"That's life. That's what all the people say; Flying high in April; Shot down in May." -Frank Sinatra

I think I have been what Frank Sinatra would have ment by "Shot Down." The past weeks have been a bit of a challenge where obstacles have been repeatedly thrown up in front of me. It started about the 22 of November when I broke my arm during soccer practice. It was towards the end of the practice, maybe in the last twenty minutes, meaning scrimmage time. I was playing and ignorantly excited to be doing so. I ran towards an opposing attacker and easily stole the ball as his control was weak. I pulled it to the left and moved it forward down the field mentally calculating the relative position of the defenders I was approaching quiet rapidly. I was on him, or more he was on me, and I pulled the ball left out of his reach. His foot dove out catching the shin of my back foot which was stopped like a wrench being thrown into the gears of a whirling machine. From full sprint to dead stop I stuck out my left arm instinctively and it was snapped in the twirl of out-of-control summersault. To me it was a blur of dark sky and lit turf, the roughend edges hinged by the incredibly loud sound of craking bone like a twig being broken in two. The whole field heard the sound and none had any doubts about the seriousness of the fall. In the moments of tumble and sound, the miliseconds between another day at soccer practice and a month in a cast, my arm miracioulsy changed shape. It grew another elbow. I starred in horror, noticing the bone poking at the in side of my skin producing a little knob on my smooth skin. Maybe just a bug bite, that ended a little too sharply! It took roughly five seconds from the sound of the snap for me to vocalize my truama. I couldn't scream, not in the way people do on rollercoasters or in horror movies, I just couldn't find it in me. Instead I shrieked over and over a sound that sounded like a continues voice-crack. I kept doing this as coaches ran over and kids ran over but stepped back when they too saw the wierd shape of my arm. It wasn't until the coaches gingerly lay me on my back and my arm to my side out of my view that I shut up. I realized that there was no pain. A weird numbness crept through my fingers and arm. In fact, only with a glance to my left did I understand why people were crowded around me shouting for the other coaches to get the nurse, oh shes left the school already, ok get the first aide kit, call his parents, do you know your mom's number, no? why not? its ten digits, don't worry I've got it, ok shes says your grandmother will be here soon, wheres the ice? whats taking it so long? I don't think my arm is supposed to look like that.

I waited on the field for twenty minutes or so whistling pieces of songs. My skin  was exposed and as I had sweat off my bug spray mosquitos feasted on my nervous blood. Though I didn't know it at the time. Coaches repositioned my arm, trying to get ice on it, but this sometimes involved weight being put on the joint that wasn't supposed to be there. Uh could you move that, like now! Cardboard was bent around my arm and some more was slid under the front to make up for the angle. A sling was put over my shoulder, but backwards so through the same struggle to get it on we took it off and back on the other way. I remebered a year before, almost to the day laying on the field, people wondering if my arm was broken or what. Today was different; the question was different: How the hell are we ganna get him to the hospital! And finaly  I was ready to leave. Coach instructed me saying I was going to sit up, but take your time, and then they were going to lift me up carefully. It happened much more quickly than explained, thankfully. As I passed by my friends I joked with them about my arm and smiled, for the last time that night.

As I was laying in them same bed as I had been almost a year ago in the same ER I was given great care. The nurses were very nice and treated me like one of their own sons. This time I was hooked up to an EKG and had my blood pressure taken. I kept asking my bewildered grandma and sister if the moniter was saying I was alive or not. It eased up the tension a little, and my grandma needed that. I lay calmly in the bed kinda just not wanting to be there. Friends came over to the hospital, and I was greatful for the company and thoughtfulness they shared. Just as soon as I had got comfertable there, still in a state of denail, mention of putting my arm back in place arose. Ya I sorta lost all calm there, slowly at first. A beefy man who was the doctor talked with my parents and I stayed wide eyed in bed realizing what they were going to have to do. I still hadn't reached a state of tears like my grandma or mom. That soon changed.

Nurses grouped around my bed and the doc pulled up a stool. This was after my teary-eyed mother confronted the doctor and asking him what pain medicines he had. She begged for morphine but just like a nice steak or mexican food, you can't get that in India. I was given some pain medicine that was completely useless and unnecessary because it had no affect. The doctor sat down next to me and we spoke in hindi a little but I was too nervous to say too much outside of the basics. Then the doctor grabbed my hand and the nurse my elbow. He kindly told me to look away. What type of fucking painkiller is that?!? Look away?! What? There's no pain if I can't see it? I don't know about you doc, but are you shitting me! I wasn't so calm anymore. I waited as they held both sides of my arm because there were now two sides! I waited almost too long. He would tense and I would brace myself and then he would relax leaving me unsure wether to keep bracing myself or relax a little. This happened a few times before to my luck, he caught me as I started to relax. He pulled on one side and the nurse pulled on the other. My forearm muscles fought against there pull by pure reflex  For the lack of anything but a cliche, fire shot through my arm. I almost passed out. Easily the worst pain in my life. I don't think the look-away painkiller did much.

I was sent home wearing a plaster cast, by way of a specialist named Dr. Bajaj. He was recommended by every expat, especially my friend who had broken his arm a month before. (His cast came off that night.) I was scheduled for a procedure that would realign my arm perfectly to be done the next day.

