Here's to a wonderful New Year...

The blur of being back home hasn't really subsided yet, and I've managed to keep my mind off the reality of trying to ease my way back into a lifestyle that has been completely foreign for a decent chunk of time, which is both good and bad. Coming home when I did was slightly overwhelming, especially for someone who is slightly overwhelmed every year come Holidays. I've had a week or so to relax and try to sleep more like a normal human being and less like a vampire. As stated before in my last post, I intended to whip together a "transition" piece, but now that I'm actually here and have been rather bluntly hit in the face by reality (in multiple ways) I've realized that there isn't much time for transition. I gotsta get paid!!!!! Seriously.


I start working with SEEM next week, and am looking forward to seeing the kids again. It's just temp, but is always fun.


Anyone in the Boston area, who checked my blog out and was the least bit interested: My friend Jess has a gallery opening at Northeastern next week. She was in Asia for 10 months and took some prodigious photos. Many are of India. All are gorgeous. Check out her blog if interested.

2005? Great year! I unequivocally hope that everyone has a happy and safe 06.


Stay Free,
Matt

Merry Christmas

Hello to whoever still checks this thing out. I'm back Stateside and wanted to extend some holiday wishes to all of you. I'm still trying to piece my life back together and figure out what just happened to me the past 3 months, so I don't really have much to say. Some time this week I plan on a recap of the transition and a more detailed account on of our trip the last 2 weeks. Right now, all I can think about is making it through Christmas alive.
Be good and talk soon.

BTW, Jenna and Hannah are still there and totally have permission to use this blog as their microphone, if they are inclined to do so.

Oh yeah, here is a link to my Flickr site which is home to some of my pictures that I didn't post to my blog. If you're interested: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattquagliozzi

How's the weather where you are?

Take a break from the drudgery of winter and check out where we've been the past 4 days. Right now we're in Madurai which is home to one of the most famous temples in India, but prior to that, we were cruising down the coast of Kerala by land and by sea. After we left Kochin, we went to Allepey where we took an 8 hour backwater boat ride to Kollam (heading south). The backwaters are a complex system of waterways that weave in and out along the coast of the Arabian Sea. Along the way, there are villages and temples strewn about in the most remote of locales. It was beautiful and perhaps the quietest place I've visited in India. A surprise to all of us, was learning that hundreds of people in this area died in last year's tsunami. Kerala is on the west coast, not the east where the vast majority of the damage was. Apparently, the water surge wrapped around the southern coast, and washed away thousands of houses. I took a picture of a shelter that was erected in the aftermath to house families whose homes were decimated. It was a very sobering moment, but then again, these "moments" come a dime a dozen in this country.

When we got to Kollam, we had to make our way down further to Varkala, which is one of the developing beach resort towns that have sprung up everywhere in order to draw tourists. Apparently, it's still in a nascent phase because there was hardly anyone there. The white sand and red cliffs were reason enough for me to plead to my travel companions to stay there for the rest of the trip, aware as I am of what awaits me upon return to Boston. Unfortunately we had to take off after less then 24 hours and get on an 8 hour train to Madurai, where I sit now.

We've done about 6 cities in 6 days I think, which is wearing us down. We get to stay here for 2 nights, then go inland to the Ghats (Mountains), then to Chennai, where I fly from.

Road trip pics

Pics go from the bottom up-
Calcutta, West Bengal: (1) Goats being sacrificed at the Kali Temple, which was one of the most horrifying places I've ever been to. (2) Communist rally (West Bengal is a Marxist state) in the streets. (3) Rickshaw puller.
Bangalore, Karnataka: This look familar? One of the main strips in the city.
Cochin, Kerala: The southwestern coast of the country and seemingly 10 million miles away from where we were living. Everything is different down here. Right now we are on Fort Cochin which is an island. (1) Chinese fishing nets pulling in some tasty fish. (2) Sun going down over the island.

We're doing more southern travel then banging a left to head back towards the East coast where I fly home from.

Maybe I'll post at some point, if not, see you soon!

I whirlwind through cities...

