The Odyssey

Disclaimer: This story is woefully late but I figured our biggest trip yet was worth hearing about, even if belated.

Time: 1:50 pm
Date: Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
Place: Lower Kindergarten Classroom, Kiran Center

Scene:

A slightly frazzled Damaris is trying to teach art to a class of five and six year olds when her phone rings.

Damaris: Hi, Daniel.
Daniel: Hi Damaris.
Damaris: ..What’s up?
Daniel: I’m sorry to bother you at work but we’ve had a change of plans.
Damaris: Really? What?
Daniel: Well, we’re going to Agra tonight.
Damaris: We’re not taking the train tomorrow?
Daniel: No. We’ll have dinner at the program house and then leave around 9.
Damaris: Oh, so do we still have Hindi class? I won’t get back from work until like 5.
Daniel: Yeah, Hindi’s from 5 to 7, right? Dinner is at 8 so just pack your stuff after and come over.
Damaris: Um, ok.
Daniel: K, see you tonight. Bye.

I would probably pinpoint that conversation as both the beginning and summary of our first Long Excursion. Long Excursions are called as such because they are Princeton-sponsored trips of seven to nine days and each country is allotted two over their nine-month stay. Our first one was supposed to go a little like this:

Thursday, the 30th - overnight train from Banaras to Agra
Friday, the 31st –See Taj Mahal in Agra and leave that evening on another overnight train to Jodhpur,
Rajastan.
Saturday, the 1st - Tour Jodhpur
Sunday, the 2nd – Day train to Jaisalmer, Rajastan
Monday, the 3rd –Start camel safari
Tuesday, the 4th - Camel safari
Wednesday, the 5th – Return from camel safari and board overnight train to Delhi
Thursday, Friday, Saturday- tour Delhi, and board overnight train on Saturday back to Banaras
Sunday, the 9th – Arrive in Banaras

All in all, the trip was fantastic. As you may have guessed by now, however, everything didn’t exactly go as planned.

          Trains in India, especially during the cold season, are often delayed, sometimes by 10 hours or more, and so at first I thought the change of plans was simply to get a head start on the trip. At Hindi class that evening, however, I discovered that the change was actually due to the fact that the Taj Mahal is closed on Fridays, the equivalent of Sundays for Muslims, and therefore we were leaving on Wednesday so we could arrive in Agra on Thursday to see the monument. In addition, we would no longer being taking an overnight train. Rather, we would be going by overnight taxi. 

         It should also probably be mentioned that taxis in India, or at least Uttar Pradesh, are not bright yellow sedans that run on a meter. They are usually unmarked vehicles of various sizes that you hire for a certain distance or time. Ours was a standard 7-seater and so we crammed our seven in (the five of us, Daniel, and Saurab, our friend and Josh’s homestay brother) and, truth be told, the ride wasn’t that bad. Thirteen hours later we arrived at our hotel in Agra. Sure, we were a little stiff and groggy but after a nice nap, hotel pressure hot shower, and some real food, we rallied, met up with Debbie, another Dragons instructor, and went to see the Taj. Which was awesome. There is no way I can do one of the wonders of the world justice with any description but I will say that even the cold, rainy, and foggy weather in which I saw the tomb couldn’t mask its utter glory and brilliance.

Beautiful inlaid at the Red Fort

Leaving on Wednesday gave us another day in Agra, which we spent several hours of exploring the Red Fort. While perhaps not quite as magnificent as its white marble neighbor, I thoroughly enjoyed wandering the hidden hallways and crannies of the old palace. That evening, we packed up our stuff and headed to the train station to board our train to Jodhpur, a city in the far western state of Rajasthan (near Pakistan). When we arrived at the station, our train had been eleven hours delayed. By the time we left to go back to the hotel, the delay was fourteen hours and counting and would probably cause us to miss our train in Jodhpur to Jaisalmer, another city about five hours away.
So Daniel and Debbie pulled some travel plan juggling magic, we went back to the hotel for a nice New Year’s celebration on stationary ground, and headed out early the next morning to Delhi. In Delhi we planned to kill a few hours with one of Daniel’s friends and then catch a direct overnight train to Jaisalmer. Our time was fairly uneventful, save for perhaps the rickshaw ride from the train station. Katie, Daniela, and I were sharing an auto rickshaw and were a little confused when the rickshaw stopped in the middle of the highway-esque road. We figured the auto was broken or the driver was having a conversation with the auto next to us and prepared to cajole the rickshaw walla into moving when we realized the real reason we had stopped. We were at a stoplight. All three of us let out a whoop of amazement and delight at what seemed like a novelty to us after only three months in Banaras. The rickshaw driver laughed at us.

