I meant to post this blog on June 6th, but I didn’t get to finish it until today. Well, here it goes: One year ago on June 6th, I was on my way to the airport to fulfill one of my childhood dreams. With months of planning, a set notion that I will never spend a summer in Gainesville, and a year of trying to figure out how I will maximize my summer to its best potential elsewhere, I decided to embark on another voyage. Yes my friends, another voyage abroad. This one involved not only crossing the Atlantic Ocean but crossing half the world. Let’s see if you can guess: It is the second most populated country of the world; it is rich with culture and religion: from Hinduism and Buddhism to Christianity and Islam; it is famous for its colorful 50+ dancers in “Bollywood” movies; and it is where SlumDog Millionaire was filmed. Ok ok these were pretty easy facts, I’ll challenge you with harder ones in the future. So where in the world was Jeannette Paulino off to? To the majestic land of India!
My motive in India was quite different from the one in Belgium. Summer 2009 stood out as the commencement of my professional search for internships in my field of study. After several applications later and inconvenient internship tenure dates, I decided to take matters into my own hands. And so I came across an organization, called ProWorld Service Corps, a mini-version of the Peace Corps, which allows an individual to choose the number of weeks they desire to intern for and the type of internship they would like to be doing. I partnered up with my dear Katy, the very good friend I made in my Brussels study abroad group and we both applied for the social and economic development field. Proworld then found a project that catered to our interests that were stated in the application. And that was the beginning of one of the most remarkable experiences I have ever had…
Between 23 hours of total plane ride, a crazy 4-hour you-think-you’re-going-to-die drive from Bangalore Airport to our home in Mysore at night, stopping for some typical Chai tea at a street vendor, and realizing that my toilet for a month would be a hole in the floor, that first night in India was quite the shocker to suck it all in that Katiuska and I ended up in incessant laughter that minutes later led us to knock out on our super thin mattress-on wood-supported-by-bricks- bed from the jet lag.
India was everything I could imagine and more. The south of India was surprisingly very similar to the tropical climate, palm trees, messed up roads scenery, and wood-burning smells of Dominican Republic. I almost felt at home. Keyword: ALMOST. After 4 days of eating Indian food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I was endowed with the honorable Traveler’s Diarrhea. I say honorable, because you haven’t lived in a foreign land and haven’t had a real experience if you have not endure the bad as well. After two days of rest, vomiting, and well let me not distraught you from reading onwards with unpleasant images, the other interns and I were in need of some delicious home-sweet-home pizza. We went to a nearby Dominos and Pizza Hut until our stomachs acquired to the taste of Indian Cuisine. But from that day forward, after the sickness, one becomes in love with the native food. At least that’s what happened with me and the other interns…of course I still remained very selective in the level of spiciness I could handle in each bite of curry and masala dishes.
Our mission in India involved teaching English and Social Studies to underprivileged preteens in an alternative school, entitled Kaliyuva Mane, or “Home for Learning,” assisting in the construction of a classroom, and organizing the school’s limited library. Kaliyuva Mane was located about 40 mins from our house in Mysore, in the rural outskirts. Picture: lots of grass, cows, men wearing blankets as skirts, children running and playing cricket, dirt roads, and very little access to electricity and water. And yet, even without the luxury of electricity and water, coming from poor backgrounds, seeing these children greet us with smiles and so much affection was so astonishing that each day at this school, my heart was consistently touched. Knowing that they took a genuine interest in me by asking me how many siblings I have back home and whether I have a big house in the United States, and asking me to show them how to dance, brought such exalting delight to my day. I showed them how to dance Merengue and the Macarena. That was their favorite activity of the day. I can still hear their excited calls “Akka Akka dance!” (Akka meaning elder sister in their dialect of Kannada) Surprisingly enough, these Indian kids knew how to move their hips with flavor! I was very impressed. They became professional Latin dancers in my eyes :) I even taught them how to say hi and goodbye in Spanish, and every morning they greeted me with a “Hola” and every afternoon they said goodbye with an “Adios.”
