Sun Temple

Today we went to some temples about 120 km from Ahmedabad and to a family silk weaving business that is very famous in India. As you can probably tell, I am kinda burned out on the long blogs so I am just posting pictures so you can see what's up. We are taking the train to Jaipur tomorrow night on the "Midnight train to Jaipur" and it will be an adventure!

An Indian extended family at a cultural visit today. They were really excited to see the pictures on the view screen!

The silk weaving machine! They dye the pattern into the thread and it is a very intricately involved process. They can do about 8 inches per day and this scarf will sell for about $4000 dollars over the internet. This is a family business that has been going for 4 generations and they are now the only family in India doing this kind of weaving.

This was the idol in a Jain temple. Jains are offshoot of Hinduism and they believe in complete nonviolence and non-killing of everything. Some extreme Jains even wear a mask so they don't kill any insects when they breathe!

I finally got a picture of a monkey today! They have been very elusive to my camera. Our bus driver pulled over so we could all get this picture!

The new India in action! These guys are carrying boxes of computer equipment on their scooter. 

Isn't this AMAZING??? I saw women carrying piles of sticks, bricks, cloth, etc! 

This is called the Sun Temple. It was built in the 10th century and is really amazing. When you get close you can see intricate carvings of various Hindu mythical stories, daily life, and a lot of erotica (which I will not be posting pictures of, sorry!) PS- In case you are wondering, I am sweating in this picture.

Some carvings at the Sun Temple.

Later, we went to a "step well" which is an area carved into the ground with water in the bottom. It is 5 stories deep and was built in the 10th century along one of the silk roads. I couldn't resist, it was the perfect opportunity for a senior picture!

A carving at the step well that I thought was pretty cool. I still haven't seen an elephant but I have heard that Jaipur is the place and that we will probably get to ride on one! I am pretty excited about that!

Adventures of Ahmedabad

Some sites from around Ahmedabad today. The security level is definitely increased, you see police everywhere. But, we went to a great school today, some kids didn't have pencils and I saw two kids get reprimanded! Indian students aren't perfect after all! Here are some animal sightings from today!!

Camel pulling a cart down the street! Seriously, this is like seeing something out of Star Wars for sure! 
A cow wearing a necklace hanging out in the bike lane. We have places to lock up bikes, I think this might be a place to tie up your cow!
A slum we drove by right next to some luxury apartment buildings. India is so interesting!
These aren't tied up and they are just chillin'. Oh, the holy cows!
A green parrot at Ghandi's ashram. This is where Ghandi lived for 12 years and did a lot of his thinking, writing, and activism! 

Tomorrow we are going on a day trip outside of town which is fine with me because seeing police everywhere kind of freaks me out. Will post later about the school visit today! It was a great place to be and they even had outdoor classrooms with outdoor seats and chalkboards!!!

Layover

Hi everyone! I am on a layover at the Mumbai/Bombay airport after the scariest, most turbulent flight of my life. But, there is free internet so I just wanted to say hi! 

Hope everyone is well!  We are on our way to Ahmedabad and had three hours in the airport here after a 25 minute, super turbulent flight!

Will write again soon!

Today we went to see a giant radio telescope about two hours from Pune. Here are some of the sights on the way. This reminds me of how my grandfather was run over by a team of mules when he was 19. Good thing it wasn't an ox cart!!!
This is one of 30 satellite dishes that works by sending meter long radio waves out and triangulating them (or the 30 word equivalent to triangulation) to see the outer reaches of the galaxy. There are only three in the world, one is in New Mexico.
Village on the way to the telescope. Women do fieldwork in saris.
This is another reminder that India is a developing nation. Traffic is stopped by major herds of livestock on the highway. 
This is a semi-truck and they are all decorated like this. Today I bent over a few times to kiss my butt goodbye because the ride up to the telescope was absolutely frightening. 