That day was Friday and as my sister went off to school I went off to a small little clinic where I watched James Bond on TV until the doctor arrived and I was put into a surgical gown that looked like a picnic table cloth. Shaking from fear, I was pulled into the OR on the way watching the ceiling lights pass by overhead. People in surgical masks stood around me. It took three painful tries to get the IV needle in the right spot. When it was finally in, I started to relax under the placebo the anesthesia was taking effect. Before they injected it into my IV I said drowsily  What color casts do you have? Green and blue. Not wanting to having a matching cast with my friend I chose blue. It was the same color as last year. And then I woke up. It was sunday morning and I didn't want to be waking up but slowly I did and then fell back asleep. I heard my dads voice. Then I fell back asleep. Blackness clouded my eyes until I realized it wasn't Sunday morning at all but the room I had waited in before. I lay with an IV in my arm and felt drugged. Because I was. My dad swears I revealed all my secrets under the influence, but I know hes joking. I had a terrible 'hangover' the rest of the day.

The next week we went to Dharamsala and met His Holiness the Dali Lama XIV. I thought his blessings would help me, sending me on a track to healthiness. The next day I got dengue. Now, as that lasted for two solid weeks, as soon as that ended I got a significant respiratory infection with a hacking cough through the night. I am now almost over it. Whats next?

His Holiness

      "I have no complete idea who this guy is, or why it is such a big deal to shake his hand. Can't anyone see him? Can't everyone get this 'specile prevlige'?" I wondered looking around. Unclear if something would acully happen, I scurred off to follow our host, the directer of the Tibetan Hosabital. Everyone was here or there doing there own little thing. We, Chase, Gram, Dad, Mom, and I were about to meet the Dhali Lama in person!
     "You could ask anyone and the Dhali Lama would be in the top 10- or even top 5- of 'the most imporent people list'!" my dad wispered to me as we calmly walked into the line. I guess i was really lucky to be there, since my dad was shacking, my Gramma was almost crying, and everyone else was super happy. I, on the other hand, was just nerves I would mess up or do something wrong!
     After waching the first group, I was told to 'When in dout, toch your head to his hand'!  But then before I knew it we where being nuged right infront of The Dhali Lama! He shook all of our hands and rubbed Chase's cast. They quckly tock our picture and before we had to leave Dad asked for His Holiness to sign the book he wrote. this is what he wrote:
          With my deep apppreciation and praise to your great work for the elimination or the life threating disease of tuberculosis.
          I thank all the conserned people.
      Dalai Lama (Buddist monk)
               2012/11/19

     We felt blessed throughout that amazing experise!

Life is ALWAYS an adventure!

   WOWEE!!! We got back to Delhi about two months ago, and it's all good! For example, I love my teacher, Ms. Van Dyke! I love my friends, Isabella, Josephine, Caitiline, Anna, Julie, and much more! I have a great ballet class...oh wait, that is not the topice of this post, so...

Chase's Breakfast!

     This weekend was 5 days long! Friday was a teacher thing, and on Tuesday it is Mahatma GandhiJi's birthday! We had a family(ish) day on Friday, and went to a lovely outdoor Jazz Concert! There were two bands, and both were great! Chase and Dad didn't like the first singer, saying she was selfish to the band, but they were all good. Anyways, we had a late night and came home on the metro. We slept soundly... whatever, moving on.

Into the Kitchen!

     The next morning after we all woke up, and mom went to the gym, we left to an "amazng"  American breakfast at a hotel. Chase and dad got an egg dish, and I got waffles. I was totally shocked when their meal came. Chase had a mile high stack of bacon! Everything was amazing, and it only gets better! When we were leaving, mom asked a worker if she could see the bakery. "All of you?" he asked. "Sure," mom replide. So the man left. One minuet later he came back with the chef. "Right this way," he said, giving us hair nets. We got to see them making the food, not what mom had in mind, but it was cool! we learned that they make a big, rectangular cake base, and then cut it out into circles, or shapes! Mom asked the chef what hes favorete food they made was, and the guy showed us their famous Bullseye! We got to eat it, as a gift from them, free desert after breakfast. Super cool!!

   
      Next, we went to an art musum, which had very unique and interesting art! It was a show that only was happening for a few days, but was on the TV, the news, it was very big! It was a MASSIVE show, who would have known!!!



      Then Shukla drove us an hour away to this "palace" hotel in Faridabad, no not like what you are thinking, it wasn't fancy...just old! As soon as we got there we just hung out, slept, read and played.
    "Come on, lets get out and about," Dad said, so we slathered up on bug spary (it's Dengue season), and headed to the market. The streets were borderd with little shops, and eveything was...crazy! (In a good way.) I bought Flip-Flops one pair, out of a million to chose from! Time flew and we stayed out untill it was dark, and untill we got lost. As we were being peddled back to the hotel, we passed a big lighted up faires weel. Turning around we relised it was like a big amusment park!

     "WOW," we exclamed. There were preety much three things, rides, women selling the same, cheep, toys to really no one, and (what we think were) women dancing, as a show, for men!?! There were about 7 ferris wheels, each one faster, and less safe, then the other. I'm not joking, they were SOOOO fast!! Also, there was the big boats that go side to side, wich were being controlled by levers and men on each side giving it force, fraeky! There were woman siting, selling the exat same thing as the women next to them! We played ring tossed, and chase shot with an Indian Beeby Gun! We ate "dinner,"and enjoyed some fair treats, like cotten candy! Like Dad said, "Even if we start the day american (food) we will not end the day American!" so right:)



     We went home and wached TV, because dads computer didn't work with the movie. It was awesome!!!!! We fell asleep in the heat, no electricity, and we were sweeting like crazy! 30 minuets later chase turnd on the Fan, there was electricity...hahaha! the fan came with one speed, SUPER fast! Dad made a joke saying, "who ever made the fan made the rides at the fair to day!" So, we fell asleep laughing!  The next day we let the fun pass over us, and then took the metro home. What an exicting, fun, lazy, and amazing weekand. Hope to write again soon,       TESSA!!!!!