Jaisalmer Fort

The next day we arrived in Jaisalmer, a beautiful “living fort” in the Thar desert. Jaisalmer was once the fort and capital for a line of Rajastan kings and is now a functioning city in and around the walls of the old fort. The day after arriving and sightseeing around the city, we began our camel safari.

The Caravan 

My lasting impression of camels is that they are huge and double jointed. These characteristics are fairly obvious, yes, but they become exceedingly relevant when you are on a camel that is sitting up or down. The sensation almost feels like riding a bunking bronco, save that with each buck you either become closer or further from the ground. Still, I like to think my noble steed Munhiya and I developed some kind of bond over our time together, especially when I entertained myself by trying to beem thoughts into his head. Camp on a camel safari is literally sleeping on the sand dunes with a ton of blankets in whatever nook you can find. The atmosphere is great and the stargazing is wonderful, however, the conditions do you leave you prone to waking up with the chills and fever, which I did on our second day out. There’s not much to say about that day except that Munhiya stuck by me and by the time Debbie got Saurab (who was also sick) and I back to Jaislamer to a hotel that night, I was more than a little out of it and gratefully passed out on the bed.

Munhiya and Me

The next day, everyone else returned from finishing the safari and we boarded a train and set off back to Delhi. Again, not much to be said about the trip as I spent pretty much the entire 20 hour duration lying on my berth resting and powering through the audio book version of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. 
In Delhi, we stayed at a pleasant hotel in the Tibetan colony, which is essentially an enclosed community of Tibetan refugees. I spent much of the time resting but was roused to go to Khan Market, an epicenter for imported goods and both an intoxicating and dangerous place for those craving treats from home like chocolate syrup,  avocados, and, of course, cheese. Probably far too much money was spent on unnecessary items (like $10 Tostidos) but we were infatuated. Scott, associate director for Bridge Year in Princeton joined us on the second day and that night we attended a function for meeting and getting to know Princeton alumni in Delhi and India. Finally, after running some last minute errands the next day, we arrived at the train station to catch our overnight to Banaras and found out, surprise, surprise, our train was twelve hours delayed. Back to the hotel it was and by the next morning, our train was flat out canceled. This left us in a bit of a pickle as there appeared to be no trains to Banaras in the immediate future and all of us were supposed to be back to work that week. Solution: spend another day in Delhi and get another taxi that night for the 780 kilometers back to Banaras. The day was spent visiting the Indian National Museum and learning some history about the country we’re living in. The night was spent embarking on our second 20 hour ride of the trip, via taxi. Once, such a journey would have sounded ridiculous. Now, in my opinion, all it needs is some cheese and crackers, audiobooks, a touch of fatigue, a dash of flexibility, and a whole bunch of creativity and positive attitude.

At 6:00 pm, on Monday, January, 10th, we arrived back home.

Photo Journalism

Here's a little potpourri of my travel's so far:

About to get on the 14 hour flight in JFK

Modeling our new purchases on our second day in Delhi

Pit stop on the way to Kausani

View from the taxi in Uttarkhand

Cows and Daniela...

A view of the Himalayas from Kausani

Banaras, the ghats, and the Ganga

Visiting and touring Kiran

On a mosque tour

View of the river from the previous mosque

Bride and groom at a wedding

Dev Depawali, a festival where the ghats are decorated with thousands of lights

Newly saried before going to a wedding

Duck.....Duck.....Groose!