Tomorrow we head for Ahmedabad where the bombings have been. The Fulbright people have been in constant contact with the US Embassy and have check to see that everywhere we are going is in a safe area. Although, I feel extra safe going to Ahmedabad now because there is a huge military presence there now and it is doubtful they would bomb the same city twice.

Bollywood movie or game of telephone?

The other night we decided we wanted to see an Indian movie. These are referred to as "Bollywood" and it is a HUGE industry here. I have heard of them before and knew that they were usually cheesy musicals and maintained very innocent standards, nobody even actually kisses on screen, and there is definitely no sex, nudity, etc. So, we found a movie called "Jaane tu...ya jaane na" which means "Whether you know or not." There were nine of us who went to the movie and two of the nine included Indian women who work for the Fulbright office in Delhi and are coordinating our Pune portion of the trip. They are staying at our hotel too and they wanted to go to a movie also. 

When you get there, there are two different lines to buy tickets, one for men and one for women. Each can buy however many tickets they need but that way they don't have to stand in line together which is culturally a bit taboo. It is amusing to me that in a country where they have such a HUGE population and people are obviously reproducing a lot, sex is a completely taboo subject and in case you were wondering, India, like Iran, also has no gay people. Ha.

Anyway, we got our tickets and went in and while we waited they had shopping in the movie theatre and a food court with a lot of Western food. One of the funniest things I have seen since I arrived here was a group of women in saris sitting around and eating a bucket of KFC, there is just something so incongruous about that! We bought our popcorn (it is unbuttered and a large is about 1/6 the size of an American large which probably helps explain why we are such fat asses!) and cans of diet coke and went in the movie. I knew it would be in Hindi and so I was kind of nervous about sitting through a two and a half hour movie in a language I don't speak, but we devised a great system.

We had assigned seats in two rows. One Indian woman and a group of us Americans sat in each row and anytime there would be long spans of dialogue or a random character we couldn't figure out, our movie watching turned into a game of telephone. The Indian women would explain what happened and then we would pass the message down the row. Those at the end of the row were getting the embellishments and opinions of all of the previous people and it was quite comical to be at the end of the row! Most of the time we could figure out what was going on just fine because about 1/3 of the phrases they say are in English. I have talked about "Hinglish" before, the mix of Hindi and English and this movie did not disappoint. It had catchy, cheesy songs, and typical Bollywood choreography and I think I might be hooked on Bollywood movies. It was absolutely hilarious! 

Here is a link to the movie's website if you would like to check out what it was about and what the adorable characters looked like. Also, I believe a sample of the music is on the website too!

http://www.jaanetu.com/

I have found out that in addition to Bollywood, there are also other centers of movie making around India in other languages because Hindi is not the official language in all of the states here. For example, near Hyderabad there is an area called Tollywood where they make films in Telagu, the language of that state and then in Chennai movies are released in the Tamil language. I have heard that almost all of them are musicals and I sure do love musicals so that makes me think I will probably like Bollywood. When you rent them they have subtitles so I wouldn't have to randomly find someone at home who speaks Hindi to translate! 

When we were in Hyderabad a few weeks ago, we saw them filming a Tollywood movie at the fort we visited and here are some pictures of the female star and then her male backup dancers. They were surprised to see a big group of white people watching their movie being made and the star came over and waved at us and said hi. It was so cool! The picture at the beginning of the post is the actress and below her dancers!

I am safe!

There have been some bombings in India but they are not where we are right now. I feel the Fulbright people will not do anything with us that is even marginally unsafe. I don't know if they are making the news there but just wanted to let everyone know that I am okay. We are definitely going to be avoiding crowded market areas, etc. for awhile. Don't be worried, I will stay in contact to let everyone know the current situation.

:)

Some recent pics

Spikes on a fort door that were able to stab through elephants attacking!
One of the many people who work at a fort. There are a lot of people working in every place we go!
We saw camels running down the street today and a girl in my group rode one! She is a Colorado girl too!
We went to the place today where Gandhi was imprisoned and some ashes are.

Another cute Indian kid!