   

Uttrakand: Adventure of the Himalayas (Part 2)

     Oh, My, Gosh, i can't belive we are going back to Seattle in about 6 houres...YHE!!! i am all ready to go, and i will tell you more later. First, though, i need to tell you alittle more about Uttrakand. the main reason we went, besides to get away from the Delhi heat (120 degress), was to make a film, or two, for the Uttrakand People we stade with at the NGO. After talking with the main man Mahaven, we decided to make three short films. One about the Spring Water, one training video about the piking and packaging of the fruit. it was fruit season you know. The last was an "eye camp" they were putting on. They were checking eyes, and making glasses, and some other things.  to be honest, i don't really know what -or why for that matter- exactly what we were filming. But, Chase Mom and I, made the films for them. chase and I helped with the lighting and sound!
      if you look out over the beautiful mountains and farm land and more you will see... mountains layering over eachother, far and misti all the way to your side. the land is too steep for farming, so the creative farmers shaped the land almost like giant steps. there are little, or should i say "big", houses scattered around, each with there own acer -or two- of land. trees filled the mountains and it was truly a pretty site!!!
     in the NGO there were voluteers that we boned with. One morning i woke some of the girls up with a YOGA class that I taught. The voluneers were staying at this place for their summer, like a month or two. They really liked the class and said it was the best morning they had had (but they had only been there fora  week.)  After the homestay I saw them coming out of the conference room/my YOGA room, wearing the same YOGA clothes they had last time. I think i inspired them and i am kinda proud.
     Now i am going to tell you how i am so ready to get to America. i want to finish this fast so one reason is my Mahindi that I got today. i got it on both hand though one hand is so much better than the other. Mahindi is something indian's put on before weddings. it stays on for about 2 weeks! A man hand did it on mine but it is so fine you might think it was made by a machine or a mold.

Thank you for reading this blog.  See you again soon. AMERICA HERE I COME!!!

Uttrakand: Adventures of the Himalayas (Part 1)

The year has officially ended for us. Tonight (or tomorrow morning depending on how you look at it) we begin our 24 hour journey towards home. We will expect to be in Seattle for the first ten days and then Cape Cod for a month after that. Between now and then we expect an amazing trip full of uninterrupted movies (well maybe besides sleeping.) To say me and Tessa are excited is an understatement. It actually almost feels unreal to me, but I can easily say this vacation and break from life is much needed by all of us!

Chai is the common drink of all of India and a drink that is most
usually given to someone being welcomed into a home. It is made
from ginger, tea leaves, cardamon, sugar and milk.

The family we stayed with had a few children (the oldest being
10 years old) and we taught them duck-duck-goose (in hindi)
and Simon Says.

During these three weeks since schools ended we (just Tessa, Mom, and I with Dad staying home to work)  took the time to go to Uttrakand, a region in the Himalayas (pronounced Him-all-E-uh-z but the locals,) to volunteer for a very big and well known organization called Chirag. (Chirag is an acronym for Central Himalayan Rural Action Group as well as meaning "candle" in hindi.) Me and Tessa are going to join forces for this topic as it was an amazing educational and experienced filled trip that felt a lot longer than one week. I am here to write part one and Tessa will soon follow with part two.

I have been assigned the difficult job of describing the home-stay. Though it seems all of this trip would be hard to describe! Where to start, I don't really know so I will just jump right in. The home-stay was on the last night and it was where we got to stay in the house of one of the farming families. I guess I will have to add that during the time we were there Uttrakand was in the middle of the peach, plum, pare, and apricot season! The fresh fruit we ate there was amazing! At the end of the week we even bought two crates to bring back to Delhi (maybe 10 kg.)

Here is "the cutest baby ever" -Mom and Tess, and the room in
which they all sleep at night on thick blankets.

The farmers have limited water and sporadic electricity but they had relatively nice houses. We were lucky to get a room to our selves and two beds (though they weren't amazingly comfortable.) The house actually accommodated two families though our Hindi didn't endup leading us to figuring out how they were related.

Quite frankly we learned a lot about a way of life unknown to many. It was a life with little luxury and spending all day to try and just get by. For example, women would spend an hour before each meal making just chapati (an Indian bread) so that comes down to three hours a day just making this type of bread! Every meal we had each day during the week (in the homestay or not) consisted of only chapti and dahl. And sometimes aloo (potato.) We were very tired of that by the end of it all!

This is their kitchen and one of the women making chapati
and chai at the same time.

On top of that to get milk (which is "dude" no joke in hindi. And cow is "guy!") the women had to go into the barn which was the first floor of the house. There was no windows in the barn, because of the risk that some other predators might get in, making it dark and musty. The bedding was just a pile of leaves that was changed rarely so it smelled terrible. When they did clean it they used the old bedding for fertilizer. Pretty self sufficient, no? It turns out that these farmers spend a lot of money and energy collecting grass and other food for their animals.

