Hey there readers,
Our first day in India was amazing, shocking, and slightly nauseating. My Mom and I woke up at about 8 in the morning with about 6 and a half hours of sleep behind us. When we emerged from our room we saw Dr. Bandhu and a fellow volunteer from New York, MJ eating breakfast. This consisted of circular, flat, but soft bread with herbs in it called chapatti (probably misspelled, but that’s what it sounds like anyways) with jam. It was pretty good, not gonna lie. So after that we were wondering what we were going to do since it’s a Sunday and on the weekends there are no projects. Dr. Bandhu told us to go to a temple called Swaminarayan Akshardham (I know it’s a mouthful), so he ordered us a taxi and we were off. The last time I had been driven through the streets of India, it was night and I couldn't see so much outside. This changed today when we were driven to the temple. I was honestly shocked. The amount of garbage I saw was gargantuan and what was even worse for me was that people live in the garbage. Little, makeshift huts dotted the landscape where people lived. What was surprising here was that the people in specific were clean and most of their clothes very nice. The traffic was even worse during the day and I would tell you more about it but I managed to sleep a bit in the car. The weather was cloudy which was nice because it was still warm but not completely stifling, especially in the car, but we had all the windows down anyways. When we arrived at the temple we had to drop our bags off, go through a bit of security and at first glance it was pretty amazing. Made of pink stone and consisting of one massive dome and four smaller ones, pretty much every last inch of it intricately carved. There were a couple of different buildings, some of which we couldn’t enter so Mom and I just beelined for the massive temple in the center. We dropped our shoes off and entered bare foot. This was definitely one of the most impressive buildings I’ve ever been in. The interior was completely made of marble and in the center was a massive gold statue of a Hindu god that I’m not familiar with so I just won’t pretend to know what I’m talking about. There were a few other statues and the insides of the domes were beautifully carved as well. After experiencing the inside, we got our shoes back and we went for a little walk enjoying the sun that had now emerged.We eventually picked up some tickets for three different exhibitions that were held in a massive building a few hundred meters from the temple. This included the storytelling of the Hindi religion, an Imax movie on one of the famous yogis, and finally a boat ride displaying the accomplishments of Hinduism. I went through this rather cynically after at some point it was said that the first airplane concept was made in 3000 B.C. Sure it's possible but for me it's extremely difficult to believe. We went to lunch outside and met this friendly Polish woman who we had a nice conversation with. Soon we left the breathtaking temple behind as we entered the pandemonium that is known as Indian traffic. We arrived home after an hour and a half and I just flopped down on the bed and took a nap. Next thing I knew I was awoken by voices and introduced to a family that had just arrived. They're pretty awesome and after the introductions, the two girls and I went to the park next door to play with some of the locals. I played cricket, though I had no idea what was going on, and we introduced a couple of games to them including duck duck goose and red rover. Duck duck goose soon turned into a case of Jack Jack JACK! because the kids found it difficult to pronounce . Red rover is a game where you form two lines and you essentially try to break through the other line. The kids didn't seem to get the process and I'm going to point out that their ages ranged from 5-13. Eventually the game consisted of a thirteen year old drop kicking a little kid in the face who began to bawl. Surprising, I know. We had dinner which was the chapatti, which I now discovered is called Roti if that clears things up for you (certainly didn't for me) but it was delicious anyways. I also had rice pudding which has the consistency of baby food. It wasn't too bad but I'm not really a fan. Afterwards, I met some more volunteers who I didn't see earlier because they went to the Taj Mahal. Also pretty cool people, just throwing that out there. Later we went to bed after discovering that we had to wake up at 8 the next morning to go to our first project, a slum school.
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