Animals Galore!

20 Dec 2011

As I thought might happen, this post will be a scattering of observations and experiences; so as usual, if you want more in-depth stories of what we are doing here, please visit the other section of our website.

I’ve learned 4 phrases in Hindi! I can say Thank you, My name is…, I am from…, and What is your name? All of these phrases are met with giggles (perhaps due to horrific mispronunciation?), but it worked once on our neighbor- his name is Amos. I often sit outside during quiet times and he comes over and sometimes we play together. Yesterday during my quiet time, I was braiding my hair. A group of girls approached me (I have NO idea where they came from), and said “Beautiful!” As they stared, I finished braiding my hair. Once it was done, they promptly took 2 photos with their phone. They said “beautiful” and “goodbye,” before walking just 10 meters away from me and then gathering around the phone to look at the photo.

Usually on arrival, we are welcomed with a flower, lei or bouquet of some sort!

I’ve said this a few times before, but I really need to make a bucket list. Not because I want the list, but because when something happens that surely would have been on the list, I can cross it off. The other day, one of those things happened! We were walking through a small village and we spotted monkeys!! Tons of them- parents, babies, monkeys of all ages. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. They were jumping on top of a couple of rooftops and into a tree. I was so close to them- definitely less than one meter.

Monkeys

Only a few days later, we saw an elephant on the side of the road! He wasn’t wild; it may have been for a wedding, but he was just hanging out there in all of his hugeness! And just yesterday we saw CAMELS! They were so majestic and bigger than the ones I remember from Jordan.

One of my favorite things to sneak in during he day is visiting the dogs on the property. I’ve been heavily warned against pursuing wild dogs, but the dogs of the house are okay to befriend. So that’s what I’ve been doing. The first group I’m still working on winning over, one of the dogs is downright vicious and isn’t chained up so it’s a little daunting (update: totally my friend now!), but the other dogs are amazing! One just had a set of five puppies and they don’t even have their eyes open yet! I visit them about as often as I can.

Burke & Janko sporting their stylish Indian outfits!

Last thing, quick story- Toilets here are just crazy. (I still plan to have an entire post about daily living here, but I ran into a camera battery roadblock so it wasn’t possible for this week.) So toilets. If there is a toilet, you are lucky. If it flushes, you are incredibly lucky. When we first arrived, I had heard that flushing is usually to be done with the pressure from a giant bucket of water. Fortunately, the first night, Burke discovered that our toilet flushes! A few days later, I was talking with one of the girls here and I mentioned something about the flush. She was shocked! She didn’t realize that her toilet could flush too, but it does! It was a little humorous that she was doing something the old way when she didn’t have to. What’s funnier though is that I mentioned it to another girl yesterday and didn’t know either! The kicker is that the two are roommates and the first roommate just didn’t tell the other!

First week in India!

12 Dec 2011

We’ve been here for a whole week now and it still feels surreal. As I was editing photos I can hardly believe this is my life right now. We are seeing amazing things and interacting with incredible people. I’ll tell you more about what we’re actually doing on the other website, but for now, here are more of my observations of what it’s like to be in India.

Our group rides from where we are staying to the center of town every day, usually twice a day, so we are quite familiar with the route already. We ride in a van, which makes us one of the biggest vehicles on the street. Rickshaws are very common, but just because they only have three wheels, doesn’t mean they don’t carry a big load. Maybe even more common are scooters. I’m on the hunt to see how many people I can spot on a single scooter- so far I’ve seen four adult men.

Family of four on bikes!

I want to reiterate is the multitude of dogs, cows, and pigs in the streets. It is insane! They teem along the country roads, but they’re also resident on the busiest city streets. Yesterday I even saw a pig and dog playing together! In addition to the wild dogs, it appears every building has its own set of guard dogs. Our establishment has three, and the neighboring building has two. I know the other two well because twice I’ve attempted to exercise by running outside. Running in this country is even more foreign to residents than it is in Slovakia, so that and the fact I’m a lone woman, its not the best idea to really venture out. What ends up happening is that I run in a giant L shape down two driveways. I ran early this morning so a couple times I looped the driveways with a small bit of road so I had a football field-sized track, but the dogs got increasingly more vicious with every lap so I went back to the L shape.

Cow crossing!

This is downtown.

The last thing I want to say is that I’ve seen so many open fires here. It appears that almost all families or business right outside of downtown have a fire in the evening. The last couple nights have been chilly so I think it’s partially for heat, but it is also definitely for cooking.

This is our neighbor!

Be sure to check out the other post about what we’re doing in India!

Nameste

07 Dec 2011

Please excuse the scattered-mindedness of this post- I’m typing it out on a borrowed office workspace computer, but I wanted to share a few of my first impressions before I get used to my surroundings (I’m not sure if that will happen, but maybe?)

We arrived in the evening last night and drove in a large van holding 12 people to the place we are staying. They said it would take an hour but it was only 10km; the main road was busy because there was a Muslim festival, so we took the back road which was hardly a road at all! It was amazing! I don’t know if they can be called potholes because they were the size of sinkholes and looked like waves of an ocean.

As we drove it was impossible to ignore the incessant honking. Start the car, honk; turn, honk; pass a car, honk; see a friend, honk; drive straight, honk; see a cow, honk. While driving today, it was pointed out to me that there are often a few simple words painted on the back of the cars, something to the effect of, Honk if everything is okay.

