#70 Return of the Monsoon?

Where am? Back at my room at the Hosp/Uni in Ponnekarra, Kerala

How am I? Good, rested from the break to my co-workers flat and I’ll be back there again every weekend for the next 4 weeks.

So let me tell you what is happening here. It’s raining again. I heard Kerala has two monsoons and I think this is the start of the second one. It’s been raining almost every day but not continuous. So if I wait it will stop or lighten up so I can go out. But Tuesday night at my friend’s flat me and the Dutch girl went to the mall to get something for dinner and on the way back we got drenched! I mean walking in puddles that were up to my ankles. It was good fun because we were on our way home and knew we could just dry off, change clothes, and we watched a video.

In the meantime between being offered the use of my co-worker’s flat (his name is Arun) while he’s in the UK, and his actually departure, an 18 year old girl from Holland (Amber) appeared. She is on her “gap year” traveling and needed a place to stay. She is the friend of Arun’s daughter and they offered her the use of the flat, too. She’s a really nice girl and we get along great so no problem.

So what is a gap year? Something I think the US should have. When students finish high school, instead of jumping into college the very next semester, they are given a gap year. My friend’s son in Australia took the year to work to get the money to continue with his education. Many Europeans, including Arun’s daughter and Amber, travel to see the world, de-stress from H.S., and think and make a decision on what they want to study in college. Arun’s daughter is back at Uni now, that’s why he’s in the UK, helping her move to the campus. In the US we are just expected to continue straight into college if we intend to continue our education. But in the rest of the world, they allow the students to take a break and breathe a little. Very smart.

So I have been playing the role of Host to Amber, taking her here and there. I met an Australian woman (Nina) in Sri Lanka who lives right here in Kochi. She was traveling in India with her sister a few years ago and met this Indian man. She went back to Australia but continued corresponding with him by internet and eventually decided to hang everything up in Australia and go back to India to be with this man. So here it is, two years and one break-up later and she is still in India. She loves it enough that she had gone to Sri Lanka to renew her visa just like me when we met. She started an online business creating websites. She laughs because she says there is a whole town in New Zealand where she has never been but she has created all their business websites. Word of mouth has spread her ability. So Nina has met lots of ex-pats (foreigners) here and when I told her I was with Amber, she invited us to meet her and them at a Club in Kochi. She knew the man who was DJ-ing. I have never been to a Club in India but I thought Amber might like it. What clinched the invite was someone from the Hosp told me that the Club was in a very nice hotel and that we should eat dinner there before going to the Club. So four of us ended up eating dinner at The Bubble Café: an American, a Dutch woman, an Australian and a Swedish woman working here at a marketing company. And Amber made a connection for finding a job when she gets to Australia.

I have skipped over the time I arrived back in India from Sri Lanka until I went to Arun’s flat. I landed in a frenzy that the hosp/uni were putting together a last minute Event for the community. They offered 60 classes/workshops/seminars within 4 days from September 6th to the 9th. All for free. I went to a Photography class (don’t laugh), a Foot Reflexology class where I was the model so I got a foot massage, a painting class and a yoga class. But just two weeks before when I was there at the hosp I had not heard a word about it so that is how last minute the decision was to do this event. I arrive on Friday and by Saturday I’m working until 9:30 p.m. trying to help put together a listing of what was being offered. It was wild. Too wild for me that by the following week, I was able to remove myself from the fracas. I was still there willing and able to help but not responsible for anything that people could complain about.

I was also asked to be a By-Stander for someone who had Parkinson’s that required me to sleep in the patient’s room for a night. In fact that was the excuse to get myself out of the Event Planning project. Shortly after that I was asked to be a By-Stander for someone who needed surgery. That was 3 nights sleeping in the patient’s room. They found her another volunteer By-Stander to take my place.

So the holiday season continues and the Hosp/Uni is quiet. I did get a document by email with a suggested syllabus for the Home Caregiver Course that they would like me to consult on. I’ll try and meet with a teacher at the School of Nursing, if he’s around. If not, there’s next week or the next. We’re in India.

Let me post this and I’ll get back with you later.
Love,
Marie

#69 Onam with Puja photo

Where am? At my friend/co-worker’s flat in Edapally, Kerala, if you want to look it up it’s near Ernakulam.

How am I? Great. The bed is soft, there’s a kitchen, washing machine and refrigerator here. It’s walking distance to a mall with a cinema. On weekends I’m living in luxury while he’s in the UK for a month.

I was back in India on Friday, 23rd August I've been kept busy since I returned from Sri Lanka so I've got to get caught up on my blog. Basically everything is good.

One of my American friends & co-worker and an Indian friend bought a house together. It's lovely; if they offered to let me rent their extra bedroom I would have grabbed it but there already is an ex-roommate of the American who wants to take it. So I'll to be staying here at the Guesthouse. But there was the house blessing that took place at 5:00 a.m. one morning. Everything is done according to astrology here. And the "puja" (blessing) they did was a small raging fire in the kitchen on a brick altar the priest constructed the day ahead of time. Here’s a photo of us at the blessing. The smoke was so thick in the house that I had to escape outside for fresh air. These are the things that they get used to from a young age and reconfirms that I am NOT a Hindu.

