You know you're in India when you are surrounded by giant spiders

Things have been great!  We went to a celebration last week for a guru’s 93^rd birthday.  He had just come out of 2 months of fasting from food and speaking.  It was set in this little town called Vijianagiri and was surrounded by the jungle, so naturally we went out to explore after.  If you think the spiders are big in Utah, please come to the jungles of India and see spiders as big as your face, just feet away. Not. Kidding.  I wish you could tell better in the photos how big they actually were… but you can see in some that are next to palm trees, they seriously could wrap around my entire face. ICK!  Here are some photos…

yep... those are normal sized palm trees. for. real.

 

Luckily they weren’t poisonous!  How did we know that?  Well let me tell you.  Below you will see us attempting to talk to an Indian lady we found on our way through the jungle.  She was on her way to her little hut village that is a little ways into the jungle, but she didn’t speak a word of English.  We tried to point to the spiders, explain them with our hands, and even draw them.  Nothing!  We drew a little picture and tried to explain with our actions to ask her if they were poisonous, but she just laughed at us haha.  Then she motioned for us to follow her to her village so we followed and met some of her family.  One of her relatives spoke really good English, so we asked him about the spiders.  He explained to her what we were asking about and she started cracking up when she realized that that was what we were talking about!  Then they asked us if we wanted to eat them.  What??? No thank you.  Haha.  If THAT wasn’t enough, her and her daughter accompanied us out of the jungle and when we came up to one of the spiders we pointed to it to show them.  Her daughter took her walking stick and started playing with the spiders and wrapping up it’s web, causing the spider to fling to the ground.  There we were, thinking we were the most low-maintenance American girls, hiking through the jungle on our own surrounded by hundreds of giant spiders and no fear!  Until this happened, and we all ran away screaming like little girls.  It was pretty funny. :) haha

 

 

  

 

Here are some more photos of the program and the jungle.  The little kids are all doing crazy yoga poses.  Sorry about the little obsession I had with the black and white trees… haha

the 93 year old guru

 

crazy yoga kids!!

just peeking through the rice paddies ya know

So after studying India’s culture for many years and living here for over 2 months now, I feel like I am getting a pretty good idea of what it’s all about—especially here in the south.  I have compiled a lovely little list of the wonderful experiences we get to have on a regular basis.  Enjoy!

You know you’re (a foreigner) in India when…

1.     The bottom of your feet are permanently black because of how often you walk around without shoes

2.     Everyone calls you madam/ma’am or sir

3.     Cows stop traffic more than stop lights or stop signs do

4.     It’s normal to fit 12 people into a tiny rickshaw, and every rickshaw ride feels like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland

5.     While trying to cross the street you are ever so grateful for all those years playing frogger, because it feels exactly the same only in real life—and you are the frog

6.     You are certain that there are a million pictures of you floating around the web or in people’s cell phones and cameras because everyone asks to take your picture every day

7.     You have been proposed to at least once, if not multiple times

8.     If you wear anything shorter than mid-calf you are seen as scandalous

9.     Everyone looks like bobbleheads because of the infamous ‘head-bob’

10. The middle of your forehead is becoming stained from putting on turmeric and kumkum in every temple you enter

11. You get to wake up every morning to screeching squirrels that sound like birds

12. You feel like you’re camping every night when you go to sleep as you crawl onto your mattress on the floor underneath your mosquito net tent

13. Eating lunch on the floor using a banana leaf as a plate is normal

14. Sexual orientation is very confusing because you are constantly seeing boys hold hands with boys and girls with girls, but never boys with girls

15. Stepping in human feces is a normal occurrence that happens to everyone

16. The word ‘snap’ refers to a photo… “do you want to snap a snap?”

17. Everything starts on ‘indian time’, aka at least 30-60 minutes late

18. A baby bat flying into your study room is normal

 
19.     All of the little kids on the streets are constantly running to you and shaking your hand  or pinching your cheek

20.     At any given moment you feel like one or more of the following because of all the attention you are constantly getting: a celebrity, royalty, a ghost, an animal in the zoo, or naked 

21.     People ask for your autograph or ask you to randomly speak at conferences you attend.  They also always give you specialty seating in the front. 

22.     You get to wake up with Lord Krishna every morning because the temple down the street wakes up the whole neighborhood at 5am with all of their pot banging in order to ‘wake up Krishna for the day’

23.     The phrase ‘Naku telugu radu’ is extremely helpful, and seems to make every indian laugh when you say it (that means ‘I don’t speak telugu’)

24.     You are confused as to why everyone is always so concerned about what you ate that day (this is their typical ice-breaker for a conversation)

25.     It’s always fun hearing the construction workers on the street drilling and dropping things at 4am

26.     The world is a garbage can

 

27.     It is totally normal to look out your window and see a male with his loin cloth lifted up as he pees in the sewer. Lets just say sometimes it’s good to not have good vision in india…. 

28.     You find bindi stickers stuck in every random place… your dresser, your mirror, your bathroom, the kitchen, the floor, the underside of your arm, etc.

