Victim of the American media...

Today I also suffered the effects of the American media. That is the only reason I can think of as to why I got so freaked out about walking around an area full of women in burkas and mosques. Well, that and the men were leering at us more than normally. Perhaps it was because in most areas we have been, there are a majority of women in saris and not completely covered from head to toe. So, I guess, we just seemed extra uncovered. I can’t believe that those women in burkas are cool and comfortable. They have a complete outfit on underneath it as sometimes you can see their brightly colored pants sticking out at the bottom and are wearing a mask on their face. It felt like wearing a ski mask to me in terms of heat when I was trying it on. I am going to try to buy one for Kendra, my team’s social studies teacher but I couldn’t find a store yesterday.

I wasn’t expecting that in India. I don’t know why, I knew they had a large Muslim population here, I guess I thought it would just be more liberal here, and I know that in many areas, it is. Hyderabad is just a “bundle of contradictions” as the lady said and here was another example. Near the hotel we have a huge, modern, Western mall, and if you drive a few minutes, you have women in burkas walking around a huge, old bazaar. I also saw two women in burkas on a motorcycle, which was surprising to me. But again, bundle of contradictions!

The bazaar where we were specialized in bangle bracelets and pearl necklaces. Although, it is hard to tell (without my mom’s expert eye) if they are real or if the guys are trying to take you for a ride. The strings of black pearls were much less expensive than I have seen at home so I just don’t know what to believe.

P.S. Achmach and I are registered at Burkas, Bath, & Beyond.

A bundle of contradictions...

Hyderabad is a very Muslim city compared to Kolkata which had a lot more Hindus and Christians. We went to a mosque today. Will write more about that later.

So apparently like 90% of the world’s pearls come through Hyderabad. Who knew? Mom, have you heard of this? Everyone is going crazy and buying pearls, not me, don’t worry! Everyone is asking me what I think are fair prices but what do I know, I get them free! J We have a big pearl store in the bottom floor of the hotel and the fury has begun! They do have pretty Tahitian pearls there, which though from Tahiti, are processed here? Something like that, I don’t really get it!

This morning we visited a place (in my head when I type this I hear the word visited as “wisited” because Indians pronounce v’s as w’s!)  called the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) and what they really are is a think tank on education and business who are contracted out to help with policy development and evaluation. Sounds boring? Actually, it was extremely interesting as they are able to take an objective look at the Indian educational system and not get mired in the feelings of being involved in it to give us a picture of what is actually happening. In other words, they are not in the trenches everyday, but are studying the trenches and have studied the trenches in other places as well.

Everything this woman was talking about was what a lot of the teachers in our group have been thinking about. The first thing she said is, “India is a bundle of contradictions!” This made us all laugh because we have all been talking about this constantly. Also, nobody gives you a straight answer to any question. Our favorite is the Indian nod. It is a cross between yes and no and so you can NEVER tell if someone is saying yes or no. I think they are trying to be ultra polite and nobody wants to flat out say no but the head bob is really difficult to read and has become a big joke with all of us because nobody can really read the answer.

So in regards to her statement about India being full of contradictions, she also said that even though there is abject poverty, there is also a thriving economy and middle class and really, neither can be ignored. This makes total sense, which makes us more able to understand how there can be a giant modern bridge in Kolkata with a slum under it. I am starting to get it a little more. She also said that in terms of curriculum development, India has done a really solid job, the problem lies with how the curriculum is actually taught.

This next part started to scare me, and you teachers who are CSAP proctors (HA! I said proctor!) will understand why this scared me. Her exact words were, “India is a performance oriented system instead of a learning oriented system.” Wow. Are we becoming this? The focus here is solely on WHAT you know and retention is low once the “big tests” are done. Yet India is churning out millions of engineers and doctors every year. Huh. Interesting.

I will write more later. Brain hurts.

 

Alternate universe?

July 15- Arrival in Hyderabad

Today we arrived in Hyderabad (pronounced Hydra-bod) and it is like a different universe from Kolkata. I feel like I am on a different planet. First of all, the climate is completely different. Flying into Kolkata, you see water everywhere and lush, green landscapes. Here in Hyderabad, everything is brown. It kind of looks like Southern Cali around San Diego and that is a stark contrast to Kolkata. Secondly, there is a TON of new development and construction here and I just had dinner in a “mall” which could have seriously been about anywhere in the US. So weird!

