8 months, 3 continents, and hopefully a little self-discovery

Where to start with the last three days...
Monday. When you come to India on an employment visa (and other types of visas), you have 14 days after you arrive in the country to appear in the Foreigners Regional Registration Office. So, Monday morning Navee, Kristen, Maddy and I ventured off to the FRRO to begin what we were told would be a day-long process of getting approved to stay in (and eventually leave) India. Everyone else in our group had already gone though this charming process before the four of us arrived in India, so we knew a few things to make sure to have ready, and a few things to avoid, but other than that, we just kind of had to roll with the punches.

After taking two buses, we arrived at the FRRO at about 10:30am and got in the first line where they check all of your paperwork and then give you a token number. The token determines what order you get called up to all of the desks throughout the day. We all got numbers 144-147, and they were on number 100 when we sat down to wait at about 10:45. They were calling out the numbers incredibly slowly... and at one point, they started going backwards. Awesome. At 1:30, we were still sitting in the same spot when all of the employees left for their lunch break. We took this opportunity to run outside to grab a snack and something to drink. Right as we walked outside, we heard drums. There was a group of probably 8-10 men playing drums, walking, and leading a bus down the street. We all got kind of excited and Maddy said "oh my gosh, a parade!!" Fairly quickly, we realized that it was in fact a funeral procession, and that on the bus was the family of the deceased- whom we could see laying inside the bus. Whoopsies. After we got over the shock of seeing a dead body and mistaking a funeral procession for a parade, we crossed the street and went to a juice bar. We drank our juice quickly and ran back across the road and into the FRRO to get our seats back. Once they reopened after their lunch break, the numbers started getting called relatively quickly. By about 2:30, we all got called up, and after sitting for about four hours, all the guy did was initial our token. Oh geez. He told us to go upstairs, and then the waiting began all over again. This time, we only had to wait for an hour or so, and then we all began a circuit of desks that we had to go to get different parts of our paperwork checked and approved. Let me quickly explain all the paperwork we had with us: we had copies of our visa applications, letters from our non-profits explaining our positions and that we were volunteer, letters from our apartments explaining that we were living there, letters from Wooster explaining that we were there on behalf of the College, copies of our passport and visa, and then the actual FRRO paperwork, as well. I had to go to 6 different desks, and each one found a different issue with my paperwork. The first guy didn't understand what HLC was, and in each form, I had to go through and point to where it said HLC and explain that that meant Hippocampus Learning Centres. The next guy thought I was going to try and leave India and then come back because we have 6 month multiple entry employment visas, and I had to explain several times that I was leaving on July 24th and I wasn't going to come back within the 6 month window that my visa allows. Then another guy was absolutely convinced that I was getting paid to work at HLC, and he didn't believe me when I said I wasn't. He kept asking me how I could afford to be in India, and when I said I paid for it before I came by myself, he asked how I afforded that. And we went in circles on that topic for a while. Finally I had to go the assistant director’s office for him to give the final approval. After he initialed my packet, I had to drop all my paperwork off at another desk so they could scan it into their computer system. This was at about 4:30, and then they told me to come back at 5:45 to pick up my registration approval. So back downstairs I went to wait for more than an hour. I was the first one out of the four of us to go through the whole process, but eventually, Maddy, Kristen and Navee came back downstairs. None of them had gotten approved and they all were told to come back on Tuesday to finish up. Ugh. They were nice enough to wait with me until my paperwork came through at about 6, not 5:45 like they originally said. But it did get processed and approved, so for that I am thankful, because I did not have to go back on Tuesday like the other three did. I had to provide copies of my approved registration to our advisors, so I immediately ran across the street to the copy shop and made the three copies I needed.

Monday night we were all supposed to have dinner with our teammates from our organizations and with one of the GSE advisors at a location of the advisor’s choosing. Because Maddy, Kristen, and Navee all work for PremaVidya, they all had to go to one place for their group dinner, and I had to go to another- Professor Moledina’s apartment. And so began my first solo outing in Bangalore. I took an auto to an intersection that Professor Moledina told me was near his apartment, and when I got out of the auto, I started looking for other street signs or the landmarks that he described, but I couldn’t find ANY of them. I asked a few people for directions or if they knew of the street I was looking for or the landmarks, but no one did. I saw a bus stop which I walked to and asked a woman if she knew of a different bus stop, which Professor Moledina said was the closest one to his apartment. She smiled and said she did know, but that it was too far away to walk to, so I should take another auto. She told me very specifically where the bus stop was and what to look for on my way, but after having been in India for two weeks now, I’ve learned to take all directions with about 17 grains of salt, so I didn’t pay much attention to her directions, and instead got in an auto and asked them to take me to the Shivaji Nagar Bus Station. It was quite a ways away, but I was astounded to realize that the woman’s directions were exactly right. I wish I’d gotten her phone number so I could call her other times when I am lost. Darn. I called Amanda, Yoshi, and Maria, who were also trying to make their way to Professor Moledina’s and they said they were also going to the Shivaji Nagar Bus Station, so I should just meet them there and then we could figure out the rest of the way together. That part of the plan worked out perfectly. When I met them, we started looking for yet another auto to take us to Professor Moledina’s apartment, since the three of them had some more specific directions than I did. It was quite a struggle, but we did eventually find an auto to take us to his place. We all piled in and started driving. And then the driver got lost. We called Professor Moledina and had him talk to our driver to give him directions, but that still didn’t get us anywhere. By this time we were an hour late for dinner. We finally just got out of the auto, thanked the driver (who really did try and figure out where to take us), and Professor Moledina came and found us and escorted us the rest of the way. His wife had cooked us a wonderful Indian meal, and we spent a couple of hours visiting with Professor Moledina, his son and daughter, his wife, another current Wooster student who is interning in Bangalore this summer, and a Wooster alum who is vacationing in Bangalore from Mumbai. Eventually, at about 10:30, Professor Moledina made us leave so we wouldn’t have too much trouble finding an auto back home. We found an auto that took five of us, which was perfect, since it was late and we didn’t really want to split up. When we got home, after a little disagreement with the auto driver about the price of the ride, we came inside and all went to bed after a very long day.