Down by the Banks

       When Petra, one of the other volunteers at Kiran, asked me if I would be interested in setting up a physical education class for the students, I replied without hesitation. I’ve always loved sports and am a firm believer in the power of physical activity so I said of course I would be interested. By P.E., she went on to explain, she didn’t mean any really intricate activities, just some organized games with the children while she took one or two at a time around the compound on a horse for hippo-therapy. I’d never taught an actual “physical education” class before but I figured I’d attended plenty of them and had enough experience playing with large groups of kids to get by. My one uncertainty stemmed from the fact that I would be working with disabled kids, something I’d never done before. Still, I wasn’t that worried and started googling for ideas. I consider myself a fairly adept googler and so to my surprise, the cyber-sleuthing didn’t turn up any good resources about physical education for students with disabilities. Although I did find some information on how to adapt regular games, most of the activities that were described involved equipment that I knew I wouldn’t have. I left my research a little discouraged and instead, reverted back to good ol’ brainstorming which, in this case, meant thinking really hard to remember the games I played in P.E. in elementary school.  
       The next day, I approached my first class with a few ideas and a lot of prayers to the creativity gods. Put plainly, it didn’t go very well. In their defense, I don’t think the creativity gods abandoned me, just the 17 five and six year olds in my class. I managed to control them for all of 20 minutes before a on-looking teacher took pity on me and sent the kids off to the playground. I imagine controlling a class of  antsy first graders anywhere in the world is hard enough, and I learned quickly that it becomes a tad harder when you don’t speak their language very well and are attempting to explain games rules with a small conversationally-geared vocabulary.
       The following day, things went a little better with second grade and over course of the week, I developed a kind of plan, well, rhythm, for each class. I start each day by teaching “Down by a Banks,” a throwback from my early years that I haven’t played in at least a decade but knew Katie had played successfully at her work site, followed by “Duck, Duck, Goose,” followed by a racing game, followed by a catching game,  followed by a general disintegration of the class when I try to explain the next game will involve me throwing the ball, all the children racing to it and the first one to get there picking it up and bringing it back to me. I say disintegrate because when I throw the ball, the children would usually race after it screaming like banshees and then, instead of picking it up and bringing it back, invariably kick it and race after it again screaming like banshees.
       Still, I learned a couple valuable lessons in the first week. One, I realized the problem was not really finding games for children with disabilities, but rather finding games in general that I would be able to explain effectively. Second, I learned firsthand that every culture has its own games and that sometimes, the best way to keep the children engaged is to play games that they have grown up playing and that I may have never seen before. In fact, I realized after the first week or so that I was having such a hard time not just because I was explaining the games in muddled Hinglish, but also because I was teaching games based on American activities and principals. P.E. games taught in the US are generally variations of one or two games that every American child has grown up with. P.E. games taught in India are probably the same except that the games are variations of one or two games that every Indian child has grown up with.  I was trying to explain American games that, to the children, were probably baseless and therefore that much more confusing.
       Over the course of each one to one-and-half hour class, there are highs and there are lows. The lows usually involved me getting frustrated with misbehaving children or grappling at all my creative threads to think of another game or a way to explain it. The highs, however, come just as often, if not more, and are small flitting moments, almost video frames, when I see a grin of pure childish joy, hear the unmistakable sound of a child’s unrestrained gleeful laughter, or yes, realize that the children can’t pronounce “goose” and so have been playing the entire game by slapping their hands down on their peers’ heads with a chortled “groose!”

       The other day, I went to run the class as usual, feeling fairly prepared for the nine hearing-impaired children I would have for the afternoon. Yes, they wouldn’t be able to hear me but I wasn’t that worried about that minor detail as most of my communication in these classes consists of mangled speech followed by elaborate pantomiming. When I got to the field, however, I was a little startled to be greeted by no less than twenty-five deaf children. I took a deep breath. The teacher, mercifully, saw my apprehension and agreed to stay with me and help run the class. Together, we managed to keep a fairly stable balance of power and played several games with the kids. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and during a tag-esque game, my gaze fell on an eight or nine year old boy and the sight of pure glee on his face struck me as both an incredibly trivial and yet indescribably extraordinary phenomenon. It occurred to me that in a matter of minutes, seconds even, the excitement would pass and be forgotten among all the worries and other joys of life but at the same time, in that flash of delight , the emotion I was witnessing was absolute and real. It struck me then that my makeshift P.E. class is in no way changing the world and yet in moments like those, or when even for an hour I get to help children have simple, unadulterated fun, it might be doing something just as important.

The Work Site

The main entrance to the center

     As I mentioned in my first post, I work for an organization called Kiran and in order to provide some context for my experiences over the next seven months, I figure I should probably give a little background on the place where I work for 6-8 hours, 5 days a week. First, the official explanation:

     Kiran describes itself as a “center for the education, training, and rehabilitation of children and youngsters with different abilities.” Their mission is to “support differently-abled children and their parents with quality service in a holistic manner so that the children can become empowered and all-around healthy adults. (Kiran) also works to share this know-how and experience with other people and organizations who wish to do the same kind of service.”

