for someone who has only been studying for such a short amount of time. She has an amazing amount of energy and is very keen to practice English with us. She is also a very good cook and I am lucky enough to have two of her meals a day.
I am beginning to learn a few Chinese phrases but it is difficult although necessarry to get around. Different tones give what seems like the same word to my simple ears different meanings. In addition to my difficulties with the language my chopstick use is another source of comedy for my host family.
In my letter to all of the host families in all three countries I mentioned that I played frisbee. The word translates into Chinese as flying pan so Amy was trying to understand the game and demonstrated by pretending to throw a bowl through the kitchen.

Last days in India

So the past few days in India have been fairly eventful. On the last night of vacation a few of us took a houseboat through the backwaters of Kerala. It was beautiful and the houseboat was incredibly luxurious. One of the highlights of the backwaters experience was talking a ride on a wooden canoe through what they called a narrow canal. This was after we docked for the night so we were riding toward the sunset with palm trees in the foreground which was amazing. On the canoe ride we rode through an area that was completely covered in water lilies which parted as paddled through them. The next day we visited a 500 year old synnagogue that was built by the Kochi jews. There are multiple theories of how they got to Kochi but it was fascinating to see such an old synagogue. As a sidenote they wouldn't let me in wearing the shorts I was wearing so I had to go to the store next door and rent a ridiculous pair of pants. The next day we took a 13 hour train ride from Kochi to Bangalore which was an interesting experience. It was a relief to get back to Bangalore and amazing to realize that this place already felt like home.
Tonight I leave for China and I'm sad to leave India but excited for China.

God's Own Country

The past two weeks I have been in Kerala on the southwestern tip of India. It is a beautiful state reknowned for it's religious diversity 1/3 each Christian, Muslim and Hindu with a few Ancient Jews sprinkled in for good measure, in addition to its natural beauty, distinct culture and coconuts.
After an exhilarating 15 hour bus ride through the middle of the night we arrived in Thrissur near the middle of the state. From Thrissur we visited a Coca-Cola bottling plant in a town called Plachimada. The bottling plant had sucked all of the groundwater out from the surrounding area and people have been sitting in front of the plant in non-violent protest for the past 5 years. It was fascinating to see their commitment and depressing to look at their near empty wells. As important as their cause is we were not there to join the protest but merely to witness their plight and some of the non-health negative consequences of carbonated beverages. One of the girls on my program has a grandmother living in Kerala so after visiting the Coke plant we went to her house for dinner and a bonfire which was a lot of fun.
Before getting to Thrissur we visited an organic farm. It wasn't a typical organic factory farm but more of a commune where a handful of commited environmentalists had moved to live as sustainably as possible while restoring some of the land that had been overgrazed. While their methods would never be able to create a profit or even a surplus it was fascinating to see how creative they were in conserving and resusing everything they used. For example they used solar, wind and tree seed power for all of their electricityand they had all of their wastewater automatically channelled into the garden.
For the last three days of the India section of the program we went into Wyanad a beautiful town in the Western Ghats mountain range. There we worked on our final papers, mine was about pesticide use causing neurological problems in Kasargode a district in Norther Kerala. The case was similar to the book/movie "A Civil Action" in that there was a disease cluster as well as water contamination but it is difficult to prove a connection. After finishing our final papers we had a bonfire at our hotel which was a great way to unwind after a stressful but inspiring few weeks in India.
After 6 weeks of intense learning we were rewarded with a one week vacation. "What to do with one week in India?" is a question that great minds have struggled with for centuries. I decided to stay in Kerala to minimize travel time as well as to spend more time in this beautiful state. The first days we stayed in Wayanad and went for a hike in the Western Ghats. It was beautiful as the Ghats are noted for being one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Despite suffering through the extreme heat we were rewarded with breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains, the trees below which came in many different shades as well as the lake. On the way down we saw an elephant used for work on the tea plantation below were we started the hike. On a down note we also saw pesticides being sprayed by female laborers some of whom had facial protection.
Hopefully the rest of my vacation will be as fun as the first day and in one week I will be in China, the middle kingdom.