After Kolkata, this feels like an alternate universe. Now, I will say that we are in a newer part of town here where our hotel is because it is a new-ish hotel. The weird part too is that there are SO many more Westerners here. At the restaurant where we had dinner, there was a table of like 20 just out of college aged guys who were here to teach people at call centers American accents! Isn’t that crazy? I didn’t even know that existed as a job and here before me sit like 20 guys from Arkansas and Oklahoma. It was really surreal!

I must also mention another aspect of the luxury hotel…they have a pillow menu! Have you ever heard of such a thing? I ordered the one called “tranquility” and this little pillow full of good smelling stuff comes right up to your room on a tray. This is all included in your hotel bill at no extra cost. It is kind of unreal! So, once I have explored Hyderabad a little more, I will write again, but just wanted to let everyone know that I have made it here and am suddenly on Mars!

PS- I saw a shirt in a mall store that was exactly like Forever 21 or Charlotte Russe that said, “You think your teacher is hard? Just wait until you have a boss!” I love it!

It pays to be smart and rich...

July 14- Birla Boys High School (Kolkata)

Today we visited an exclusive private school in Kolkata for boys. It is one of the top rated schools in the city and is very expensive by Indian standards. Guess what? They were much more like an American school. They had smaller classes, more lab equipment, real books in their library, and teachers are chosen specifically to be there instead of placed in a government school wherever there happens to be an opening. Money makes a big difference! The atmosphere of the school was totally different and you got the feeling that teachers actually know the students more personally and I saw some actual personal interactions going on between the teachers and the kids. 

Okay, so I saw what I consider to be a school with solid practices and now I must mention that there is a giant waiting list to get into this school and so they have to have an entrance exam. Furthermore, because the numbers of applicants are so high, they only take the highest scoring kids. So basically I spent the morning in a school for wealthy, smart kids.  They do have some remediation if it is needed but the principal discussed with us that she thinks India is severely lacking in resources and acknowledgement of kids with special needs. We kind of needed to hear this because every other time we asked about it, nobody really understood the questions.

The whole time I have been here talking to professionals and visiting schools, I have not heard one person mention literacy or even anything related to it. It is a major focus in the US in the classroom, in teacher preparation programs, etc. and so I was really wondering if it was ever brought up here. I mean the kids all do have three languages in Kolkata; English, Hindi, and Bengali, which is the regional language of this area.  The principal of this school (an all female administration team just like at my school but these were women running a boys’ school-WOO HOO) mentioned that they will have a consultant coming in to work with the teachers in the areas of improving reading comprehension. She couldn’t really talk much about it yet because it hadn’t happened yet but to me it sounded really encouraging compared to everything I have heard.

The principal also talked about how in India, even if kids are not even close to being qualified, parents and students want the kid to at least try to get into the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology—similar to MIT for us). The entrance exams to get into IITs are not correlated to the school curriculum so if you want to go to an IIT, you have to go to a coaching center for the rest of your learning. We have heard that IITs require kids to have knowledge of statics, which I think that engineering majors in the US take in their 2nd or 3rd year, and they know it before they even begin undergraduate degrees.

Today while we were talking to kids at the boys’ school, all of the kids in the science stream (there are three streams after grade 10 exams; science, commerce/business, or humanities and the brightest kids tend to go into the science steam then commerce, then humanities) were attending coaching schools everyday after school. The competition level is just so high that in order to even have a shot at getting a spot at a prestigious university, it is absolutely necessary to have more hours in than the next guy. The competition is tough for our kids in the US to get into good schools, but I have to remember that when I am talking about the middle/upper class here, that is a much larger raw number just based purely on the fact that the population is like 1.3 billion! 

July 13- Finally a Day Off!

I changed the setting so that you don't have to log on to leave me a comment...just put your name because it will tell me it was anonymous...unless you want to be anonymous!

July 13, 2008- Hindu temple visit, Clay figure sculpting area, and botanical gardens

Today we went to a Hindu temple in Kolkata. It is Sunday and so eerily, the streets were deserted until we got to the temple where things were hopping! Hindu temples are dedicated to certain gods in the main temple but then this one had subsidiary small temples dedicated to other gods. There were many people and we were trying to figure out how to be the most respectful and so we took our shoes off since we saw everyone else was barefoot. There was a cow napping right in the midst of all these people. I know cows are sacred here but I just can’t get over seeing them just hanging out all over town.

