Saturday, June 5

{i'm lovin' it.}

so here's the deal. i've been informed that my boss at home is basically a waffle and my job a no-go, i've crunched on the financially related numbers, and i've been signed up to lead an event the day after my date of departure sooooooo..... it's official.
i'm staying.
i have enough money to stay an extra fourish weeks, so i'm gonna keep it to two or three to be safe with the plane ticket and all. two months in india, babyyy! ba-da-ba-ba-paaa [i'm lovin' it]
things have been going great here again, i'm settled into a little more of a groove i feel like. i'm singing and playing piano tomorrow with the singing team which is such a fun opportunity... it's my fourth time singing for events here. sometimes i think i've changed since my childhood in that i always used to want to be a performer, but now i feel like more and more i'm becoming a behind-the-scenes person... i feel i'd rather be setting up or taking pictures than being up in front of people. i guess i don't mind the occasions to do so, though, since i'm basically 'Indian Idol' at this point ;) but enough about me... (don't make me sing... anyone, anyone?)
let's talk about the events of the day. i went onto the campuses to recruit PMI volunteers, which on different days can go different ways. it's realllly hit-or-miss. haha. sometimes, i'm that white face that draws everyone's attention and bright smiley focus, and sometimes, i'm that nuisance who happens to be bothering the girls filling out their applications. i get smiles, i get stares, i get that puzzled and slightly frightened look that turns into a bug-eyed and open-mouthed silence which you might see on the face of a person who has just been approached by either a celebrity or a talking donkey. i met a sweet girl today named Shiva who seemed very overwhelmed, but thankful for the offer of help i extended to her. she seemed interested in what PMI had to offer, and we chatted a little bit before she told me she needed to get back to her form because she had to turn it in quite soon. i really hope she comes by - she was probably the sweetest girl i've met this week on Delhi University Campus.
after the campus work with the PMI staff and two members of the Master's college team, we came back for lunch and i did finances with the Malakars, after which i got to sing some with Kagui who's leading the songs tomorrow. they were going to have me just play piano (yes, sorry that i'm dumb and american and i need chords to figure out songs on the piano. yes, i mean to tell you that i can't figure it out on the fly for the first time in front of a whole crowd on sunday morning. yes, i know you're northeast indian and have music in your blood, but my blood is noteless, so give me a break!!) but they found out i can also sing harmony, so i'm going to try and do both at the same time. whoosh, they work you hard here in India. i should have guessed, when a rickshaw driver will pull four grown men across town behind his little bicycle with his tiny toothpick legs for fifty cents.
speaking of rickshaws, what an excellent transition point into one of the best stories yet.
Peter asked me to take the team to Kamla Nagar and back for dinner so they could see the market and... so they could eat, obviously! well, i mustered up all my strength, gathered up all my hindi phrases, put on my meanest bargain face, and set out to find six rickshaws to carry us all to market. we searched and searched to find six together who would understand, and finally we found them with the help of a saintly motorcycle rider/translator. hooray, we made it to kamla nagar! i paid one rickshaw driver all the money and told him "Ap saab Kaliya," "this is for all of you!" he split it among them and we walked to McDonald's [ba-da-ba-ba-paaa], and i felt so proud of myself. i'm such a hardened indian traveler! However, while eating my little chicken wrap in the cool of McDonald's, after the classic american "COW! COW IN THE STREET!" shouting fiasco (which of course thrilled and highly amused all the Indians at that fine dining establishment), i realized. i had to do it all again to get us home. "Oh well," i thought, as we walked back down the street, "i'll find the courage to put on the hard bargain julie face again." and it worked! i got a better deal on the six rickshaws we needed and we were whisked off to the infamous bizzhotel. I'm starting to feel like a game show host at this point, because i must add... "But that's not all!" The rickshaw-wallas (anybody who DOES something here is a walla. iron people are presswallas, shop-keeps are shopwallas, etc. what a fun suffix, eh?) had misunderstood me, been too eager to get going to listen to me, or had taken some wrong turns in order to get more money out of me by spending more time getting to our port of debarkation. in any case, they all stopped at the wrong place and i told them again where we needed to be. They rolled those big brown indian eyes at me and pedaled on their way, but in the process the six of them were separated. no big deal - they know what they're doing. True, on days when the rickshaw-wallas DO know what they're doing. ours happened to continue to stink more than the stinky river next to PMI (and let me assure you, it is quite stinky.) and deliver us all to different places. the MOST unfortunate part of all of this ruckus is that in the pairing of students to ride in the rickshaws, the two had been left un-partnered were myself and Joe, the leader of the team - the only two people with phones. we jumped off our ride close to the hotel, threw twenty rupees at our rickshaw-walla, and began sprinting after the three rickshaws carrying the team away from us. what a sight we must have been - two cute little americans racing as fast as their flip-flops will carry them down the construction-riddled dirt road of Hudson Line. but alas, even in our speediness, we did not catch them. we walked across the highway to the hotel, hoping their drivers had been better than ours, but they were not there. "nightmare," i whispered under my breath as Joe did his best to keep his cool. The team has been here less than three days - i doubted their abilities to communicate with the rickshaw-wallas or to find their way back on foot from the neighboring communities, and i was scared straight. Joe went back to the road where we were dropped off and i waited at the hotel to see if the team would show up as i called heather, peter, and josh hoping for assurance or ideas. i paced back and forth, checking every rickshaw that passed for their beautiful white faces. i felt a little scared for myself, walking alone next to the metro after dark, but for the most part i was too consumed with my worry in having lost this precious team! finally, just as peter called me back to tell me that four had been dropped off on the Malakar's doorstep, i heard someone call my name from a distance. The remaining six girls had walked back from Hudson line to the hotel, and what a welcome sight they were! i think i felt something like the father of the prodigal son as i jubilantly explained to peter that they had finally found their way home! i called a relieved Joe, who either stayed much calmer than i or hid his angst exceptionally well, hugged them all, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. i'm not a genuine Indian yet, folks! From what i know, though, i couldn't really have prevented what happened unless i knew Hindi, so any American leader would have had the same problem that night. (just so you don't think i'm incompetent and directionally challenged.... though now that i write it down, that's probably more accurate than not!)
i'm still a little mortified at the potential outcomes of the evening, but here come the new mercies in the morning.
what a day! what an adventure! what an excercise in trust.
with love from delhi,
julie the rejuvenated.

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