an observation, and some pictures

I couldn't help but notice that my post about getting food thrown at me on the street set the record for the most reader comments on my blog thus far. I'm glad I'm not under any pressue to achieve high ratings or else these next few weeks might have been rough ones for me...

A few random pictures and stories:

Yesterday I went shopping with Erin, Molly, and Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley is much trendier than I am so we ended up at Fabindia. They didn't have anything in his size, but he did help pick out two shirts for me.
These birds are everywhere in Kolkata, and as near as we can tell they are pure evil.
Last Sunday Molly, Erin, and I went to check out the Hoogley River. The bridges were extremely modern looking, but the scene below, though very interesting, was not.

Near the river is a very large flower market that we walked through. The first picture does not make it look amazingly attractive...

...but this one shows how beautiful the arrangements being sold actually were.

normally i love curried potatoes...

Living in Kolkata is hard.  Every time I think that I'm starting to figure things out something new gets thrown at me, in some cases literally.  Today I was just walking down the street on the way to the market for lunch when I felt something hit my back.  I turned around to see a very angry old woman yelling at me in Bengali with the remnants of curried potatoes in her hand - those same curried potatoes were now on the back of my shirt.  It was immediately obvious that she was missing a few screws upstairs, so I think the best way to describe my reaction was an instant of anger followed quickly by an emotionally defeated sigh.  Joe Ballard, if you are reading this, I feel it must be said that you never mentioned anything like this in our trainings - needless to say I felt completely unprepared... 

random updates

a few quick thoughts/updates/predictions:

- I led a one hour career preparation workshop for 119 11th and 12th grade students this morning - needless to say that my project is now in full swing.  In addition to the fact that the  room I was given had an intended capacity of somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 (some students were standing, others were sitting on each other's laps, and the entire front row was within two feet of the front blackboard sitting on benches that were brought in for the occasion), it was also long and narrow with three relatively loud fans spread down the middle.  My voice is a little sore coming out of it, but a technique that I learned at City Year (hands up) definitely kept me from losing my voice altogether.  Overall it went very well, and I learned today that they want me to come up with a different career-themed presentation every Friday while I'm here.
- A slightly different kind of story...yesterday I sat in on a training session for Kolkata "teachers" (not fully trained, but still providing a much-needed service) that was being held at the Loreto School.  A lot of the strategies that were being taught involved teaching through songs and games, so I jumpd right in with everyone else - luckily it was being taught in English.  During the training, though, I saw a white lizard crawling along the ceiling above me.  I later asked the trainer about it, and he said not to worry because they were safe.  That made me feel better, and I told him I had been a little antsy because I knew that some lizards bite or were poisonous.  He then said something like "oh yeah, it's poisonous, but you still don't need to worry about it - we just keep them here to catch bugs".   For any Simpsons fans out there, it made me think of the episode where the lizard birds were celebrated because they ate the town's annoying pigeons, and all fears of what to do with the lizard birds, themselves, were brushed away by the suggestion to just get a bigger animal to eat them - I believe it was a mongoose, but I may be mistaken (I also believe Homer may have called it the "circle of life" or "nature's cycle" - regardless, good times...  Either way, I must admit that I'm just not a big fan of any poisonous reptile that crawls along the ceiling above my head, even if I "don't need to worry about them".
- Finally, if anything is going kill me here I'm convinced it will be an umbrella - it is no fun being tall in a city of largely shorter people now that it is raining pretty much every day (the monsoon has arrived).  If the umbrellas themselves don't get me, I think a bus might when I tilt my head into the street to avoid the umbrellas...either way, I just want the record to show that I called it if it actually happens...

walking is exercise, right?

On Sunday (my one day off) I decided that the most logical thing to do on a scorchingly hot day would be to go for a four hour walk around town. The goals of the walk were to both see the city, and also test out the warning on my malaria medicine that says it makes people more susceptible to sunburn - my theory was that they were bluffing - they were not.
Below are a few pictures that I took along the way - it really was a beautiful day, especially compared to all of the heavy rain we've been getting lately. This first picture is of the Victoria Memorial. I didn't go inside, but plan on going back some evening when apparently they do a fountain show at sunset.

