So long , farewell , I mean to say goodbye . . .

So my trip to India has come to a premature though not unwelcomed or sad end. The crew and I have decided to cut our losses and head to Malaysia about 2 weeks earlier than planned. Originally we bought tickets flying out of New Delhi on November 12^th directly in Bangkok. However, we all decided it would be a better decision to just buy new tickets to Malaysia and get out of India earlier. There are a few reasons why I am happy with this decision. Now I am no hard hearted, frigid person, but neither am I Mother Teresa; the zeitgeist of her time in this area. However, I think for my emotional well being it is better to leave a place that so openly profits from its suffering masses without any qualms whatsoever. Personally, I am tired and emotionally exhausted at having to be rude and almost downright mean to children and toddlers aged 2 through 12. This has been one of the harshest realities I have had to deal with here. No child should be alone on the streets at night by themselves begging from money or food to eat. No child should have to lie down on a cold pavement peppered with the fecal matter of all manner of animal and rodent from rat through horse and human. No child should have to be shouted at by any adult whose heart is being bleeding, who is trying to come to terms with the morals they have been taught and who is grappling with their conscience and the disparity between what is safe and what might be ethical. An adult who given the opportunity and right circumstance would help in any possible way, but who also knows that this is neither safe nor intelligent, since they would immediately be swarmed upon by dozens of other kids and permanently be on the radar of said children who roam the streets and could quickly turn to harassing, violent mob if not appeased. Hunger and desperation forces people to do certain things that most of the “civilized, cultured, above poverty level” masses would rather not think about. So these kids did what they had to do, and so did I. I kept my mean mug and used my most bitter, scornful voice dripping in distaste and condescension when saying NO , in the pathetic hope that the child would leave me alone so that I would not have to twice perform the ACT. No child should have to deal with this. It’s tiring , it’s exhausting and I’m sure wanes and detracts from the humanness of all parties involved. So goodbye to that. That I will never miss, and will hopefully forget with time. . .though I doubt it.

                I will also not forget or miss the smog and pollution that covers India like a thick blanket. The eye burning, skin coating, allergy, sniffing, sneezing, coughing causing fumes that make breathing hard. Seriously how is it even legal to do this ? I was perusing my pictures of India recently and realized how many of them seem blurred, but not as a result of my camera lens but rather the smoke and smog that’s in the air. Today , we are staying at a hotel with a roof top restaurant and pool. I cannot even enjoy the stars because they are impossible to see even on a cloudless night. Yes it is that bad. Beautiful sunsets should not come as a result of toxins in the atmosphere.

                Lastly, I will not be missing the number of accidents and bleeding people I have seen here and that is all I am saying on that matter since I would rather not call to memory those occasions.

               

                Enough of the bleak no? So what will I be missing? The beaches! The warm , inviting waters of Goa and Kerala state. Ohhhh … they seem to call to you, day and night with bars and huts intermittent along the water’s edge filled with their expats, Diaspora and locals. So many fun memories. The food . . .chappattis, idlis, naan ( buttered, plain and garlic) , chicken tikka, tandoori, afghani, pannier palak , alu gobi, jeera rice, chicken biryani, papad, pampadams, shahi paneer, matar mushroom masala , paneer lababdar, navratan korma , dahl ( green , red, yellow and black) , masala chai tea and maybe a lassi plus all those other meals I can’t pronounce or never learned its associated name. *sigh* yes I will be missing this. I will also miss our long and sometimes eventful train rides. Just a few days ago, trying to catch a train from Jaipur to Agra we somehow got on the wrong train and went 4 hours in the wrong direction and finding ourselves in Ejmir hahaha. I will also miss asking someone the price of something , then dividing by 3 and subtracting 79 to find out the actual price I should be paying. I will miss arguing with said people who told me these prices. I will always cherish, being able to see the Bengal bay, the taj, the forts, the palaces , hearing the stories of the Maharaja and seeing histories in painting. I will miss observing this culture, the good and bad because I no longer think they are mutually exclusive. However, time passes and life moves on, moments become memories and future becomes the present, with that said myself and the crew will be in Malaysia soon and I’m looking forward to the memories I will create there too.