It was so magically wonderful how I became part of these children’s lives for about a month during my stay in India. But it is even more wonderful how these children became a part of me for my whole life. They gave me so much. They gave me their curiosity, their laughs, their smiles, their time to learn, and most importantly, their love. They showed me their world and accepted me as a foreigner, as their friend. It is the innocence of the young ones and the intelligence and the great potential of the older kids that gives me more certitude of what I want to do in my future. It is because of these children, the children in disadvantaged conditions that I am pursuing a career in Political Science and International Relations. I want to be able to provide them with the opportunities of development that they deserve. My internship with the children is indescribable to what it did to my self-development.
India, the land that I always dreamed of visiting as a child when I would dance in front of late-night Bollywood videos on TV. Something about this country always caught my attention. The unique culture, the amazing music, the vibrant colors! I am so grateful to have finally experienced it in person. I even bought myself a Sari :D And my last week in India, Katy and I ventured on our own for some traveling to the North of India to New Delhi and Agra. Two girls alone in Northern India, it was quite exciting for we did not know what awaited us! Safety was always on our mind, but we were ready for any unexpected encounters ;)
When we traveled for five hours in a car from New Delhi to Agra with a driver we paid for (the best option instead of any bus or train, and IT’S relatively cheap if you’re ever thinking of visiting the Taj Mahal), at one point we stopped in the middle of the road. We were approached by insistent men selling handmade jewelry, men with monkeys on a leash showing tourists the tricks it could do, and other money beggars. We were told to not look at them and keep the windows widely shut although it is quite tempting to observe the almost-circus like scenery.
When Katy and I finally got to the gates of the Taj Mahal, passing Indian children who surprisingly spoke Italian apart from English, Hindi, Spanish to sell books of photographs, goose bumps were crawling up my skin. My heart was loudly beating.
As we entered, I saw the beautiful marbled-symmetrical monument at a distance. There it was. My eyes began to water. It was almost surreal, yet so real. I couldn’t believe I was facing one of the 7 wonders of the world. I couldn’t believe I was in front of the most well-known sacred symbol of love. This added the cherry on top of my stay in India. My voyage across the world was now fully fulfilled. I got the best of many worlds: the rural outskirts, the tropical town of Mysore, the city of New Delhi. Did I mention, one weekend I was also able to touch the Arabian Sea when we traveled to the beach in Kerala and the Gandhi Memorial in New Delhi. I also saw elephants on the side of the road and monkeys in my backyard. Talk about shouting WOW! A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Each city and each experience with its own wonder. India is engraved in my heart as one of the best decisions I ever made. I know I’ll go back one day. It is written!
If you would like more details on my experience with Proworld and the children, I have another blog recounting more deeply at: http://myproworld.goabroad.net/journal.php. In the Search Engine on the right, choose India and I should be the most recent post :)
My motive in India was quite different from the one in Belgium. Summer 2009 stood out as the commencement of my professional search for internships in my field of study. After several applications later and inconvenient internship tenure dates, I decided to take matters into my own hands. And so I came across an organization, called ProWorld Service Corps, a mini-version of the Peace Corps, which allows an individual to choose the number of weeks they desire to intern for and the type of internship they would like to be doing. I partnered up with my dear Katy, the very good friend I made in my Brussels study abroad group and we both applied for the social and economic development field. Proworld then found a project that catered to our interests that were stated in the application. And that was the beginning of one of the most remarkable experiences I have ever had…
Between 23 hours of total plane ride, a crazy 4-hour you-think-you’re-going-to-die drive from Bangalore Airport to our home in Mysore at night, stopping for some typical Chai tea at a street vendor, and realizing that my toilet for a month would be a hole in the floor, that first night in India was quite the shocker to suck it all in that Katiuska and I ended up in incessant laughter that minutes later led us to knock out on our super thin mattress-on wood-supported-by-bricks- bed from the jet lag.
India was everything I could imagine and more. The south of India was surprisingly very similar to the tropical climate, palm trees, messed up roads scenery, and wood-burning smells of Dominican Republic. I almost felt at home. Keyword: ALMOST. After 4 days of eating Indian food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I was endowed with the honorable Traveler’s Diarrhea. I say honorable, because you haven’t lived in a foreign land and haven’t had a real experience if you have not endure the bad as well. After two days of rest, vomiting, and well let me not distraught you from reading onwards with unpleasant images, the other interns and I were in need of some delicious home-sweet-home pizza. We went to a nearby Dominos and Pizza Hut until our stomachs acquired to the taste of Indian Cuisine. But from that day forward, after the sickness, one becomes in love with the native food. At least that’s what happened with me and the other interns…of course I still remained very selective in the level of spiciness I could handle in each bite of curry and masala dishes.