We were in a taxi and suddenly there was a traffic jam where everyone came to a screeching halt. I thought that there was an accident or something, but no, it was just a cow and a calf hanging out right in the middle of the street. I could probably live here my whole life and not get used to that! I also saw a herd of goats in the street being herded by several people. We have been told that if the goats are tagged red, they are on their way to slaughter. It is just so incongruous that in this modern city with modern commerce happening, livestock is in the streets.

Four of us decided to hire a car for the day since it was our day off. It was only $10 per person and that way we wouldn’t have to haggle over prices with cab drivers all day and also, it was air-conditioned. I read back through some of my blog entries and I noticed that I talk about sweating a lot. I will try to stop doing that because there really isn’t ever a time where I am not sweating so you can just assume that anything I am writing about, I was sweating profusely, copiously, dehydrationally the whole time. But the last thing I will say about it is that while at the temple, my brown pants were completely soaked through except for on the pockets so it either looked like I had water thrown on me or that I had peed myself. People were definitely staring at the icky American!

As we were going back to the taxi from the temple, we were absolutely bombarded by beggars. They were pulling at our clothes, tugging our arms, and yelling things in our faces to give them money. I feel so sad for them but it is super scary to have random street people pulling on you in every direction from little kids to old ladies with no teeth. We got in the taxi and they were beating on the windows and trying to pull the windows down with their hands. The driver was yelling at them but they just kept banging on the car over and over. As we started moving, they eventually started fading away. I have said this in other entries but I really just don’t know what to do in this situation. They are obviously in complete poverty but you cannot just get out your wallet and start passing out money. They were pulling on us without our wallets out, I can’t imagine what it would be like if our wallets were in front of them.

Next we went to an area of Kolkata where they make sculptures for a festival that will be in October. After the festival is over, they throw the sculptures (made first from straw, then covered in clay, and then painted) into the river. These semi-naked people were absolutely amazing artists and you could even look at the straw bases and see which god it would be. They were all sculpting the same gods but everyone on the street was doing different sizes of them. My favorite is Ganesha, he is the god who has the head of an elephant and is there to remove obstacles. Their sculpturing areas were super small and I am not sure how they can stand to be in these tight spaces with itchy straw and clay mud. There were people of all ages as artists too and there of course, were still many motorcycles buzzing by us honking constantly while we walked down this tiny alleyway.

The botanical garden was on the other side of a huge river, not the Ganges but I can’t remember what it was called. It reminded me of the Ohio River running next to Louisville, it was that big. The bridge over it is a very modern, new looking tension bridge that looks exactly like the bridge in Charleston, SC or the Bay Bridge over the Chesapeake. Again, it is so bizarre to see this giant, modern bridge here where you also might see livestock being herded across it. The botanical garden was definitely off the beaten path (actually we have seen very few Western tourists at all except for at the Mother Teresa house) and so we got to see some different areas of Kolkata. More than once on this taxi ride I saw my life flash before my eyes as we zoomed head on toward buses and other cars. Our driver had been Patrick Swayze’s personal driver in the early 80s when he was here filming the movie “City of Joy.” He had pictures of himself with Patrick Swayze, which was hilarious.

At the botanical garden we saw the world’s largest Banyan tree. This sounded exciting at first since we were told it was almost a kilometer around, but Banyan trees are like Aspen trees and they are all one connected organism even if they look like hundreds of trees. So really, it was a grove of Banyan trees, which was still cool looking because they went their roots down from their branches instead of roots coming from the ground up.

After that we went back to the hotel (I am still pretty sick with a cold and got the chills on the way back which should tell you that something is definitely wrong with me!) and sat out by the pool at a table. Suddenly, it got very dark (it is monsoon season here) and we had to rush to a covered table where the sky commenced dumping rain like I have never seen. This was my first tropical shower (except for in Florida) and this wasn’t just a shower, it was buckets and buckets of water and I am pretty sure that our hotel was struck by lightning because it was the loudest crack I have ever heard, especially since we were sitting outside on a covered patio.
Obviously, Kolkata has had more cultural visits than Delhi and we have gotten to see more of the city. Tomorrow we go to a boy’s private school so it will be interesting to see if their teaching methods are more of the same or more innovative since they might have fewer students. One thing that I have definitely noticed here is that they are VERY un-PC about discussing people with special needs. First of all, there is no law that people with special needs must be educated to the same degree as anyone else. I heard someone say that they have “spastic schools” but I am not sure what that really means. We have a special education teacher in my group and she asks every group we talk to about what they do with kids who have “special needs” and nobody really even understands the question because it is outside their realm of comprehension that these people can learn too.