Love,
Dee

PS I'm too tired to proof this, read and forgive :)

India : Tea ,Beaches, Prawns, Chappattis , Elephants, Tuk Tuks, Monkeys and humans!

This title actually has nothing to do with my post, it’s just what my life has been for the past 5 weeks or so, that, and writing, a lot of documenting, because I want to be able to remember this trip in the years to come. We’ve been in India since the 21^st of October.After our 1 hour flight from Sri Lanka ,we landed in Chennai airport in the Tamil Nadu region of India aka the south. We knew we were about to move on up to the East Side when a real taxi on 4 wheels with AC, picked us up in a real car, that didn’t give us whiplash every time it changed gears. Woooo! were we excited to not be sitting under each other’s armpits in the back of a tuk tuk. I suspect I was especially happy because I have always felt that if I could kick a vehicle over with one Chuck Norris roundhouse kick, then I am much better of walking! No?! do you agree or do you agree? Eh? OK OK * . About 4 hours later we got to our final destination. We were finally at the home of Aunty H, who is R-Wheezy’s relative (side note R- Wheezy’s family has more cultures and races than a United Nations Summit meeting, it’s quite spectacular and wonderful!)
                Anywhooo I was glad we were finally there because really I’m tired of flirting with death in the cars of these drivers. However I learned quickly that driving is as bad in India as Sri Lanka if not worse, and I was in a fender bender in Sri Lanka ! YIKES! Other than that it is simply beautiful.  After a 2 day rest, we decided to try our legs at Hiking up Mount Arunachala with Vijay ( a friend of R – Wheezy’s aunt ) at 5 AM in the morning to visit the Sri Ashram Ramanasramam where the guru Ramana Maharshi lived for many years.. Mt. Arunchala can be found in Tiruvanamalai which is an important Shaivite town where Shiva is revered as  Arunachaleswar (an aspect of fire). There is a proliferation of Ashrams around here and many Sikh and Buddhist followers, foreigners and locals alike. Those who have surrendered and reject all attachment to the material world, those devotees who stay in no place longer than 3 days , those who are looking for enlightenment and even those once regular travelers who came to this place years ago for a visit and just never returned to their home towns and countries. These are the people we meet. This is why I travel.

Anywhooo I digress, back to our 5 AM morning exercise. While hiking up and down the mountain (which satisfied my exercise requirements for the next 2 months I think.) Vijay who is very learned and also quite possibly the most hilarious version of an incorrigible 68 year old man I have ever met, regaled us with some apocryphal, some religious and some historical  stories and anecdotes. I think he was trying to drop some knowledge on us, but not in the avuncular way of a condescending, highly educated, intellect but rather as a friend trying to enlighten. For example, here are a couple of my favourites :

A woman is speaking to Vijay and asks “ Do you meditate?”
Vijay “ No I don’t meditate”
Woman “ Why?”
Vijay “ Because if you need more than the 6 to 8 hours of peace and quiet you get while you sleep at night then that’s just greedy!”

2) Woman “ Do you pray?”

Vijay “ No I don’t pray, because if he doesn’t know my needs better than me then he is not worth praying to.”

Something to think about huh? Let those marinate y'all. There were quite a few others, many much more interesting and mind twisting than these, but I’ll save those for my personal collection and drop one every now and then on you guys .

After descending the mounting  we went to the tea shop to have our usual, traditional Indian breakfast, of dosai ( a flat fried bread), idlis ( a steamed something of some sort) mint and coconut chutney, coconut sambol , dahl and some other crunchy stuff on a banana leaf. YUM YUM ( my apologies, I just realized I usually don’t know what I’m eating, all the same it’s all delicious, I’ll work on that.) I’ve been practicing eating with my hands too, which is very common here and completely the norm even in hotels and restaurants. I still have problems scooping the rice, mashed with my fingers into the dahl, to my mouth without it dribbling down my chin. But hey, you practice and you learn and when people look at you and double over with their guffaws you learn even faster. That’s just the way it goes.