Reception/ One of my favorite places to hang out

This mission translates into a wide-reaching organization with its base in Madhopur, a village about 15 km or a 30-45 minute bus ride outside Varanasi. In short, Kiran does a lot. I’m undoubtedly going to miss several units, but I’ll list the ones that come to mind.  For example, at the center alone there is:

•  a K-12 grade school that serves over 140 kids,
• a physical therapy/rehabilitation unit that treats those kids,
•  an orthotics workshop that designs and makes custom orthotics and prosthetics for the children on-site and free of charge,
•  a vocational school that trains young adults in employable skills including, but not limited to, woodworking, tailoring, baking, horticulture, and art and design,
• a free clinic where parents can bring their children to get diagnosed and learn how to care for people with that disability,
• a separate school (Human Resources Training Center or HRTC) that is training young adults to become special education teachers, with the idea that they will then go out and work in the villages Kiran can’t reach,
• and finally, a department to raise awareness in the society about disabilities, particularly cerebral palsy and polio.

The side of the Main Hall (and one of the center's dogs)

     On top of all this, Kiran runs week-long camps in rural villages for disabled children who live too far away to commute to the center as well as several other programs geared towards disability issues.
     Just to give you a sense of how large this whole operation is, understand that the “center” is really more like a small village with over 140 people living there and 120 kids and at least 50 staff members being bused in everyday.
     Now, my part in this whole shebang is really a tiny fraction of the overall picture. In the mornings, I’ve started helping out in the Art and Design unit by making bracelets which they sell in their store and recently, I’ve begun designing a new one that will hopefully be added to the collection. Soon, I will start helping out in a new food preservation unit that is being set up which I’ve gotten the impression will work with mentally challenged students as well as expand the products Kiran offers (they run a couple stores in the city in addition to supplying local vendors and partner organizations in Europe). In the afternoon, I run a P.E. class (check out my next post), and then one or two English classes for the staff and HRTC trainees.

Our hippo-therapy horse, Suresh

I suppose that’s pretty much the run down on Kiran but if you would like to learn more or get a more thorough overview, feel free to check out their website at kiranvillage.org.

P.S. Stay tuned for more pictures of the center and perhaps even a few showing exactly what I’ve been up to.

The Bovine Chronicles

In honor of India's favorite animal and a couple of my first experiences in Banaras, I'm going to tell you a couple of stories about cows.
My first tale is actually from our second day in the city. In order to help us get better acquainted with our surroundings, Daniel and Christina gave us a list of items to procure and sent us off on a “scavenger hunt.“  The list was written in Devangari and so after getting more than a little help from our friend Papu, we decided to begin the hunt by going to a nearby bazaar called Godolia. I squeezed into a cycle rickshaw with Katie and Alan and away we went. The ride was only about 10 minutes but at some point, I spaced off and my mind drifted to the subject of cows. I noticed one on the side of the road with particularly menacing horns and imagined what would happen if a cow tried to gore me. Yes, in retrospect, the topic seems unusual and random but at the time, my mind didn’t seem to think anything was wrong with the topic and entertained the notion by picturing and determining the best route to take should I find myself in a showdown with a holy animal. I pondered that the key was probably keeping the horns away from my body but before I could dwell on the matter much further, I was distracted by the many sights, smells, and generally overwhelming sensory experiences that is an Indian bazaar.
Later that day, we were wandering a side street in search of a specific sweet shop and, sure enough, I had my showdown. Now, to be honest, the altercation was not exactly two-sided. The bull was minding its own business, noticed something invading its personal space, swung its head half-heartedly at the intruder, and conveniently began munching on a fresh pile of trash. I was strolling down the road, saw a large, white, mass equipped with sharp objects come at me, felt my adrenaline skyrocket, grabbed the horns to keep them away from my body and simultaneously leaped about 3 feet away.

Damaris- 1, Cow- 0, obviously.