I kind of feel like in terms of SpEd, India is where we were like 75 years ago or something. My principal roommate went to a seminar conducted by the American Consulate for principals yesterday where a person was there trying to convince principals that people with vision or hearing impairments can still learn. It is just so interesting. The last few days though I have gotten to forget that I am hear for educational reasons because we have had so many cultural events, which I suppose, are educational too. I am starting to think that one of the main reasons that India is turning out so many engineers, scientists, and doctors is that they are really only education the elite who have money or resources to get themselves to school.

Last night, the group (I didn’t go because I felt like crap and I am so sad I missed it) went to a free school in a slum area where teachers are volunteers and if they weren’t there, none of these slum kids would get any education. I know that there are huge discrepancies of wealth in the American system and that we have a huge dropout rate in urban areas, but everyone at least has access. It might not be equal but there is still access to an education, even if it is a crappy one. If we were only educating the middle class and above, we would probably be churning out amazing kids constantly too, more than we already are. I have to remember that the students in the US who go to MIT from our schools are just as amazing as the kids who are going to the prestigious universities here, and those are mostly the kids we are meeting.

Well, I better end this post before people’s eyes fall out. It is pouring rain, I am sick, and it is our day off, so I have had time to write more!
Sorry so long!

NO boys

Since everyone keeps asking, let me just say that everyone on my trip is married except for 4 of us girls. 

More Kolkata...

July 12- Old Kolkata Walking Tour

Today the head of the American Institute, an offshoot of the consular office here, took us on a walking/tram tour of the old part of Kolkata. I am becoming more adjusted to the number of people out everywhere but NOT the traffic. The air is so polluted that it feels like you are sucking on a tailpipe of a car all the time. I have a chest cold already, so not being able to breathe clean air is not really helping. The traffic is nothing like I have ever seen. I don’t really even have the words to describe it. There is literally one inch (or less probably) between things. Here in Kolkata they also have rickshaws pulled by people, barefoot people at that. I saw a girl talking on her cell phone and riding in a pedi-cab pulled by a barefoot man, how’s that for a juxtaposition!?!

I thought the traffic in Delhi was bad but here it is much worse! The population density is higher here than in Delhi so it feels even more congested. I know I keep talking about this, but really, when you go anywhere, crossing the street is extremely scary! Not to mention the noise! Everyone honks their horn constantly, and it is not to be rude, but there are people darting in an out of traffic on a variety of modes, even legs, so they have to honk. The backs of auto-rickshaws and busses actually have signs that say, “Please honk!” Remember also that sometimes there are cows right in the middle of the street too, just hanging out!

We walked through some really crowded markets and if you’ve ever had an image of what India looks like in your head, this is it! There are masses of people from all walks of life from dirty street people to businessmen in suits (though how they are not soaked completely through with sweat I do not understand) to school children in droves wearing uniforms. There is so much visual stimulation, one is not really quite sure where to look and if you show too much interest in something you are looking at then you will be bombarded with the sellers. If you think sales clerks in the US are pushy, you ain’t seen nothin’!

Three of us girls (there are seven girls and nine guys in our group) were wearing our Indian outfits and I literally had to peel mine off when we got back to the hotel because it was so sweaty and also I felt SO dirty from all the beggars touching my arms trying to get money. I hope I am not sounding mean about the beggar situation but truly it is filthy dirty here and it is a bit overwhelming to see this many street people and to see them picking through piles of trash on the street. We talk about poverty in the US but it is nothing like this. There are shanty villages right on the side of the road where thousands of people are living, but next to them there are also luxury apartment buildings being built. It is a very dichotomous society, even more so than ours. Although, I must admit, my views are somewhat skewed at home because I don’t live in a big urban area. But even in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, it is not like this.

I am definitely going to by some stuff but I just have to be brave about the haggling! The one outfit I did buy was from a fixed price store so I didn’t have to haggle over the price. Another girl here is pretty good at it so I need to watch her. It is hard because I don’t really know what a reasonable price for stuff even is!