This picture was taken with the help of the flash on the camera
although it was only the afternoon and very bright outside!

 The best moment I had came in the morning. It was six o' clock and I had spent hours tossing and turning over the hard bed and bruises dotted my hips. I was awaken by the grandmother, who was the main host, as she opened the door letting the early sun peak up over the mountains and flowed the room. She held a tray in her hand with metal cups containing chai which I gingerly held and sipped slowly so that it wouldn't burn my tongue, though theres no avoiding that with chai and it did slightly anyway. We stepped outside to the balcony which protruded from the house maybe two feet. She sat me down on the edge against the outside wall of the room we had slept in. (Mom and Tessa had gotten up earlier to go for a hike.) As I finished with the chai I looked out over the green hills on which orchards of sweet peaches and the other fruits of the season grew. There were few clouds in the sky and the steep hills created shadows as the sun lumbered up and over them. Houses dotted, spread out inconveniently. I looked down into the valley and heard the sounds of a wedding that had happend through the whole night. The drumming could be heard from a great distance as the tent was a mere speck in the sea of a pine, oak, and fruit tree oasis. As I finished my chai, licking the sugary remains off from around my lips I was given three onions and a handfull of garlic cloves to peel.
Later Mom and Tessa came back and I said to Mom, the words flowing off my tongue as I had them well rehearsed, "Hum breakfast bana rah-ha hey." We are making breakfast.

Tessa will now take over for part to though, as she will probably tell you, she is overly zealous with excitement! I can't wait either... 18 hours of movies here I come! - Chase

Reflections

It seems every time we post we start out with something along the lines of "wow, we haven't posted anything in ages." This is evidently not an exception. We are wrapping up our first year in India and the time has just flown by! School ends tomorrow, the end of 7th grade for me and 4th for Tessa. This year has been one of many ups and downs, much like the roller coaster metaphor given to us before we came. It has been filled with many positve learning expiriences as well as negitive ones. I've gained much insight about the culture and economics of this astoundingly different place as well as the natural hard times of moving. Tough parts have come up throughout the year with much thanks to being 13, a year I hear by many is a tough one (I can only argue for that!)

Not only has the lack of a music program in this country depleted one of my favorite passions, I have faced challenges about fitting with the crowd at the school and trying to figure out who I am. I am told thats just a part of ife and growing up. Well, having moved to India I will never know if it is really just that or a side effect of moving.

I have learned a considerable amount that I would have not even thought about back in Seattle. Altough culture here is that of one still striving from the beginings of hinduism, the economics of this country are  equally fascinating. So much of this country is unregulated yet still functions considerably efficently. Take  for example that although the trash collection is very modest and rellys heavily on the trash pickers, India still collects 47% of its generated plastic as compared to the states where we only collect 5%! Many of these situations occur on a day to day baises thanks to the large amounts of unemployed leading to cheap labor.

Other traditions that have interested us are those of arranged marriages which I'm sure you will hear a lot of from Mom in the future. Personally I would have no idea where to start with that topic anyway :)

One of the many positive things of India is the fruits of this region. Like it should be fruits are avalible seasonally during the time they can be grown in this region. It is officially the mango season. The many types of mangos are all amazing and to die for! I have about three or four a day sometimes, but Mom tries to limit our consumption for the purpose of not constantly buying. Along with mangos during this season there are lychees. These are also very good! For those of you who don't get to experience what a  lychee is   they are a fruit. Past that I don't know how to really describe them. They are about the size of grapes and have a hard shell thats purple-ish or more red. They are easy to peel and on the inside is a weird white meat that tastes amazing. Under that is a pit. Both of these things can be seen being sold on the rode on carts that are pushed by sellers. On the way home from school today there was a road where  we counted 16 consecutive lychee sellers! It is a spectacular sight.

Here is a comical picture of a park we went by recently. Like a lot of things in India it looked really cool on the outside but upon closer observation all broken. There were a few other slides like this along with whole platforms ripped up and gone. There was also a ladder up to a slide on which all of the rungs were gone along with huge sections of the slides. Lets all take a moment of silence to all of those innocent kids that have died at this park.


As a family we have also spent some time teaching english to blind kids at a boys school for the blind. It is the school our driver's son attends. We have stopped now for summer but here are a few pictures of  what it was like:

These pics are of us teaching the kids the body parts and simple commands using everyones favorite game "Simon Says." (The boy in the tan colored shirt is our driver's son. His name is pronounced P-ewsh (spelling ignored) and he is fourteen.) They had a lot of fun playing this game. Other, less successful ways, we tried to teach the boys were by having one on one conversations with them in which I could tell they weren't getting anything out of it but Mom was a little bit more convinced they were learning a little. Overall the experience was a good one and I learned a lot about teaching especially those you can't comunicate well with.