Luckily for us, there's an internet connection in our hotel this particular evening. I haven't had enough time to catch my breath after we left Kalimpong, much less think of something worthy to write. It seems the whole ordeal has been nothing short of hectic up until now. In the past 4 days we've been in Calcutta, Bangalore, and now Kerala. We'll continue on the southern route for several more days before we make our way back towards the east coast, where I fly home from.
We're all run down from the planes, trains and head pains incumbent with traveling in a country that is uncomfortable no matter where you go, but it's gorgeous where we are now. It's also hot.
Very brief recap, because I'm exhausted.
Calcutta was every bit as scary, exciting, and enormous as I had expected. In the span of about 4 hours we witnessed goats being ritually sacrificed at a temple that was straight out of some B- horror movie, and then ate pastries and drank tea with the beautiful upper middle classers at a place that was a dead ringer of a "Cheesecake Factory" clone. That was pretty much the theme of the stay. India is the land of contrasts, but Calcutta accentuated the poles. There was more poverty than could ever be imagined in the West, but a good deal of the city felt oddly comfortable and familiar. Much moreso than the hellish runaround of Delhi. For a city of 14 million people, Calcutta seemed to have pockets of tranquility that even New York doesn't have. And there are human drawn rickshaws (which are unfortunately being phased out by the Marxist government, for some reason). I'll post some disturbing and beautiful pictures when I can find a computer with USB.

Next was Bangalore, which was our first foray into South India. Chennai was experiencing inclement weather in the form of cyclones, so we changed our flight and went to the west side instead. Bangalore is the IT hub of India, and easily it's most Westernized city. It's also where all of the infamous call centers are located, which means that there's a good chance that I bumped into that guy that methodically coached you back to good wits when your Dell computer crapped out on you. All of the development has turned it into a bland strip mall-ish city, that is void of any character or worthy sights to see. It was nice to walk around and feel that "American comfort" of knowing that the person flanking you on the sidewalk is not dirt poor and sizing you up to steal your wallet. On the other hand, it embodied much of the America that I'm glad I've been away from the past 3 months. There was a very nice park though, which was cleaner and greener than anything else I've seen here in cities. The people were pretty, wealthy, and proud of the fact that KFC and Pizza Hut are within a stones throw from each other.
Next up, and where I'm falling asleep writing this right now, is Cochin. It's gorgeous here. Jungle brush and the Arabian Sea. Tons of tourists and not enough natives to shield them, but the ocean is reason enough to forget about it for a few days. Tomorrow we're going to a beach town where we'll travel by boat through the "backwaters" of the mangrove and palm tree islands, weaving in and out of the ocean. We'll be in Kerala (the state we're in now) for a few days, then take a long train to Madurai which is home to perhaps the most famous Hindu temples in the country. After that, I'm done. Back to homebase in the states, and getting culture shocked all over again. Hopefully I'll see most of you upon arrival.
I can't promise that I'll have this kind of time again to write because we're constantly on the road it seems, but we'll see. If I do, I'll try to post some pictures.
Ok, I'm falling asleep. I'll be at the beach the next few days. Have fun shoveling.

Makin' moves...

Just like that, we're gone...
Seems like only yesterday we rolled into town, but as it tends to do, time marched on rather quickly. Today we said our tearful goodbyes to our lovely students who we both will miss terribly. They prepared a pretty formal farewell for us with all of their parents. There was a raffle, and of course, I won an electric rice cooker which is obviously too big for me to carry around with me for 2 and half weeks. I guess I'll give it to the fam. Too bad. I like electric rice.

We have to part ways with our family on Thursday, which neither of us are looking forward to. If you've read the blog, you know darn well how great they all are. Needless to say, they'll be missed and never forgotten.

Now to Calcutta, which I've heard some good things about from other travelers we've come across. We're meeting Jenna's friend, Hannah, there which we're both excited about because she's awesome. The three of us will do the southern tour thing together.
I'm sure that we'll have internet access in Calcutta so I'll post about how insane it is and whether or not a human rickshaw puller can pull us "husky" Americans.
Ciao.

No, not Hitler Youth! They're my students....
This is Thirteenth Mile, not the Third Reich.