On Tuesday, it was back to work for me, and back to the FRRO for Maddy, Navee, and Kristen. Maria and I spent the morning going over several different visions we had of our project so we could meet with our supervisor in the afternoon to go over those visions and narrow down the scope of our project. We worked until about 1pm, and then we went and got lunch at a cute place around the corner from our office called the Hole in the Wall Café. Maria and I both agreed that being in the café didn’t feel like being in India, but the food was good, and it had a nice atmosphere. Then it was back to work where we met with Professor Moledina and went over our work from the morning, and he helped us tweak a few things before we met with Lily at 3pm. After talking through our ideas with Lily, we narrowed down our project. Our new focus is building and strengthening HLC’s online identity through social media and the HLC website, because, as it stands, not many people know about HLC or its distinction from the Hippocampus Reading Foundation, Hippocampus School Services, and the Hippocampus Children’s Center. This is going to include Maria and I working on some new forms of media for HLC to use, like taking and uploading new photos and possibly making a video. After our meeting with Lily, we are both feeling really good about the new clarity regarding our project, and we were ready to go in to work this morning. On another exciting note, (with Professor Moledina’s help) we finally figured out how to make it all the way back to our apartments by bus without great difficulty or really long walks. Thank heaven, it’s about time we got that figured out.

This morning Maria and I started working on the tasks that we outlined yesterday with Lily, and those tasks carried us through most of the day. At about 1:45 we all headed out to lunch. Maria and Yoshi wanted to go back to the Hole in the Wall Café, but Amanda and I wanted Indian food. So we parted ways for lunch, and Amanda took me to a cheap restaurant down the street where you order you food at a counter and then you stand at tables and eat. I was absolutely starving, so I ordered a meal that on any other day could have easily fed two people and a cup of chai… and it was all only 50 rupees, which is less than a dollar. The guy behind the ordering counter held out my receipt on a plate, so I took the plate and the receipt to hand to the guys behind the other counter who fill your order. When I turned around to the next counter, Amanda saw me and just doubled over laughing. When she was able to take a breath, she explained that I wasn’t supposed to take the plate and that I was just supposed to take the receipt and that the guy at the ordering counter kept the plate to hand everyone else their receipts. I shrugged and laughed and turned back around to give the guy back the plate and he had this smirk on his face with his hand outstretched to take the plate back from me. Oh well. It took Amanda a while to stop laughing at me, but by the time she did, our enormous plates of food had arrived. After eating, we walked back to work and worked until about 4:30.

Then at 4:30, Amanda and I went to our first Kannada lesson (the local language). HLC is offering Kannada lessons once a week for about $15 for the whole month, and Amanda and I decided we wanted to learn a little bit of Kannada just to help us get around, understand the culture a little better, and to have a little fun. It turned out to be way overwhelming, but a ton of fun and a good way to get to know some of the other women that work in our office. When we first walked in, all five of the women who are taking the class with us were yelling over the teacher, and that is pretty much how it continued for the next two hours. I’m not sure if I’ll remember much of anything because Kannada is so different from English, but if nothing else, it will be a fun way to spend two hours a week while we are here.

Because we left at 6:30, Yoshi and Maria had already left for the day, so Amanda and I had to get home on our own. The first bus ride was completely fine, but when we got to the Madiwala bus stop, we waited for quite a while for our next bus, and when we finally saw it, it was quite a ways away from where we were standing at the bus stop, so we ran down to catch it, just as it pulled away and drove up exactly to where we were originally standing. So we sprinted, plowing our way through all of the other people standing at the stop, and luckily we made it. We got home by 7:30 and then tried to review the Kannada we learned, realizing we remembered almost nothing, even with our notes. Oh well, we’ll practice tomorrow J

Also, finally (and by stealing a few from Maddy)… here are some pictures of us in Bangalore!