Now, before you start picturing cows rampaging through the city impaling people left and right, hear out my second story. This one isn't actually mine, but was told to the group by one of our recent lecturers, a professor at Banaras Hindu University. He told us of how in the village where he grew up, there was an incredibly ornery cow who would never let anyone milk her. She was so bad-tempered that, eventually, no one would go near her for fear of being injured. Then, when our speaker was two months old, his mother died. His family and the villagers thought him doomed for death without his mother's nourishment. However, one day, they had brought him outside when, suddenly, that very cow came over and began to feed him. Obviously, they were shocked and even more so when they discovered that, as long as the baby was present, they could even milk the cow themselves. When our speaker was old enough to eat real food though, the cow ceased her cooperativeness just as abruptly and could once again no longer be milked. Our speaker ended the story simply by saying, "And that's it. Without that cow, I would not be here today."
In some ways, I think Banaras is a like a cow. You catch it in the wrong place at the wrong time and it might try to gore you. Or run you over. Poison you with food. Suffocate you with air. Roast you alive or freeze you to death. Then again, thousands of people come here every month to be rejuvenated and revitalized. The contradictory nature of India is probably one of the most talked-about aspects of the country and so it fits that its animal figurehead would follow suit. Sure, a cow tried to gore me. Then again, since the encounter, you will never catch me walking the streets so oblivious of my surroundings. In fact, I‘ve discovered that when you are keeping yourself perpetually aware of any potentially dangerous surroundings, you  happen to notice a lot more of the safe stuff too. A cow didn’t wean me from birth, but I think it may have performed just as crucial a favor by not only sparing me from an actual goring by some more zealous animal, but also enriching my experience here on whole.

P.S. If you're looking to learn a little Devangari (Hindi script), check out my sidebar section. One of the most frustrating and fun aspects of reading Devangari is when you come across a word and sound it out while trying to simultaneously translate it, only to discover that the word is in fact English, albeit spelled strangely. I'll show you the script and the direct translation in Roman letters and see for yourself if you can figure out what word is. The section is called ess-cAA-pay in honor of Dory from Finding Nemo ("ess-cAA-pay. hmm, that's funny, it spelled just like escape!) Enjoy.

Kanda

     Our next stop was a small village to the west of Kausani called Kanda. Our time in Kanda can be mostly summed up by three things: our service project, chocolate, and the day we left.

     For our service project, we were living and working with an organization called ROSE. ROSE works with foreign volunteers to better the community and we were going to spend our time rebuilding a caved-in roof on the house of one of the villagers. Now, rebuilding a roof may sound like an impressive job but don't be fooled; for at least half the time, our work consisted of sifting gravel and bagging the sifted sand. Evidently, making cement requires inordinate amounts of fine sand, a fact I am now well aware of thanks to the 60 bags we produced over the course of 4 or 5 days. Still, heaving a shovel of gravel against a grate is surprisingly satisfying and, after a week of total relaxation, some manual labor was definitely appreciated. After being rained out for another 4 days, we did complete the project on our last day in the village. If anyone's curious, making a cement roof in a rural Indian village is actually fairly simple ordeal. All you need to do is get about 30 workers one morning, mix (lots of) sand, water, and cement mix manually on the ground, and then literally pass up big platefuls of the wet concoction and dump the goop on the roof. In about 2 hours, the house will be covered by a lovely and sturdy cement slab.

     As for chocolate, we were addicted. I probably ate as much of the stuff in one day as I normally do in one month at home. The food at ROSE was good but consisted of variations of the same thing for every meal and so the necessity of some dietary supplements became immediately apparent. The chocolate in the village mostly consisted of slightly melted Cadbury 'Dairy Milks" and Kit Kats but it didn't seem to matter as long as the candy faintly resembled real chocolate. In fact, one of the highlighting discoveries of the week came one day when Katie and I were checking out a store in the village, about a 20 minute walk from our house. Katie was perusing the shop’s Cadbury selection and tried to see if they had any larger bars by asking "Barra Walla? Bigger one?" The shopkeeper looked confused for a couple seconds and then his face lit up and he motioned for us to wait. He went to the back of his shop, opened his refrigerator, and pulled out a black box. I had already bought everything I wanted but I couldn't help but be a little curious about the contents of the mysterious container. He blew some dust off the top of the box and, I'm not kidding, opened it as if showing us some fine jewelry or precious stones. The box was full of average size bars of chocolate and so Katie started explaining again that she wanted a bigger size, not a different kind. I saw the brand name was "Fun Tan" and was about to dismiss the bars when I noticed in small letters underneath the words "Dark Chocolate." The storekeeper was sold out within two days.

