It's been a while!
I just got back from a week long trip with some members of Daly College and different delegations of Round Squares Schools from Canada, Australia and France.
…small interruption to walk over to the DC Hospital to check how I was to take the medicine prescribed to me by the Doctor this morning. OK, let’s start there! While on our trip, I caught the most horrible cold. Got back into town last night. This morning before going to school, I stopped by the hospital, which is right behind our Residence, to ask the Doctor about a cough syrup. After a brief 2 minute examination…”Open up wide, Aaaaaaah, Deep breath, again, again…” he writes me a prescription of 5 medicines which he writes in the stereotypic unreadable handwriting of a Doctor and tells me to send for them at the Market. When I get to school, I give the prescription to one of the Lab assistants with a 500 Rs bill, telling him if it costs more, to let me know. Since they had already arranged for substitution for me for the day, I was feeling so bad, I ended up going back home. A couple of hours later, Nahran shows up at my apartment with all the medicine for the incredible cost of 174.50 Rs (a little less that $4!) How crazy is that?! I did not pay too close attention to the Doctor’s direction on how to take the medicine, because I figured the “Medicine Man” was going to neatly type it all up for me like Walgreens does back home, right?! Well, that wasn’t to be. It all came in a green little plastic bag, the 5 or 10 pills, depending on whether I was to take it twice or once a day!!) So I had to go back to the hospital to ask for an explanation! ...and this time I paid attention! This is how medicine should be practiced! You go see a doctor for something, he sees about that ailment, and off you go on your merry way! You need 5 capsules of this medicine, 5 capsules of this medicine are cut out and handed to you. None of that fancy packaging that makes you pay $30 co-payment for any medicine!! Here is a new idea Mr. President! Would that make his Health Plan more palatable to the American Republican …ooops, did I say that?! I meant to say: “American Public”!
Our latest trip: Delhi, Agra, Jaipur.
I’ll start from the beginning. Sunday, Delhi was a total disaster in poor planning on the part of the tour organizers. How did they get it so right after Delhi, I don’t know! But one thing at a time… So Delhi, the hotel was too far from the city and traffic was a nightmare. Everything was partially done because we ran out of time. We had about a half hour to visit the Qutub Minar,
which is the tallest brick tour in the world – 72 meters, built in the 12th Century. Really a magnificent sight. In the afternoon we were supposed to visit the Lotus Temple but made it too late there so we had to be content to take pictures from the streets! Laurence, I am sure you are happy to know it will be our first time with you in December. I like that better, anyway. It will feel more special to see it with you. Then the famous Akshardham, very irreverently put, a massive Disney production with fake river boat ride through 10,000 years of Indian culture! It is truly impressive. A giant Hindu temple in the center of the complex is carved entirely of pink stone and white marble. It took five years to be built(11-2000 to 11-20050. Unfortunately we have no picture of this visit because cameras were not allowed at all. But do google it! It really is a 
glowing testimony to what volunteerism, talent and spiritual faith can accomplish. My favorite visit of all, Raj Ghat, a simple memorial that marks the spot of Gandhi’s cremation! A black marble platform with an inscription of his last words “He Ram” (O God) and an eternal flame at one end. That was Delhi!
I just got back from a week long trip with some members of Daly College and different delegations of Round Squares Schools from Canada, Australia and France.
…small interruption to walk over to the DC Hospital to check how I was to take the medicine prescribed to me by the Doctor this morning. OK, let’s start there! While on our trip, I caught the most horrible cold. Got back into town last night. This morning before going to school, I stopped by the hospital, which is right behind our Residence, to ask the Doctor about a cough syrup. After a brief 2 minute examination…”Open up wide, Aaaaaaah, Deep breath, again, again…” he writes me a prescription of 5 medicines which he writes in the stereotypic unreadable handwriting of a Doctor and tells me to send for them at the Market. When I get to school, I give the prescription to one of the Lab assistants with a 500 Rs bill, telling him if it costs more, to let me know. Since they had already arranged for substitution for me for the day, I was feeling so bad, I ended up going back home. A couple of hours later, Nahran shows up at my apartment with all the medicine for the incredible cost of 174.50 Rs (a little less that $4!) How crazy is that?! I did not pay too close attention to the Doctor’s direction on how to take the medicine, because I figured the “Medicine Man” was going to neatly type it all up for me like Walgreens does back home, right?! Well, that wasn’t to be. It all came in a green little plastic bag, the 5 or 10 pills, depending on whether I was to take it twice or once a day!!) So I had to go back to the hospital to ask for an explanation! ...and this time I paid attention! This is how medicine should be practiced! You go see a doctor for something, he sees about that ailment, and off you go on your merry way! You need 5 capsules of this medicine, 5 capsules of this medicine are cut out and handed to you. None of that fancy packaging that makes you pay $30 co-payment for any medicine!! Here is a new idea Mr. President! Would that make his Health Plan more palatable to the American Republican …ooops, did I say that?! I meant to say: “American Public”!
Our latest trip: Delhi, Agra, Jaipur.