Well thats about all I'm going to put into this post. I will make sure that the next person who posts is Tessa because it seems it was originally her idea but I'm turning out to be the one who posts the most. I see revenge for this in the near future :) sorry Tessa. -Chase

Our adventures vacation

Wow, we haven't posted in ages!!
Guess what, because of that you missed a lot!! Whatever, i will tell about the last thing that happened... um its kind of long but here i go!!!
     last week it was Chase's 13th birthday, a big deal, right? we decied we would have a vacation, not just for Chase, to Chill-axe. Flush zipp slam,were some of the many sounds.
     "Cheak the tolits," mom commanded.
     "I think we got evry thing," dad yelled, zipping the bags.
     "Hurry up, i'm soo ready," i replide, jupping up and down.
     Yhe, 1 and a half hours later we were driven to our new adventer. through dirt rodes, we wachet villegers slash at the tall, dull, yellow wheat stoks. we learned from our driver the whole process.
      Finally, errre we truned at a big sign,        Betrix        Descover Nature    
     "huh?" we wondered. "a big fancy sign in the middle of nowhere," i thought.it looked tiny, but we walked out to the small, yet fancy, mud and straw hut.  when we walked on we relized how big it was. "4 Acers of land," the guy added.
     "I hope there is a swimming pool or a lake," i whispered to my awing mom., we brought our swim sutes. Just then we turned the corner and poof there was a big, stunning, bright blue pool!! 
    twenty mins afer we were all setteled Chase Dad and I splased in. it was fun! 
     Sudenly, a group of workers gathred around a bush. Dad and chase went to see what was happeing, i didn't care. 
     "A snake?" i heared dad chukel. i raced out and sure anof they were smaking something with a huge stike. Swosh, they pikeed up a snake and raced away with it on the stike. 
     "So much for  'discover nature'," dad esclamed as we left the bush. we giggled, part of the snake was even flattened!!! 
     i could go on and on but good night...For now.... . . . . . . . .
    

A Journal Entry From Kerala

Ruummmmmmbbbbblle, grrrroooom. Diesel  engine houseboats interrupt the calmness of the Backwaters. A scratching in the walls, I originaly mistook for rats, are the pigeons looking for shade in this tropical heat that made sweat drip down my face in uncoordinated paths even when I sat in the canoes in peace as we drifted with the invasive water-Hiaasen.  After spending a night in Kochi (which Dad and Tessa pronounce “Cohin,” another name for it, making me think of Koh Chang in Thailand The feeling of the culture and land is not much different. For example the food  here is heavily coconut and banana based as well.) we took a two hour drive to here in the backwaters. As for the name of the area we are in, we have not figured that out. We pulled up along a river bank, got out our luggage looking around for the guest house called “Greenpalm” and instead found a fair sized canoe that would act as our taxi to get to the other side. It was a great two minute ride across that really set the peacefulness and relaxed tone of the four days to come in the area.

Earlier in Kochi, we had had a great time. From the airport it was about an hour and half drive and having not eaten anything all morning as soon as we put our stuff down in the hotel we walked a block to a restaurant that all but knocked me out with culture shock. First of all there was not an Indian person in sight! That was the first time in almost seven months. Also the menu was very tourist oriented. This was obvious to tell for the menu emphasized its used of cleaned (as in Clorox soaked) greens and other uses of “clean water.” This allowed us to have good (as in outside of school) sandwiches and salads which were also the first in a long time. It reminded me very much of a place we ate at in Baja, Mexico. (In fact, for some reason or another, Kochi in general reminded me of Baja.) Afterwards we walked alone the water front, literally a block away. Great Chinese-fishing-nets, thrown together and repaired with seemingly random sheets of wood, lined up in a long row from one end of the walk-way to another. We “helped” the fishermen on one net pull it up. When we did I figured out how they worked and their cleverness and simplicity fascinated me. It worked like this: There was a horizontal pivitole poll between two vertical stationary ones. At about an 120 degree angle four polls, two on each side, stuck out to form two triangles. The one pointing out towards the water was maybe two thirds the size of the other. From it two polls were bent like tent sticks so that the nets were spread out into a square. From the other side, the land side that is, the triangle came way back. From it dangled long ropes, some to be used to pull down that side thus pulling up the net side, and some from which rocks were suqueread to add more pull wait. The few times we were there when the nets were pulled up the nets were mostly empty except for a few fish. They said this was a bad season, the monsoons being the best. Even though it was a “bad season” there were many stalls with multiple types of seafood including prawns, mahi mahi, and even a few sharks!

Besides the waterfront we (that is G’pa and Nonna are with us on this trip and have been for the last two weeks) saw the church in which Vasco De Gama was temporarily buried for 30 years before his brother or son or someone brought him back to Portugal. This area, as in Kerala, is very Christian due to Portugal’s previous presence. Also we were introduced to the four, though later it turned out to be that there were twenty nine, types of bananas. While tasting them, the four we were primarily told about, we categorized by taste, “Mango Banana” and “Lemon Banana” etc. I thus regained my love of bananas, that is I regained my love for bananas for those types that are actually really good!!!