29.     Your legs are just used to falling asleep all the time because of how often you have to sit ‘indian style’

30.     Burping is totally acceptable to do out loud and in public.  Life moves on every time as if nothing happened

31.     Something inside of you tells you ‘no!’ any time you use your left hand for anything because you have gotten so used to only being able to use your right hand to eat (left hand is used for wiping) (not that we do that, but that’s what Indians do so if they see us using our left hand to eat, who knows what their reaction will be!)

32.     Sari-envy is a real and serious condition, and it happens to the best of us :) hahaha

33.     Everyone calls you ‘sister’ or ‘akka’ which means older sister in Telugu (wait.. isn’t that just a Mormon thing??)

34.     You are afraid to do anything in public that will draw any attention because you can be almost 100% sure that it will show up on the news the next day.  We always like to imagine the headlines they would put up… “3 large foreign ladies looking nice in indian clothes dangerously attempt to do yoga on the roof of their 4-story home in Lawson’s Bay Colony…”  bahaha [this fear has risen from real situations by the way, this is not an exaggeration!]

35.     A day is never complete unless rice is eaten for at least one meal, and hand washing is more common after eating rather than before because you eat with your hands

36. You can expect the power to be cut at least once a day

37. If you get held up in traffic and then a big group of people make you get out of your auto/car and sit on the ground, it’s not a big deal… it’s just the strikers doing what they do everyday (this applies specifically to Andhra Pradesh right now)

38. Nothing is open until after 10:00 am, and some days nothing is open at all because of a strike

39. In Indian English the Z=J and the V=W, which means that the word ‘Zoo’ now becomes ‘Jew’ and ‘Vowel’ becomes ‘wo-well’. Also, every vowel is said with a 'y' at the beginning which makes it sometimes difficult to write down words that people spell for you... "yay-p-p-l-ye"

40. At least once a day you will hear the following words or phrases: “then only…” “isn’t it?” “frankly” “shall we make a move?” “which country?”

41. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and think that a body is hovering over you because of the clothes that you have piled up on your mosquito net in order to avoid throwing them on the floor 

42. Your first name is referred to as your “good name”

43. At least once a week you somehow find yourself participating in puja and eating food from random people, just because people always invite you and seem to pull you in whenever it is happening

44. Your feet not only build calluses from walking without shoes all the time, but they also build up resistance to heat from walking on burning hot cement all the time 

45. You have spent countless hours patiently sitting and listening to a language you don't understand, and you are only aware of about 30% of what is going on at any given moment

46. You can’t leave any food out because you know it will soon be raided by ants

47. Gandhi’s birthday is celebrated with blowing out candles and a cake :)

Happy Birthday Gandhi!!  

p.s. Emily and I went to Rushikonda beach yesterday and it was beautiful!! Santosh and Satish met up with us there and we hung out for awhile, it was so fun.  I also met a lady there from Spain who didn’t really speak English.. I never thought I would get to use Spanish in India but that is the second time I’ve been able to!  The elders are teaching an investigator who is Indian but he just lived in Paraguay for 6 years and he doesn’t speak a lot of English and the elders don’t speak Telugu so I have been able to help them out too.  Love seeing the blessings of my mission continue afterwards :)  Here are some pics from the beach and a few other things we have been up to

we dyed our hair with henna the other day and Em got a little bit on her face... hahaha

playing in the water

talking with the lady from españa

me photographing while the most adorable little boy tried to get me to buy seashells haha (notice how my pants and shirt match the beach and the ocean? totally did not do that on purpose.)

our friend at the beach :) Santosh and Satish dared us to kiss it but they only offered 5 rupees and that DEFINITELY wasn't enough, haha

my life is kind of awesome right now :)

hahaha. me and satish

us being hipsters, or something

this is our adorable couple photo :) 

Satish never smiles!

there we go!

drinking coconut milk again! and below is Santosh stealing mine, hah

it is so funny, the whole back seat was open but there were 3 of us girls back there so these 2 guys squished in the front with the driver.  it's just so funny to me how much distance is always between guys and girls here!

we went to a Jain conference to talk with the leaders and they invited us to speak on the spot!! hahaha. somehow we got out of it... we still don't really know what happened........ but they did present us with these nice plaques as a memoir for visiting, haha!

with our friend Vandana (on the far right) and her friend Richa, she helped me get in touch with all of these guys to interview them for my project.  They are leaders in Jainism, the guy right below Richa is in charge of 320 branches of Jain youths... so basically, he's a pretty big deal!

after the conference they invited us to eat with them too and they fed us food from Rajhasthan. It was soooo yummy :) they are so dang nice!!! (ps remember that Jain nun I interviewed a while back? she was there again, and they told me a little bit more about life as a jain nun.  They walk EVERYWHERE, they don't use any transportation ever.  They took 3 months to walk from the north down here to Vizag in order to stay here and teach for awhile.  Some of them walked barefoot.  Also, they have shaven heads but they don't shave, they pluck every hair out individually! ouch!)

 That's all folks! k byeeee!