                After our breakfast, we dodged , ducked and prayed our way across the street while sidestepping  the cows, the bulls, their poop and tuk tuks that all seem to want to engage pedestrians in a game of ‘Chicken” We get to the tea stall where we fall into chatting with an apparent non local (turns out in the past he lived up at the border of India and Burma. Another traveler who never made it back home. He’s a photographer who almost gave up photography (how tragic that would have been!) He’s facetious but not insulting or rude.  After a little bullying he loans me his camera so I can scroll through his pictures, after all, he’s a published photographer so reason states that he inevitably has dozens of beautiful eclectic and artistic photos. WRONG! His camera memory is empty and he doesn’t even have an SD card. So, I decide to full his camera with some the scenery around us, the tea man, the random pedestrian and my friends. You only have one chance to capture one moment in time and then it’s gone like a whisper, lost forever to the present.  Anyways after some banter he claims he’s going to put it on his website. I thought “yeah believe it when I see it !”  J True to his word though . . . (check it out  http://devgogoi.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/peace-corps-is-50-years-young/ )

                Following this Hari met us at the tea stall and we all went into town. Parx ( who I shall now call our guy traveler and friend) , R Wheezy and myself visited the Arunchaleswar temple , built during the 11^th century, which covers approximately 10 hectares of land.  Here both Parx and R Wheezy got blessed by an elephant. You place either fruit or money in your hand which the elephant takes with his trunk. He eats the fruit immediately and passes the money (both bills and coins) to his handler seated next to him. Then he pops you gently on your head with his trunk and you are blessed.

                After the temple we meandered back through the streets to the store where we left our shoes. It’s not strange to see people wonder about barefooted,  which now is not strange to me either since even in Dubai we saw business men going to work in sandals.  But, nevertheless just so you can picture it in your mind, to my Trinis : It’s like walking around Frederick or Charlotte street barefoot , Californians : It’s like walking around San Francisco, Tenderloin area  without shoes, North Carolinians : It’s Durham without shoes and to my Armenians it’s like Yerevan ( Toumanyan st) without shoes. You get the picture? Good! Footwear secure on our now  pitch charred feet,  we walk to Trishull’s hotel to have some of the cheapest and most delicious Indian food of my life!

                Some people say you either love India or you hate it passionately. Luckily I have fallen on the brighter side of that spectrum.

PS the day after I wrote this we went to Puducherry , locally known as Pondi where I saw a larger than life sized effigy of Ghandi and the bay of Bengal. India has been beautiful and good to me.

PPS Mom sent you a post card from Sri Lanka, not sure if I put enough postage. Let me know if you got it. Love you

Sincerely,
Dee.

"Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries." -- René Descarte

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd yourrrrrrrrrrrrrr LOINS!!  It’s going to be a long post.

Excuse me miss , EXCUSE ME MISS , Let me tell you one thing!!

I would just like to start this blog post with something I have figured out thus far during this trip. Panhandlers, street vendors, taxi folk and restaurant hounders in Turkey lovvvve to harass you. Now ,that in itself you cannot fault them for because it is their job and how they make their money. HOWEVER, one would think that after you have said NO for the 57^th time that they would take a hint, because no one, NO ONE can be that OBTUSE! If  they don't then I cannot be held responsible for my follow up actions. Now I don’t like being rude so I have started to take PRE-EMPTIVE measures ! Have you ever realized how people quickly stop talking to a crazy person? Seriously, just act crazy when you are being harassed! It’s amazing! ORRRR what R-wheezy and I have also found useful is speaking loudly to people in a completely different language. Why yes I might look like a speak English, BUT I am going to answer you in a completely different language and then proceed to have a conversation with you in that language, and you may or may not participate in said conversation, why? Because you have been harassing me with your “ Excuse me misses , can I tell you one thing” and your “HELLOS” and your “ Wait a minute , I have good deal for you” , but no, I don’t want to listen to you  anymore , I’ve heard all the ‘one things’ you could tell me and when you  said “Hello” I said “ Goodbye” but since you won’t stop I am going to act crazy. I will have a few ‘one things’ to tell you in a language that you can’t understand while my voice raises a few decibels , starts to sound like a cacophony and my eyes roll to the back of my head and I dance like I’m having some kind of fit, and you will stand there and listen to me. Why? Because now it’s my turn to tell you one more thing.