Our mission in India involved teaching English and Social Studies to underprivileged preteens in an alternative school, entitled Kaliyuva Mane, or “Home for Learning,” assisting in the construction of a classroom, and organizing the school’s limited library. Kaliyuva Mane was located about 40 mins from our house in Mysore, in the rural outskirts. Picture: lots of grass, cows, men wearing blankets as skirts, children running and playing cricket, dirt roads, and very little access to electricity and water. And yet, even without the luxury of electricity and water, coming from poor backgrounds, seeing these children greet us with smiles and so much affection was so astonishing that each day at this school, my heart was consistently touched. Knowing that they took a genuine interest in me by asking me how many siblings I have back home and whether I have a big house in the United States, and asking me to show them how to dance, brought such exalting delight to my day. I showed them how to dance Merengue and the Macarena. That was their favorite activity of the day. I can still hear their excited calls “Akka Akka dance!” (Akka meaning elder sister in their dialect of Kannada) Surprisingly enough, these Indian kids knew how to move their hips with flavor! I was very impressed. They became professional Latin dancers in my eyes :) I even taught them how to say hi and goodbye in Spanish, and every morning they greeted me with a “Hola” and every afternoon they said goodbye with an “Adios.”
It was so magically wonderful how I became part of these children’s lives for about a month during my stay in India. But it is even more wonderful how these children became a part of me for my whole life. They gave me so much. They gave me their curiosity, their laughs, their smiles, their time to learn, and most importantly, their love. They showed me their world and accepted me as a foreigner, as their friend. It is the innocence of the young ones and the intelligence and the great potential of the older kids that gives me more certitude of what I want to do in my future. It is because of these children, the children in disadvantaged conditions that I am pursuing a career in Political Science and International Relations. I want to be able to provide them with the opportunities of development that they deserve. My internship with the children is indescribable to what it did to my self-development.
India, the land that I always dreamed of visiting as a child when I would dance in front of late-night Bollywood videos on TV. Something about this country always caught my attention. The unique culture, the amazing music, the vibrant colors! I am so grateful to have finally experienced it in person. I even bought myself a Sari :D And my last week in India, Katy and I ventured on our own for some traveling to the North of India to New Delhi and Agra. Two girls alone in Northern India, it was quite exciting for we did not know what awaited us! Safety was always on our mind, but we were ready for any unexpected encounters ;)
When we traveled for five hours in a car from New Delhi to Agra with a driver we paid for (the best option instead of any bus or train, and IT’S relatively cheap if you’re ever thinking of visiting the Taj Mahal), at one point we stopped in the middle of the road. We were approached by insistent men selling handmade jewelry, men with monkeys on a leash showing tourists the tricks it could do, and other money beggars. We were told to not look at them and keep the windows widely shut although it is quite tempting to observe the almost-circus like scenery.
When Katy and I finally got to the gates of the Taj Mahal, passing Indian children who surprisingly spoke Italian apart from English, Hindi, Spanish to sell books of photographs, goose bumps were crawling up my skin. My heart was loudly beating.
As we entered, I saw the beautiful marbled-symmetrical monument at a distance. There it was. My eyes began to water. It was almost surreal, yet so real. I couldn’t believe I was facing one of the 7 wonders of the world. I couldn’t believe I was in front of the most well-known sacred symbol of love. This added the cherry on top of my stay in India. My voyage across the world was now fully fulfilled. I got the best of many worlds: the rural outskirts, the tropical town of Mysore, the city of New Delhi. Did I mention, one weekend I was also able to touch the Arabian Sea when we traveled to the beach in Kerala and the Gandhi Memorial in New Delhi. I also saw elephants on the side of the road and monkeys in my backyard. Talk about shouting WOW! A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Each city and each experience with its own wonder. India is engraved in my heart as one of the best decisions I ever made. I know I’ll go back one day. It is written!
If you would like more details on my experience with Proworld and the children, I have another blog recounting more deeply at: http://myproworld.goabroad.net/journal.php. In the Search Engine on the right, choose India and I should be the most recent post :)
Ahhhhhhhhh........ You're inspiring me to wanderlust!
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