Anyway, now in the backwaters, we have been overfilled with great views, scenes and memories. Yesterday we did so much to even put on paper  type. Some very great memories are as followed: Earlier yesterday G’pa and I went for a walk back towards the rice fields. (The islands are slowly sinking or the water is slowly rising, I couldn’t understand what I was told, but either way I was told the land is basically dikes surrounding the low rice fields, which are like six feet below the river. This makes it easy to irrigate because when it comes time to water the fields they open “gates” and gravity does its job. This also means they need pump houses to pump out water when they need to. This in general creates a buetiful land scape in the rice fields because some people have also rasied small areas of land which look like tropical islands in a sea of green.) Back near the rice fields we looked at the rice, which it turns out that the rice is a milky liquid until harvest time at which point it hardens into what we think of as rice, (The rice they grow here is called Kerala Fluffy Rice which has fat grains. We confirmed that to get to the white color they wash the grains over and over again instead of “brown rice” being a different crop.) and on the way back I found a coconut on the ground (though that’s not much of an accomplishment seeing they are everywhere in the trees. In fact you can harvest coconuts from a tree once  every 45 days. Banana trees, we learned, only produce one bunch then they die and that’s the end of the tree. The root system of the tree produces multiple trees, each tree taking an unbelivible ten months only to then be harvested. (In most places it takes fourteen, but the land here is very fertile. An acre of rice crop can produce 2000 to sometimes 3000 kilograms a season!))  With the coconut I spent an hour trying to open up the outer shell with a broken tile I found. I actually made good progress but in general I thought it was a great simulation of cheap labor in the construction sites near our house; The tools are not the best but that doesn’t matter because if you work hard and long enough with something that is not perfect you can make it work. Philip, the owner of the guest house, saw me working and brought me over to a tool specificly designed to do that job. With it, he finshed what looked like another half hour in under a second. Now the anatomy of this type of coconut (of the two) is that there is an outer shell that breaks open into what we think of as the coconut with the brown shell. Philip, using a coconut knife thing, broke open that and since it was a good coconut I drunk the milk which was hot from being in the shells. It was very special.

Philip showed us around the property and different spice plants. For example a cinimon tree, from which I learned cinimon is a bark, and a curry tree (the leaves are the spice.) 

We also have spent a bit of time fishing. Its almost exactly like the goldfish fishing in China, except the fish hardly bit the hook. The last go of yesterday I put the line in the water and a spot darted out and bit the hook!!! Now Thomas, our guide for last night’s walk and this morning’s bird watching trip and tomorrow’s morning walk, said it is the tastiest fish and sure enough Anna, the cook for the guest house and also Thomas’s mother, fried it up with a masala marinate that I learned so that we can make fish and other seafood like that on Cape Cod. It was very good, though not very big; The size of my hand maybe.

Its “tea time” now (Philip lives partially in Manchester with his two daughters and wife.) We will go canoeing afterward. Today we already fished, swam, birdwatched, and did a fantastic bike ride. Wow!

-Chase

Peri-Urban Biking in Delhi

Just got back from a 3 hour "mountain" bike ride with my dad and i have to say that it was one of the most diverse and spectacular ride I have ever done. I say "mountain biking" because of the amount of technicality involved, though it was more of, as my Dad agrees as well, a "S**t Slalom."We started out in one of the nicer neighbourhoods of Delhi; Vasant Vihar. That part of the ride was pretty straight forward street riding with dodging cars and all. Very soon we got to a "biodiversity park." There, it became a sandy trail with  a barbed wire fence on booth sides. Past that sprawling low-lying shrubs blew in a slight breeze. It was obvious whoever owned the place was trying to regrow trees for lots of fences surrounded twigs poking out of the ground to protect the saplings from the cows and goats that were occasionally standing out in the land with the peacocks.

This went on for a short while until we hit road again. After crossing a few big intersections we came to more dirt roads through lower-class farm houses. All of them were walled off so you could only see the roofs. The walls that had crumbled reviled trash cluttered lots overgrown with grass and stones almost like the broken up lots in our neighbourhood back home.  We then passed through the ruins of an old Muggle building. The crumbling walls fought the trash that was being picked at by the lazy goats that sat tiredly in the warm sun. It wasn't a particularly large ruin and we were soon at a wall we had to (or more specifically just Dad had to) carry the bikes over. On the other side we were greeted by a group of boys playing cricket. Later we would see them carrying bricks from a construction site to use as their wicket! As we rode through a "trail system."

It was not-unlike the "Biodiversity Park" in terms of the shrubbery, although there were some taller trees as well, and dirt paths. The prominent differences were the quality of the "trails" which were studded with what could be called 'boulders' only that they were still passable either  way, and the amount of trash which no one was planning to pic up in the near future.. Big pits, which Dad confirmed as quarries, lined the trails which Dad and I agreed could be awesome mountain biking parks if renovated. But that aside, the current paths created some fun stuff with all the rocks and ruts.

After a long time of this we were at a village. It was small though nicely paved and full of a crowd of happy kids that chased after us with  shining grins. They offered there hands for me to shake though from past experiences Dad advised me not to because of the risk of being pulled off the bike. It was still very fun watching the kids in the village. We hit another dirt rode and soon turned around as the heat was getting to us. At a certain point on the way back we took a different turn that got us into a different village. This one was way bigger though instead of paved roads they were dirt, giving me the impression it was a less well off of a village.

The rest of the ride back was pretty simple and we soon got back to our starting point. The day finally ended with our favourite chicken tik:a roles in the market! 

Adventures at the Circus

chase just wrote about the circus in chsdhrgnu, and it was good, right, well he missed the most important/ funniest port....
first let me tell you about one phobia i have, i hate clowns!!! hey scare me half to death!!!!!!!!

at the circus there where clowns... how, in some acts, took volunteers. fro one of the acts they took about 7 volunteers one of with was chase. ( as the chose i letterly hid behind mom's chair.) all the volunteers jumped roped as 2 clowns span the rope for them. the main clown made chase go last ( chase isn't that good, why r u doing this??) we thought. the act wasn't that funny till it was chases turn. First they put blindfolds on Chase and told him to jump until they said stop. And that is just what he did. They stopped spinning the rope but Chase kept jumping which was very funny.  Another clown act they did was took a volunteer (pointing to me but I ran away so Chase went up) and stuffed a regular bandana down Chase's pants. The rest is in these photos!

and  then they pulled it out... with underwear on it hee hee it was funny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
                                                                    Tessa

The End Of the World (might or just hopefuly not) is Coming!