So here’s the main course , what’s been  going on since Fethiye? A couple days after my last post R-wheezy and I packed our back packs and took our very tanned selves to Selchuk  where we couchsurfed with Aydin the owner of a carpet shop. The owner’s of these carpet shops are trying to keep alive that art and style of weaving  without outsourcing it to underpaid, starving children. The patterns are absolutely beautiful and hopefully a couple of them will grace the walls and floors of my house one day  because the talent needed to create them is unbounded. While here we also roamed St.John’s church and the ancient city of Ephesus with its marble streets and columned alleys adorned with old, chiseled marble and stone sculptures.  Sometimes I wish for magic powers. Mine would be the ability to touch something and know its history. I always get this craving when I walk somewhere with a very distinct and rich history. You wonder what gladiator walked in the same steps  as yourself at that moment, or slave or Caesar lost his life in this town and why? You wonder about treasons committed, love found, stories and histories created. If you are like me, you always want to know more. Hence the quoting which heads this post by Rene Descarte

After Ephesus,  R-wheezy and I hightailed it to Bergama. Here we celebrated Eid while staying at the Athena hostel which was an old Ottoman building that had been restored.  We were awakened every single morning between 4:30 and 5:00 to beating drums, loud megaphone singing and the call to prayer. I finally figured out sleeping with my earplugs was my best bet to sleep in late. While there, we visited the Red Basilica, Dilikili beach (Aegean Sea) and Akropol. In all of Turkey and even more so along the coasts it seems that everyone uses solar panels. Seriously even the farm houses and what seemed to be the not so well off people had 2/3 solar panels installed on the roofs of their houses and even motion sensor lights to conserve energy. How come we don’t do that? Are we really so unwilling to front the money initially because we fear minor inconveniences and  a minor decline financial gain? We will not be here 100 years from now but at the rate we are consuming our resources without replenishing, what will be left for our progeny?

From Bergama we took the midnight bus from Izmir to our friends apartment  in Istanbul. Just so you know I would always recommend the Kamil Koc bus service to anyone traveling by land around Turkey. They’re great, friendly and very reliable.  In Istanbul where we met up with the third of our traveling Trio we had our last fill of Doner kebabs, fish sandwiches, I caught a case of pink eye ( YEAH I did!! ) bought some scarves, saw the Hagia Sofia, the cisterns and Topkapi Palace where I saw the worlds 4^th largest diamond that was made into a ring. Seriously, this ring was the size of my palm. How would one subtly show off a ring like that? There was nothing subtle about sultans back in those days. Them, their harems, and clothes that looked big enough to fit giants. To anyone that cares Turkey is one of the most beautiful places I have been to. I would recommend that everyone visit if provided with the opportunity. I am certainly glad I did. 

Dubai – Everything is big and overdone here. Everyone drives an SUV. Palm trees grow where they don’t belong. There are skating rinks, waterfalls, zoos and aquariums in malls. Can’t say I’d do it again.

PS pics to come soon.

