Well, shoot

Jun 15, 2008 14:38

India is going to suck. I guess it didn't occur to me that it might not be like Bangladesh. That I might not get my own room in an apartment with a bathroom, a computer with internet, a tv with a dvd player, etc. Oh sure, I knew that I had been living in the lap of luxury, but...Instead, I might have to take bucket baths all summer, have no internet access to speak of, fry any electrical device that I plug into my computer, and have ants eat the cellophane under my keyboard if I do turn it on (which might fry the battery). Ah, but to begin at the beginning:

I flew into DC and immediately just caught the bus from Dulles to DC ($3.10, yessss!!!). I got to the hotel and another girl got off with a huge bag. I was like, "Going to India?" Yes. It was my to-be-roommate Jillian, who spent the year in Lucknow studying Urdu and who's had three years and a summer of Bangla. We checked in and it turned out that there were only 4 of us going to the Kolkata program. The next day was unexciting other than we found out that we had to pay for our lodging in Kolkata. Everyone in India has to pay for their lodging, which totally insulted me because it was free in Bangladesh plus we got the same stipend!! I was like, "Oh great, now I have to pay a landlord, too!" And there are horror stories of that. Jillian when she was in Lucknow her landlord tried to say that she hadn't paid the last month's rent, and tried to modify the records that she had. Any way, nothing to do about it, so the next day we went to the airport to fly out to Kolkata.

We went DC to Newark, Newark to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Kolkata. Well, at the DC airport we had the worst food I've ever had in a restaurant. It was a frozen pizza. The restaurant had just heated it. Eew. I called Bank of America and told them that my card would be in India so that they wouldn't cancel it if they suddenly saw charges in India. On the Newark to Frankfurt flight my period started. Great. Big problem. I had known that it might, so I had a pad in my bag. One pad. One. I knew this could be catastrophic. So now I was worried about bucket baths, computer-eating ants, frying electronics, and my period. It was very worrisome. Frankfurt was a quick layover, but I can say that it's an awful airport. Very stupid. They checked us in to get into the waiting area in front of the gate. Furthermore, on the Newark-Frankfurt flight we didn't have personalized tvs, only little ones above the aisle (Lufthansa, in case you were wondering), so I had tried to sleep instead. On the Frankfurt-Kolkata flight I had an awesome seat. There was no seat in front of me, so I could stretch my legs out, and I had a little tv that I could bring out of the armrest. But of course, I had my period to panic about. And rightly so. I went to the bathroom and had gone through the underwear and was starting to go through my pants. I knew that if I couldn't get another pad or tampon I was a goner. I would get off that plane and my pants from the belt to the knees would be soaked through. No exaggeration and an apology to my readers, especially male (hi Dad!), but it was a problem. Luckily, the stewardess found these two tiny tampon things, but I was sitting funny the whole flight nevertheless. I watched "Definitely, Maybe" (eh), "La Vie en Rose" (Marion Cotillard absolutely deserved the Oscar for her portrayal of Edith Piaf, but man was that woman awful and messed up), and...um...oh, right "Jumper" (eh).

And then we landed. We took a little bus to the terminal, where we passed easily and quickly through customs and waited for our bags. Mine was the last to come, of course, and the top of my shampoo bottle had somehow come unscrewed so that shampoo had soaked through the bag and it smelled sweetly of Herbal Essences. I converted all the US money that I had brought at the money exchange place. It's 40 rupees to the dollar right now, and fluctuating rapidly. Inflation is going up by the hour, I guess. Then out into the muggy air, where of course my glasses fogged up immediately. We were met by some AIIS people, and they packed us into a little SUV and off we went. And now...

As we drove, me still panicking over bucket baths and no internet, I started looking around. At first, Kolkata seemed very different from Dhaka. There are no people out at night. None. Even at 1 in the morning in Dhaka there are people out. Hundreds of people, and rickshaws everywhere. There are none in Kolkata. Rickshaws are pulled by humans, not by bikes, and there are few of them. They're certainly not decorated as they were in Bangladesh. But the real surprise are the cars! They're from the 40s, I think. They're immaculately kept, and shine without rust, but no car like them has been seen for decades in the US. And they're everywhere! There were also dogs everywhere in the streets. But my heart sank as I realized that it was not so different from Dhaka at all. There are still the small stalls with corrugated iron roofs, the tiny hovels where people live, or the men who are asleep on the side of the road in their lunghis. And the trash that floats in the open gutters/sewage pits that run along the sides of roads. We dropped our two men off and drove to the AIIS institute in Kolkata. The creaky, rusted and old gates opened, and we walked upstairs to the institute.

We were put in a room with two singles. The bathroom had a small toilet and a showerhead in the corner. At least we had airconditioning. Apparently it's quite rare, and we won't have it in our homestays. Here, it is nice enough. I'm writing from the computer in the institute. Orientation starts tomorrow, and so we have nothing to do today. The boys have been placed in their homestay, which is apparently nice but for no internet. There's supposed to be wireless internet here, but I hear that it's not working. And so, all six of us here (4 CLS, 2 FLAS students) will fight to use the computer from 8:30-9, the time before class starts in the morning. I'm feeling slightly less panicked today than I was last night, when all i could think was, "Oh God, what am I doing here? Why did I come back! I hate it here!" But we'll see. I'm still scared. I'm still worried that I'll have no AC and bucket baths and that I'll hate it, but there's nothing to do about it. I'm here until August 26th, whether I like it or not. There was already a heavy rain this afternoon, but it was nice. It cooled things off. Jillian is flipping out because she demanded an apartment because her fiance from Lucknow is going to come visit her, but they gave her a homestay. So they'll find her an apartment and I might do that with her. If I have to pay for it anyway, I might as well be with Jillian and get internet (she's definately going to get it to talk with her fiance on Skype) and have privacy than be in a homestay. Stay tuned, however, because I won't know what anything will be like until tomorrow, when I meet the homestay.
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