The photo at the beginning is from the House Puja. There's me, third from the right, with the two flat owners, Eileen who is second from the left, and Reshma who is in the very colorful saree next to her. The couple to my right in the photo are Reshma's parents and the other two people were friends. I am hiding my hand because I was holding a big bag about to leave when they said WAIT! We want a photo. So here it is.

Another Indian co-worker is going to the UK for a month and has offered me the use of his flat while he's away. SEE HOW FAR BEHIND I AM WITH THIS BLOG. He has a kitchen with a refrigerator and a washing machine and lives close to the shopping center so I'll be going there on weekends for the next 4 weeks. Cold drinks while I'm having my clothes washed for me, how much luxury can I stand?! I’m also checking the cinema that I can walk to movies while I’m there. It’s in the shopping center.
UPDATE: The only English movie showing yesterday was Grownups 2 so that’s what I went to see. It was typical juvenile humor but at least I got to eat popcorn and had a laugh or two.

It's holiday season here, kind of like Thanksgiving called Onam. I have to look it up for myself. According to Wikipedia "Onam is an ancient festival which still survives in modern times. Kerala's rice harvest festival and the Festival of Rain Flowers, which fall on the Malayalam month of Chingam, celebrates the Asura King Mahabali's annual visit from Patala (the underworld). Onam is unique since Mahabali has been revered by the people of Kerala since prehistory. The King is so much attached to his kingdom that it is believed that he comes annually from the nether world to see his people living happily. It is in honor of King Mahabali, affectionately called Onathappan, that Onam is celebrated." So while they holiday, everything is at a standstill work-wise. This will go on for the rest of September.

I’m going to end and post this now so you know I’m still alive.
Love,
Marie

#68 Greetings from Sri Lanka dated August 21

DELAYED ENTRY
This is a photo from Africa. I got a young woman to help show me how to load the photo and voila, here's the Rhinos I saw. Has nothing to do with Sri Lanka but by time I got to Sri Lanka, my camera wasn't really working anymore. I have two photos from Sri Lanka and I'll try to upload them another time. I'm lazy, but I'm retired and I'm allowed to be lazy! So on with my blog...

Where am? At a hostel in Colombo, Sri Lanka

How am I? Wonderful. I get my visa tomorrow, and I’m back in India on Friday, 23rd August.

This has been a whirlwind trip. I can start by saying I didn’t like Colombo but from all the Guide Books I have looked at, all three of them, no one says great things about Colombo. It’s just where the airport is. I hooked up with a British woman the first night I got here, at the same hostel I’m at right now, and we went out together to see a Temple, had dinner two nights, and walked on the beach. I think I got a touch of too much sun when I went to the consulate and she was there to help me which was very nice. She walked to the local store and bought me what I needed. She’s a nurse who quit her job to travel for a year. She went to India and found it too hard to handle. She also didn’t dress Indian style and she is going to try an experiment I have been wanting to try. I had an Indian pants outfit that really needed to be altered because it was too long for me and I gave it to her. When she goes back to India, she is going to wear it and see if the men treat her differently. It will be interesting if it has any effect because she actually counted how many times men exposed themselves to her. She is younger than me, tall and blond and she was traveling in the north of India, not where I am. I felt sorry for her because she was really disturbed by it.

So I’m back at that hostel and no one is here, it’s very quiet. I like it because I just got back from a 6 hour bus ride which was exhausting. The hotel owner at the place I stayed at in Haputale last night recommended that I get off the bus headed to Colombo at Nugegoda and take a rickshaw ride from there to my hostel instead of going all the way to Colombo and taking a rickshaw from there. It saved me time and money but it was chancy because I had no idea where I was. But it all worked out fine. Tomorrow I will take a bus to the Consulate, hand my passport over before 10:00 a.m., and then go back to pick it up with the new Visa before 5:00 p.m.
This is where I stopped typing this entry so let me tell you what happened after that. I didn’t get out of the Visa Office until after 6:00 p.m. We were a captive audience, around 40 of us, waiting for our passports to show up that the Visa Office is separate from the consulate and the passports had still not been delivered from the Consulate. But we did get them and I made it back to India, no problem. I actually had a lovely day that I didn’t want to hang around the hostel so I found things to do in Colombo. I window shopped, went to the Tourism Office. I didn’t know there was one and I even asked the Srilankan Airlines and they didn’t know to tell me where it was. I walked by a hotel with a sign that said it was run by students and I stepped in because I wanted to see if they had a restaurant that I love going to places run by students. They didn’t have a restaurant but they knew where the Tourism Office was, right next door to their building. Then they told me where to go for vegetarian food and I had lunch. I tried to see a movie but there wasn’t any English language movies that I wanted to see. Then I went to a 5 Star Hotel for a cup of tea and it was time to go back for my passport. I truly hope I don’t have to go back to Sri Lanka again, kind of like Qatar. I had enough of it.

The only two highlights:
1. The Perahera Festival in Kandy that was amazing. I couldn’t believe I was experiencing this centuries old ritual with elephants dressed up with electric lights, and thousands of Sri Lankans in costumes, dancing and playing drums and twirling fire tipped batons and
2. Staying at a Buddhist Ashram that was silent. It was beautiful but three days was enough for me because it had no electricity. I’d like to try it again in the USA and see how it goes.

I'm actually back in India so let me post this and I will try to get up-to-date since you haven't heard from me in a while.
Love,
Marie