I've been trying to post about our students and the teaching gig for awhile, but I've been sidelined by faulty internet connections and most recently, dysentery. The latter can best be described as having a 24 hour enema, but probably not as pleasant. I'm fine now. I think.
Anywoo, the real reason that we came to this crazy place was to teach, not just to look at the pretty mountains, which are very pretty I might add.
Our school is a primary school of 54 students ranging from nursery to Class 4. All of them live fairly close to the school (although some are actually from Nepal and Sikkim but stay with relatives in Kalimpong), and we've even gone to visit several of them at their homes to meet their families.
I was assigned to teach Grammar, which was interesting considering their textbooks were written using very suspect grammar. Also suspect was my spelling on the day of their exam, which found me misspelling the name of the subject I was entrusted to teach wrong on the blackboard. I am nothing if not careless from time to time...
The school itself is cute, albeit very rudimentary. It lacked electricity, walls that ran from the floor to the ceiling, and had a tin roof which was overwhelmingly noisy when it rained. As a teacher I had to compete in a daily screaming contest with Jenna just to be heard in the next room. My baritone typically beat her tenor, but ultimately that's up to the kids to decide.
As for the actual teaching, it is the concrete opposite of my memories of elementary school. The entire learning process revolves solely around memorization, and not comprehension. I would teach a lesson only to write the answers on the board, so they could copy them down. No matter how baffled their little Nepali faces looked, I had to keep it moving. I had done my part if I wrote the correct answers on the board. I often found myself shooting myself in the foot for trying to actually "teach" certain lessons to make sure the kids understood what they were writing down. In the end this was just time wasted, as I was short several lessons come exam time. When exams rolled around, there was absolutely no pressure on me or Jenna because they had every answer to every exam written in their notebooks. This method of teaching was not something that I ever got used to, but you can't fight the machine, man. Especially if that machine is a foreign machine and you're only there for 2 months.
Probably the most unnerving disparity in the Indian educational mechanism was the propensity of teachers to wail on students with bamboo sticks. It was like all of those stories that older Catholics tell you about there schools days. Like the one about "Sister Mary Nancy and her cane" or whatever the crazy nun's name is. Very tough to stomach indeed. If students get answers wrong, they are reprimanded with a bamboo lash. Sometimes I almost bawled as hard as the poor kid that was getting beat. I had to leave once. You should see how they treat their dogs....a nightmare on the collective unconsciousness of PETA.
With all of the alien differences that came with teaching in an alien place, I can confidently say that it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. There was never a day when I was not impressed with their capacity and willingness to learn a new language, and given the resources, they do an excellent job. Jenna and I almost broke down when we went to the house of two of our students. A family of four living in a room big enough for 1. Despite the poverty that many of them come from, they are all happy, intelligent, and wonderful. It's funny, but the people seem happier as a whole compared to Americans whose quality of life is exponentially better. This too, I will miss.
I'll miss these kids so much, and saying goodbye to them will be sad for us. Prior to coming to India for 3 months, I heard so many people say that traveling will "change my life". I've had a hard time with this statement, which I've been grappling with since I've been here. Has it been an eye opening and amazing experience? Damn right it has. Have I seen things and met people that I've only read about in books or seen on public TV or Discovery Channel? Of course. Have I seen how the other half of the world lives? Yup. All in all, it has been an amazing time and certainly something I will cherish forever and never forget. It's been both the most wonderful and most terrifying experience I'll likely have. But has it changed my life? Hard to say. Poverty is poverty, no matter where it happens to fall on the map. Last I remember, right before we left the states, there were almost a million of impoverished Americans who lost their homes in a hurricane, who were not being helped by the country that they pay their taxes in. I doubt that my life has changed during this trip any more than it would have had I went down to New Orleans to help out the poor people who were being given the ultimate "F.U." by their own country.

Working with these kids on a daily basis on the other hand, will leave an indelible, life changing impression on me. Seeing these little people go through life the way they do is a beautiful thing. I have no doubt that some of them will go on to do wonderful things. Even the least intelligent of them were the most charming and appreciative people one could imagine. I think everyone I know could take a lesson from them. Each one was so happy to be there every day, and I think that that's the best attitude anyone could have, from the 1st world, to the 3rd world and all points in between. That's the lesson I learned from these little rascals. I'll think of them always.
See you soon.

One week left...

We have exactly a week left of our visit to Kalimpong. It's sad to think about moving on and it's beginning to feel like home (save for the lack of communication thing).
Exams are this week instead of last week, because of the death in the family so we've been busy trying to make sure our kiddies pass with flying colors. We dodged a bullet big time with the exams being pushed back a week. We were supposed to teach the kids some American dances (are there any?) for their end of the year extravaganza. After much deliberation (and intense lobbying to do "Rock Lobster" by the B-52's on my part) we narrowed it down to some songs from the Sound of Music and a Wilson Picket song for the guys, which had the potential to be VERY funny if the kids got into it. Luckily for them though, we ran out of time. Me in charge of "creative movement" wouldn't bode well for any diplomatic relations between India and our country.

Tomorrow if I make it to the internet, I'll do the post that I've been waiting to do for awhile. Everyone seems to want a piece of us now that it's the one week countdown, so we'll be busy busy busy. I need to write about the kids though. They're so flippin' awesome.