This next picture is of St. Paul's Cathedral. I just happened to walk past it and was blown away. The inside is equally amazing, so I'm going to try to attend a service sometime just to try to soak it all in.Finally, I'm happy to report that Mrs. Paul is alive and well, and it looks like my intended project, at least parts of it, just might work out - I'm still cautiously optimistic, but coming out of yesterday I'm more optimistic than cautious...

Introducing Flat Stanley

This post is for my nephew Ben, who recently sent me this email, dutifully typed by his mother I'm guessing:

"Dear Uncle Jay--
Is Flat Stanley still in India? I have another Flat Stanley in my Flat Stanley book. Bye. Ben"

For those of you not affiliated with the Clinton School, Flat Stanley is a children's book character that the First Lady of Arkansas Ginger Beebe uses to get kids excited about reading and learning about different cultures. She carries a cutout of Flat Stanley with her wherever she goes, and she asked my class to do the same during our international service projects. I am proud to say that my Flat Stanley was expertly decorated by my nephew, so he has every right to demand to know its whereabouts.

Well, Ben, I am happy to report that Flat Stanley is still here with me, and that he is enjoying himself in India. At first he was a little nervous and did not get out much. He instead chose to spend a lot of time sleeping under his mosquito net.

He has started to get more and more adventurous, though. On Monday, for example, he visited the American Center in Kolkata for a conference on Child Labor issues. Below is a picture of him with my classmate Erin:

Erin will be doing a project soon with the younger students at the Loreto Day School, where they will get to decorate their own Flat Stanleys. Third grade students at Rockefeller Elementary School in Little Rock, Arkansas were nice enough to decorate Flat Stanleys for us to bring to the students here in India, and we will then be taking the ones that the Indian students decorate back to Arkansas - sort of a Flat Stanley pen pal program.

I vow to do a much better job in the future of keeping all of you up to date regarding Flat Stanley's travels and exploits in India, and once again, many thanks go out to Ben for his hard work and decorating - the students here really like him.

Strike update

a few quick updates:

- Apparently the strike in Kolkata is in response to a recently announced 11% increase in fuel prices in India.  I've mentioned this to several people now, but I just can't understand how many people here are able to afford gas at all, with the average price in Delhi now being over $4.50/gallon.  Just to give some context, I took a 30 minute taxi ride yesterday that cost me a little less than $2.50.  The profit margins in that example must be non existant, and I would think they would actually be losing money.
- Also, the strike will only last from 6am-6pm each day (which is why I'm able to get to a computer now).  This was nice to find out today because I am a little hungry right now and don't have much in my flat to eat, so now I'll be able to hit up a little Chinese food stand on my block for dinner.
- It was wild to walk around the city today with the streets pretty much deserted.  There were a handful of soccer and cricket games being played in the middle of streets, even main streets.  The only vehicles out during the day were ambulances, police cars, and a small number of rogue taxis.

Power to the people

It sounds like I won't have internet access for the next two days or so because the majority of the city (which unfortunately includes cyber cafes) will be on strike tomorrow and Friday.  Apparently all public transportation except planes will be shut down, as well as most businesses.  I'm not exactly sure what they are striking about, but I have heard that strikes like this are not rare, so I guess I'll just have to get used to them.

I also wanted to share a few more pictures of the Loreto Day School:



This was taken from a pedestrian walkway that crosses over AJC Bose Road, the main road in my neighborhood.  In front of the school you can see a few of the many street vendors that line the sidewalk along the road.



This is the main entrance to the school (sorry, I don't know how to rotate pictures on blogspot).  I'm not exactly sure what the sign out front says - I'm hoping it has something to do with a BBQ that they are throwing in my honor, though...