     And then there was the day we left. Uttarakhand, the region we were in, had received record amounts of rainfall that year and many of the roads had been wiped out by landslides and debris. Even though the train station was only usually an eight hour jeep ride away, we decided to leave a day early to ensure we made our train back to Delhi. So, bright and early at 7:00 am on Tuesday morning, we packed up all our stuff, left Rose and walked half an hour to the village where we could catch a jeep. The direct road had been washed out so we were going to have to take a longer, roundabout route that required switching jeeps several times. I took my trusty car-sick medicine immediately and by our first car switch, was beginning to feel the drowsiness side-effects. I woke up two hours later when we switched jeeps yet again and then one hour later when we hit a road block. We didn't know how long it would take to clear the roadblock and heard there were several others so we decided to hike 2 kilometers past the road blocks and catch a jeep on the other side. 2 kilometers turned into 5 kilometers which turned into 7 kilometers which turned into a 12 kilometer or 7.5 mile or 3 and a half hour hike. Except for the paved roads we were walking on, the trek felt like any backpacking trip and we passed the time by talking, listening to music, and even playing some trail games. We finally reached the end of the road-blocked section and took a short drive to the nearby city of Almora, where we decided to spend the night. The trip from Kanda to Almora normally takes 2 hours. It had been 11 and half since we left ROSE. The next day went a bit a smoother, with only a 9 hour Jeep ride to the train station, which we arrived at with plenty of time to catch our ride to Delhi. 
     Our 32 hour journey was exhausting, but also incredibly exhilarating and exciting. It may have taken 4 times as long as usual, but we learned a lot more about expectations, flexibility, determination, and optimism than we could have possibly learned by simply sitting in a car for 8 hours.  I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed a hot bath and real bed as much as I did that night in Almora, but I do believe the adventure was one of the best ways we could have possibly ended our time in the mountains and geared up for our time in Banaras.

Kausani

      After arriving in Delhi and taking a couple days to get our bearings (and buy traditional clothes), we took an overnight train from the capital to the northern state of Uttarakhand. From there, we took a jeep to the small village of Kausani. The ride was pretty uneventful although I think I should mention that over the course of the 8 hour drive, I discovered the wonders of car-sick medicine. Where those magic pills have been all my life, I really don't know, but I mention them because I am certain that our travels in the mountains would have turned out very differently without them.
     In Kausani, we stayed at a hotel/resort/retreat called the Chevron Eco-lodge and the going was easy, to say the least. We were supplied with huge, delicious, regular meals, comfy beds, Western toilets, hot water, and a never-ending supply of fresh chai. Our days were mostly filled with food, briefings, exploring, journaling, and bonding.
     That being said, for two hours every day I was invariably wrenched out of this bubble and thrust into the difficulties of learning a new language. Hindi is hard. Binitji is a wonderful teacher but I still ended every class feeling completely lost. On our expeditions to the village center, we tried to put what we’d learned to use and I couldn’t help but laugh about what my stammerings must have sounded like to the villagers. Most likely something equivalent to “..How…are you? I are good! How much …does…err…one hour!...cost?!”
     Then again, one day at the internet café, I glanced over to the screen next to me and noticed that every time the boy did some action on his computer game, the words “Spicy Move!” would flash in bright orange letters. I laughed and then involuntarily thought “Spicy! Like..masala! masaaledar!” I pictured Binitji saying “Make a sentence!” and thought “khanna masaaledar hai.” The food is spicy.
     Kausani was everything you’d want from your first week in a country you're going to spend the next nine months in: nice people, beautiful scenery, delicious food, and lots of time to process. In some ways, it was almost like home. Almost, because whenever I started to get too comfortable, I was instantly reminded of my foreignness by something like walking back to the lodge and realizing that every time I meant to ask someone how they’re doing, I’d been saying “Ap kaha se hai?” instead of “Ap kaise hai?” I thought the confused looks I’d been getting were because people didn’t understand my accent. Now, I think it’s probably more of a combination of my accent and the fact that I'd been smiling and asking “Where are you from?” and responding “I'm good too!”
     Still, all in all, our first week in India was grand. However, by the end of our stay in Kausani, I think we all realized that we'd really just left one bubble of comfort for another and were greatly looking forward to moving on.