Wow yay! Other people are starting to do their share of the blog instead of just making me do (and doing that by not letting me go on facebook until I've written more then they have ever even attempted to write...) But still...  Well anyway without any further ado...

Hey guys! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and also welcome to 2012!!! :) For all of you that believe in the 2012 end of the world, hope your having a good part of the last year of your life... I’m going to  try to be optimastic and ignore all the people that want to follow the Mayan's calendar so here is another short section of my long to come life:

Although I’ve put this blog post off for the last two weeks in which I’ve started up school again, I'm going to write about the second part of our break. After we had gotten back from Jaipur with our grandma, we had a week of relaxing before she left and our confuseingly related family come in. (I say that because they are really my mom's aunt, uncle and cousins, but because of the age difference, they could pass as our older cousins and aunt and uncle... but who really cares.) With them we went to Chandigar and Amritsar. Chandigar, the originally planned capitol, was probably the cloesest I have gotten to America, besides the high-class malls here in delhi, in five months. The city, planned on a very convenient grid system, was divided into sectionns. (It felt very sci-fi in a way... i dont know, something about "we are in sector 35 right now.")  Section17 was the "shoppng" area. We looked there for a little bit and it was VERY clean. It reminded me a little of Boston with the brick side walk plaza area. The highlight of Chandigarh though was a full-on circus that we would have never heard of if we hadn't driven past it. The circus, which showed three times a day everyday ( for a month), had hardly more than 50 people in the tent meant for probably 500 people.

For a meer 200 rupees (4 dollars) a person the acts were spectacular... actually really just plain unbelievably amazing. There must have been 200 acts though. (Some seemed pretty repetitive and it dragged on a little two much... but WOW I could hardly wrap my mind around any of the acts) the scariest act was this guy (who had already done 50 other completely different though amazing acts.) who had a tall poll on which he balanced a tripod like thing that had very sharp legs. Then all at once even before you could tell what was going on, he threw the poll away and fell to the ground laying perfectly just as the tripod like thing fell into the ground, one leg to the right of his hips, one to the left, and one right between legs!!! As it hit there was a firecracker inside that cracked loudly right ad it landed and just about the time I thought the guy had just killed himself.

That was only the first part of our trip so I, or if I can win a bet or something unlikley like that and I can get someone else to do it, will write about Amritsar later... like way later... like once Mom takes my facebook time hostage again... well ya hope your 2012 has ended your world yet!!! Chase

chase

Mom's 2 rupees....or Mom's 2 cents.  I notice that I have not contributed my fair share to this blog and thus a few words now.
My big passion these days apart from the family and video work on mental health is.....learning Hindi. The absolute joy I feel when people laugh at me/with me while I try to put sentences together is more fun than I ever remembered it to be. People are so kind and patient with me and I feel so grateful for that.

A highlight of visiting Jaipur was seeing fabric come to life

The language is confusing for the sentence structure is completely different than English. But the really hard thing is that I can not read Hindi so I can not read about the rules. I have been teaching myself with podcasts and the help of all of India. I have started to take a few private lessons and that is great. I only want to speak Hindi so it is nice to be able to completely ignore all the written stuff...who needs it??? Hindi will allow me to volunteer as a doctor, in some capacity, because the places I want to work have patients from all over India and most do not speak English.  In what capacity I can volunteer my doctor skills has yet to be sorted out....but I promise to blog when I know more.

But why learn Hindi? Doesn't everyone know English In Delhi?  Absolutely not.  The government schools only teach English at most 1 hour a day so, for example, many of the kids on the park do not speak any English.  Tons of people that work in Delhi do not speak any English.

India has severely underspent in Education as compared to many other countries, such as China.  India did put resources towards the top echelon with the creation of the highly competitive Information Tech schools that are impossible to get into.

There is a big trend for families to send their kids to private school, no matter how poor they may be, in part so that they will learn English. The private schools teach in English all day except for the 1 class of Hindi.  I just learned that often a private school can cost as low as $2 dollars a month. 

Recently the government rolled out a new plan and committed new resources for revving up primary schools but no one seems that optimistic.

Taking a break while  recently filming on global mental health  in a Township of  South Africa  

Warmly, Delaney

Jaypor's Adventure

We went to jaypor and for 1 of the 3 days we saw people making things. Some of the things were, cloth-paper making, bloke printing, cloth dying, potery, and cariving block prints!!! It was all really cool, but my favoret was the bloke printing place. We got to make our own so I now the most about bloke printing then the other places… I wasn’t bored like a few others!!! For each desing (animal, flower, ect) there were about 3, 4, or 5 different colors wich had ther oun block!!! Frist you pushed the outline in the middle with a redish coler, then you line op the second block with a different color to some point (depending on the pattern) and after 3, 4, or 5 different colers you put the back round. And finally with the copany’s name you’r done!!!!! HE WAS AN EXPERT AT IT and a charter, too!!!!