Yours Truly

Dee.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear - Mark Twain

We have been in Fethiye since the 20th and we leave tomorrow for Selcuk. Having lived in the Post Soviet Caucus region for the past two years I have repeatedly heard people talk about the beauty of Turkey. Not once did I consider that they could be understating the fact. Turkey is all the good things I heard it would be . . .PLUS SOME. We stayed at a hostel right in the center of Fethiye about a 6 minute walk to the pier and a 15 to 20 minute ride to really good beaches. R wheezy, the boys and I were only able to grace the beaches with our presence once this time around. The rest of the time we spent * drum roll* . . .getting OPEN WATER DIVING CERTIFIED!YYes ladies and gentlemen R wheezy ,Bop and I are now Scuba certified for open water. Let me tell you guys how this came about . . . It began 2 months ago, in a far away ,mystical land called , Armenia. R Wheezy is surfing the internet trying to plan out our itenary, then suddenly turns to me and says " Hey you want to get scuba certified" Now R Wheezy is slick like that because at that very moment I was enjoying something called a cafe glace. This is a coffee drink , blended with vanilla ice-cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup over a dollop of whipped cream. She knew at that very moment I would say YES to anything just to be left alone with my drink. That, and for some reason I don't hear too well when I have my sun-glasses on like I did because it was a sunny day , and when that happens I usually just nod my head and pretend I heard. So that's how I got roped in. . . Flash forward 2 months.. .
         I am putting on a wet suit and pulling up from the knee because it's wet with salt water and sticks to my skin. It's my final dive today and I 'm wondering to myself how many jelly fish are going to sting me this time, if my face mask will fill up with water again, and if  I'll have to exhale into them so that they might empty or if my awesome instructor will suddenly and unexpectedly yank my regulator ( oxygen source) from my mouth in order that I might learn to be prepared for emergency situations. I'm also stressing that at 18 Metres / 60+ feet under water I will suddenly panic, realise I am out of my comfort zone, thrash my way to the surface and then die from decompression sickness or exploded lungs. Hmmmm . . . I get into the water and we begin to dive, it's quiet down here * dammit* I just got stung,  1, 2, 3 times and that last bugger got me on the lip oh well , these don't hurt to bad ( like stinging nettle). I'm relaxed, we go deeper, I have to equalize and my ear pops, I find my neutral balance and all is well, 18 Metres, 19 Metres, 20 . . .and I smile. I am not panicking and I am not bleeding from any orifice. I have more air in my tank than anyone else and I am at ease. We complete the dive after we've seen a sunken boat, some 1000 year old pottery , some grasslike fields , some coral and 4! ARGGG that last jelly just HAD to get that last sting in ( if only I could see those transparent gremlins before I swim into them). We ascend and I take off my gear . . . weight belt, flippers, BCD and disassemble them on the boat. On our return back to shore my instructor hands me my diver card stating I'm certified,  after  scoring our tests and shakes my hand. I then realise . . .OH SNAP YALL!!! I AM A CERTIFIED DIVER!! who woulda thought!? great times , excellent experiences with lovely folk , thanks R wheezy .

Sincerely,
Dee

At the fort in Tbilisi Georgia

Goodbye Armenia, Helloooooo Georgia!!!

Hmmmmm I don't quite know how to put my first day/ night out of Georgia into words. . .hmmmm let's see. I'm traveling with R wheezy (who is a girl), P wheezy ( who is a guy) and let's just call this other guy Bop. So Bop , the two wheezys and I rode the train from Yerevan all the way to Tbilisi, we got in at about 1 AM Georgia time . And went directly to our couchsurfer's house. Now when you read someone's couchsurfing profile and they say " something is definitely wrong with me"  in their profile description then usually to most normal people that would be a red flag ( dot dot dot) HOWEVER . . . to four travel hungry , expat, ex-PC volunteers , newly released into the brave new world, this signals a fun, exciting night full a great and new experiences. . . Anywho I digress, we got to our couchsurfers house and called him since he was not there when we rang his bell. He pulls up in a car about 5 minutes later and tells us to drop our stuff  because we are about to go to" a crazy place where all the weird people in Georgia are" ( NOTE:that should have been our second  red flag, but nooooo because we are some troopers and after 2 years in PC there's noting we can't handle, or that surprises us anymore) so we get to the afor- mentioned place and YUP! NO SIREE BOB couch surfer #1 did not lie to us. 4 hours later, after a mildly amusing and extremely disturbing night , R Wheezy and I decide to get the key for his house, and to leave the establishment we were at to go grab our stuff and then throw up the two fingers at his place. So we did. We collected our stuff from his apartment and  though we had no idea where we would be resting our heads that night , we knew for  sure it was not gonna be couchsurfer no# 1's house. AWKWARDDDD, table for 1,thanks! Later on R Wheezy and I found a hostel that let us sleep on their floor with cushions included for free 99. I honestly think the owner just saw the panic stricken look in our eyes and decided it would probably be safer to just let us in than have us running around olde town in Tbilisi knocking down doors at 4 AM in the morning. Anywho, we're about to get dressed in camouflage so we can go eat some khajapurie while we ensure we do not run in to couchsurfer no#1 . By the way, did I mention he lives next door to the hostel? 0_O
That's the way she blows. Sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn't. Will try to post pics later.