I’ll start from the beginning. Sunday, Delhi was a total disaster in poor planning on the part of the tour organizers. How did they get it so right after Delhi, I don’t know! But one thing at a time… So Delhi, the hotel was too far from the city and traffic was a nightmare. Everything was partially done because we ran out of time. We had about a half hour to visit the Qutub Minar,
which is the tallest brick tour in the world – 72 meters, built in the 12th Century. Really a magnificent sight. In the afternoon we were supposed to visit the Lotus Temple but made it too late there so we had to be content to take pictures from the streets! Laurence, I am sure you are happy to know it will be our first time with you in December. I like that better, anyway. It will feel more special to see it with you. Then the famous Akshardham, very irreverently put, a massive Disney production with fake river boat ride through 10,000 years of Indian culture! It is truly impressive. A giant Hindu temple in the center of the complex is carved entirely of pink stone and white marble. It took five years to be built(11-2000 to 11-20050. Unfortunately we have no picture of this visit because cameras were not allowed at all. But do google it! It really is a 
glowing testimony to what volunteerism, talent and spiritual faith can accomplish. My favorite visit of all, Raj Ghat, a simple memorial that marks the spot of Gandhi’s cremation! A black marble platform with an inscription of his last words “He Ram” (O God) and an eternal flame at one end. That was Delhi! I did have a chance to meet with another Fulbrighter who is teaching in Delhi, Evelina! That was special! In spite of our obvious differences of origins and the likes :-) , I tell you I felt like I was meeting with a long lost kin!! We had dinner at the Banana Leaf, where we had had a couple of meals back in August when we had first arrived! Really, highlight of the whole week!
Then on Tuesday, miserable day in the bus going from Delhi to Agra. Now I know all you skeptics out there are going to question the veracity of this statement, but we drove the 200 Km (that's 120 miles!) distance between these two cities in exactly 7 hours. There was no breakdown of the bus, no accident on the way, nothing like that, just cows, rickshaws, goats, dogs, two-wheelers, whole families on ONE motorcycle, people, did I mention the cows? cows, cows resting, cows walking, cows crossing the street (do they know where they’re going?) people, cars, trucks, and broken roads! We just check in the hotel, and everyone crashes! I guess we had to be pure of any sightseeing for a while and fresh and disposed to take in what was in store for us the day after! God in his infinite wisdom! So, you guess it! The Taj Mahal! Words totally fail me. How was this conceived? From far, this humongous white structure, from close this incredibly tender white marble so delicately carved with such incredible details! How did they do it? Ronsard said “Il ne faut pas mourir sans avoir vu Carcassone”, Isabelle corrects Ronsard and says “No one should die without having seen the Taj Mahal!” I am almost sorry to post my pictures. They are such an injustice to what this place is all about. You have to see the whiteness of the marble. Imagine a baby’s cheek in a commercial for a baby soap or something, well, that will get you a little close to the reality, not completely but… It’s the translucent of this huge laced building that gets to you from up close, I think. This is what pictures will never show, folks. You’ll see the majestic, the grandiose, the perfect symmetry but not that! I tell you folks, I left my heart in Agra last week!
Two days later I was getting sick in Jaipur!! So I pretty much missed the pink city!
Very easily we forget. This week I had a bit of a wake-up call, of a sort. Truly this experience is turning out to be more than I bargained for originally! OK, you’ve heard this idea from me before, “kids are the same everywhere”, right? Well, can I change this to People are the same everywhere?! We hurt each other, we amaze each other, we disappoint each other, we break promises… and we heal and we move on. I don’t know why I had it in my mind that all Indians were going to be little Gandhi, all one billion of them (is that the count?)! Is everyone having a good laugh?!! Now, this is a touchy subject. It deals with the taboo idea that makes the world go round!!! You know what I mean, right?! I will try to be as sensitive as I can (…what, me and my big foot?!) Why even bring it up? some will ask. Well, because this blog is not only about my “Teaching in India” but also “Learning in India”. I know, the teachers reading me are saying “Well, duh, Isabelle, aren’t teaching and learning one and the same process?!” Touché! OK, so here goes. In India, it is not … I’ve been sitting in front of this blinking cursor for the past 15 minutes, no kidding, trying to put into words how Indians dealt with money matter and couldn’t come up with one single idea! Let me start with the incident and then maybe it will get easier to say what I learned. This tour was supposed to cost a certain amount of rupees. At the end of the trip I have spent one third more and I don’t mean in personal spending!! (No, I did not go crazy buying souvenirs, sorry!!) They just kept on coming with more and more expenses for us! And in the most polite of ways, “Yes, I understand how frustrating, Mam, but that will be another 2150 rupees.” It was very frustrating! And I wrapped myself in my proud American Way and thought, that would never happen back home! X amount is X amount. Period! It took me all week of being frustrated, appalled, annoyed, and feeling like I was being robbed, to realize, “Ne, Isabelle! They didn’t do anything that extraordinarily wrong! They misrepresented some truths J, maybe, they miscalculated, they didn’t see the big picture, but they didn’t rob me, they did not purposefully change the facts… And, sadly, they are not all Gandhi!!! So then I started to think, well what about my proud American Way? Could that have happened back home also?! What would be the need for “Tell it to Howard” (Is that the name of that show?) Of course, not this exact incident, but some other where one of the party feels erroneously they’ve been wronged one way or the other. And we get hurt and disappointed and we roll over and heal. The important thing is to let go of this feeling of having been wronged. An Indian guru told Wayne Dyer “there are two types of things one can worry about, one type, you can’t do anything about, so why worry about it, the other type you can do something about it, so you do it and it doesn’t exist anymore.“ (I’ve had to use this idea twice in the space of a day!) So I have realized that there was nothing I could do about this one, so I just need to let it go and remember the baby’s cheek commercial!!! As I told someone today, I will not let the small issues get in the bigger picture of this experience.
For all of you who are not familiar with my writing style, I do always use way too many exclamation points everywhere! I guess it is to make up for my lack of precise command of expression like the two people I mentioned in one of my first blogs! Now should be a game quiz moment, “what is the name of at least one of the persons mentioned…!!!” (see, I told you!) I’ve watched way too much Gilmore Girls!!
I'll post the pictures later! ... and here they are :-)
The agra Fort:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38480&id=1408545811&l=096301363a
The Taj Mahal:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38473&id=1408545811&l=9cb32255d7
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