                 -Tessa

My Take on Christmass

Dec 30, 2011

My Take on Christmas

                Christmas is always bittersweet for me. I love being together with the family who assemble and long for being 8 years old– old enough to appreciate but too young to have any responsibility. Now I struggle with the logistics and miss being with so many of our far flung family and mostly my brother Parker. I like watching folks enjoy the gift exchange, but have personally never enjoyed giving or getting presents. All of this is only amplified by being so far from home and having children who are “too old” to believe in Santa.

                None the less, it was another great Christmas (why is there only one S?). It’s been great to have Lynn, Delaney’s mom, here as she has been an enthusiastic and flexible traveler (critical attributes in India). After  a few days in Delhi we took the early morning train to Jaipur (which I now think is pronounced j-pur not Jaipur – does anyone out there know for sure?). We wandered the chaotic streets with hawkers (sounds dangerously like hookers when said by Indian tour guides), saw one of the original Playboy Mansions (the Hawa Mahal, I’ll let Delaney and Chase explain why this analogy is so funny … and loaded), had lunch at a restaurant with food as good as  Burkhana “one of the world’s best restaurants” , and walked thru the urban chaos to the Albert hall. I will spare you the photo I took of the crow’s eating a dead rat – but it really epitomizes our family’s approach to embracing all facets of India. 

                The day before Christmass (I’m ignoring Microsoft spell checker and going with the Christ-Mass spelling) was epic. After an India breakfast with way too much fat (the Indians at the restaurant were eating cornflakes, and the hot milk it is served with,  not with a spoon but by scooping it into some roti (unleavened bread). That visiongoes in the record books with the elderly couple in Toyko I saw eating a big mac with a knife and fork.  A long discussion between Delaney and I about priorities, options, budgets and risks set us onto an adventure with a rented car ($30) and a hope (see stuff being made). Like most gamble we take, we won – we saw guys carving wood block printing patterns, a factory where rags turned into beautiful paper products (they fold paper bags by hand – who what goes into those bags from fancy stores), silk screen printing of those ubiquitous cotton bed covers , block printing (where a guy who our limited language interpreted as immodestly referring to himself as an avatar of some Hindu god…  the god of block printing must exist as there are about 300,000 Hindu Gods), and pottery where the combination of rusted old horse shoes and lemon makes a brown solution that turns black upon firing. Our day ended well after dark with a camel ride down the side of a highway but also by a lake with a beautifully illuminated submerged fort. For those of you who have been to a Grateful Dead concert, I’ll add that just when I thought I was peaking, I heard singing from the camel behind us with my two kids and mother in law singing “We three Kings” as the ride ended (by the gas station where we mounted). I went to bed with no bicycles to assemble or batteries to install.

Christmass morning was fun. We awoke by alarm clock thinking the kids (who are very clear that they are too mature to believe in Santa) would sleep in – but only to find they had been awake for hours. After breakfast we met our old friends Shivam and Raj. I remember extoling the virtues of kids to them after dinner in our first Seattle house when we had kids and they didn’t. They now have 3 young kids and bravely were taking a pilgrimage (with two siblings) to India – now I was extoling the virtues of older kids! It was a total blast to hang with them in a family friendly van as we drove to the Ambar palace, rode elephants to the top, toured the palace and returned to their hotel. Passing on a lunch on the grass at the hotel (that was a total throw back to some British Public Television show) we opted for gorging ourselves at the Indian tourist restaurant before catching the train back to Delhi and spending hours on VOIP with family on the east and west coast of North America trying vainly to explain our holiday.

 Since then we have winded down Lynn’s visit with a few days around Delhi, sharing with her Chase’s prowess with the sax, Tessa’s continually dancing body and our new normal in Delhi. I knew Lynn understood our new life when we went to a “famous” restaurant in crowded Old Delhi. It was  down some random alley and called (or described, we never knew) as Pratha Walla Gully. We waited, jostled by the passing traffic on a crowded 12 foot wide alley, for 15 minutes for some of 30 seats  jammed into a 15 by 15 foot space (shared by the “kitchen” some barefoot and cross legged guy fried stuffed bread in pure butter). Lynn did not flinch while two rats ran by and Delaney suffered stoically while the family consumed about 10 pounds of grease.

My segway to 2012,

Welcome to 2012! As the year wound down, I finished reading Nanden Nilekani’s inspirational and optimistic book “Imaging India” which really helped me understand some of the critical choices facing India today.

Nilekani spends very little space on the contrasts and clichés that fill the other books I’ve been wallowing in over the past 4 months. He does identify India’s key assets (the demographic dividend, a large “democrazy”, relatively high English literacy, entrepreneurial prowess, technology and a global presence – “the sun never sets on the Indian diaspora”). These are discussed in the context of the equally impressive challenges (a country younger than my father, caste, religion, regionalism, class, inadequate infrastructure and primary education and a plethora of challenging policies). 

But what really resonates with my diminishing understanding of India (I feel I know less each day I’m here!) was the importance that the interplay between the state, markets and civil society will play in its future. The scope of the Indian government is staggering - as is the still palpable legacy of colonization, paternalism and socialism. I found Nilekani’s optimism about the capacity of appropriately regulated markets to increase efficiency, accountability and initiative a source of great hope. He identifies the most critical task as empowering people’s Jugaard, a word that can be (poorly) translated as informal innovation, of people at the local level to take charge and innovate. For health in particular, he argues that success depends on unique and innovative approaches to put health funds in the hands of citizens and using IT to build a competitive model with multiple options for care. For me this is an optimistic Segway into 2012.

Peter