You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings -- there are no such things. There are only middles.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens. -Ralph Waldo Emerson.


Well, well, well. . . As of 12:00:01 AM this morning I officially became a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, better known in these foreign aid and expat circles as an RPCV. 27 months have been completed and it is my turn to leave Armenia. This morning I sat with Rani, Vinnie, Erin, Chris and my mother downstairs at Envoy hostel. I realized that except for Rani, Vinnie and I, ALL the other A17 volunteers from our group have already left. Yeah, we've said our goodbyes, had our last get togethers and our final drinks but because of the slow trickle out of people it never really hit me that these people were leaving, probably never to be seen again for a really long time. Of course I am certain I will run into a few who have the same aspirations and life goals as I do where International Aid and Foreign Development is concerned but it will not be a time like we've had here ever again. Later on we'll all be in our work suits, with our families, running our businesses, trying to get reports in on time, managing our employees or being managed ourselves. It'll never be us, hanging with the villagers, chilling in Yerevan at jazzve , or the hostel, kicking it at the vernessage, speaking Armenian and Russian, singing some Tata Simonyan, drinking black coffee straight up or eating out of desert dishes, doing the akbher squat while we chew sunflower seeds, taking the sweaty marshutni rides where the tatiks are afraid to open the windows because they swear by the matsun that we'll all catch colds and die. It'll be different. So different. Many of us have opted to do extended trips. I don't think we are , all of us, quite ready to let this life go.
I know my Ajan is probably right now sailing on a boat through greece, Jsu and Coeman are already in Georgia, others are in Thailand, some have made it back to the US and are doing road trips, yet others are in the Balkans or left just this morning to fly to Germany and Prague. So what will I be doing? Well here's how that story starts. I am in the process of my Foreign Service Exam. Already leapt over the first hurdle and passed the written exam, I just submitted my PNQ's (personal narrative questions) and now will have to wait for about a month to see how I do. In the meanwhile Ranijan, Parks and myself will be traveling East.


I will be taking the train to Tiblisi, Georgia on the night of the 17th where I will be spending only 3 days since I've been there before. On the 20th I'll be flying out to Istanbul, Turkey and then taking the bus to Bodhrum where I'll be getting my diving certificate. During that time I may or may not take a boat to Greece and take in Santorini , Kos and 1 other island. Next Rani , Parks and I will be flying into Sri Lanka , where we will spend 3 weeks until we leave for India on September 24th. We'll be there for 6weeks hanging out at Ashram's and other temples, trying to find peace in our restless, too young souls .Rani's aunts live there so it'll be a fun time. On November 12th we fly to Bangkok, Thailand and seeing as we haven't bought our exit ticket for there yet, we don't know how long we'll be there.


Thus my blog will go through a Peace Corps reflection and recollection transformation and become more of a travel , off the beaten path blog. We'll be trying some vlogging and also load more pictures. I'm sure you'll enjoy reading of any faux pas to be committed and all the mistakes I will undoubtedly make. For those of you who stuck with reading my not too timely updates and sent me messages facebook, I miss you all too, and I'll be home, at some point , maybe even in 2012. :)


Dee