We are staying just outside of a 2.5 million people city. As we drove towards the city this morning, we saw so many animals! Along the sides of the roads (and sometimes in the roads) every five meters or so there is a cow, another cow, dog, cow, dog, cow, goat, cow, dog, boar, cow, dog. It’s amazing. As for buildings, the city is mostly 3 story buildings, but on the way into the city I’d say there were more storage-type living spaces and shanties rather than western-style, stand alone buildings.

Last few things before my this small bout of internet is up- the head bobble is so prevalent and I am LOVING it.

The place we are staying welcomed us with Indian food- western style. They heard a lot of people in our group don’t like spicy (hot) food, but instead they left out all of the spices (flavors). It was still amazing, but probably the most bland food in all of India.

That’s the end of my internet time!

India

04 Dec 2011

We’re going to India tomorrow.

And we won't be needing these hats:)

Also, if you haven’t seen it, I just finished a video and you can watch it on the subscriber section of our website. Next time I post it’ll be from India!!

November 2011

09 Nov 2011

I was half-tempted to call this post “Random Things” or something to that effect (confession: the working title of posts like this one is usually “funny things that Slovaks do”). Sometimes these are my favorite posts, but other times they end up feeling kind of listy. I’ll tell you at the end which category this one falls into.

First up, in our living arrangements, there is another married couple with an average age equaling ours, but the biggest difference is that they are Czech and have a baby. Also, they love board games. One day Burke and a few others including this Czech daddy played the most massive board game known to man (it took them 10 hours to play it!) and once when I walked in I found the circumstances hilarious.

Nobody puts baby in the corner... except this baby.

They said she was sleeping, but she definitely was not sleeping laying there in the corner facing the wall. I hung out with Baby Eliška for a while but peaced out when she got a little fussy.

Hey look, flowers!

Certainly you remember my hospital confessional series, specifically this one about what they were feeding me, but I thought you might like to be reminded!

In some cases it’s particularly obvious that the cooks in the kitchen are scrambling to put something, anything at all, on a plate. Last week we were at a conference held in a rather large hotel, and we were told that both lunch and dinner would be provided; as usual I inquired further and asked if that meant for me too and I was told yes. I suppose “meal” is a relative term.

My dinner: white rice, soggy french fries and tartar sauce.

Here’s something fun! Burke and I took this medium-longish bike ride in the spring and we did it again last weekend. I’ve been dealing with some hip pain when I run long or hilly distances lately so I gave in on Burke’s bike ride request in an effort to get a long workout in on the weekend. It was fun to compare the different views of the Slovak countryside in fall and spring. Below, you can view the different views of me in the fall and spring.

40 mi bike ride from BB to Zvolen- the scenic route

These last few little anecdotes I have for you have no accompanying photo, but I thought they were so funny! Therefore, I am going to use bullet points to visually attract those readers who just skim through our posts. If you are reading this text in full, it’ll be our little secret:)

Over the weekend, I convinced a couple of the guys to do a workout video with me and the Slovak who was doing it with us, saw jumping jacks and said he’d always seen them in American movies, but no Slovak he knew had ever actually done one.
Similarly, I was talking about last Christmas to that same Slovak friend and told him how I loved singing Christmas carols after dinner together as a group. He said he thought that was normal… in the movies, all the families get together around the piano and sing christmas songs. So, tell me, is that normal in your family?
Sunday was “Slovak Thanksgiving.” I asked one Slovak girl if she usually does anything for Slovak Thanksgiving and she said, “Oh there are a lot of feasts in the church, I don’t really know which ones are which.” I thought it was pretty funny, but then when we went to church, the pastor started speaking about Thanksgiving and its origins. Guess what story he told. Ours! He started talking about American thanksgiving and our traditions and the pilgrims and indians, the whole shebang. No wonder Slovaks don’t know the story or celebrate. It’s ours.
I loved this following conversation:
Janko: (cutting something) Don’t we have any better sneezers?
Burke: Sneezers!? What?
Me: No, you mean scissors, Janko.
Janko: Jaaaaj (Yaiy= common Slovak expression meaning something like a cross between Oh and Oops)
Katka: Sneeze is like the alarm.
Me: Hahahaha no that’s snooze.

Lastly, if you want to know why I have this photo of this cute little kid (and see more photos of his friends), you should go to the other section of our website (leave a comment if you need the password)!

Germany & The Czech Republic

05 Nov 2011

I confess. I forgot completely forgot about this series of posts. Let’s try to get through these last countries quickly so that I can give you a more relevent post!

Our first stop in germany was Herlach; it was in Herlach that we slept in a castle. It was drafty, but majestic. One day during some of our down time, I went out and took a little walk and then sat down to read next to a barn. A little old lady beckoned me from across the street and proceeded to walk to where I was perched. She spoke to me in German for a minute and the only word I understood was kälte (cold). Then she motioned for me to come to her house with her. I’m always up for an adventure, so I went along with this cute grandma to her house, where she sat me on her front porch, complete with rocking chair, cushions and direct sunlight. Her daughter came out and talked to me for a while, and by the time I left I was so hot from the sun. How thoughtful.

The castle where we slept!

One evening we went to Augsburg, I saw a sign as we were approaching the city that it is a sister city to Dayton, Ohio! While we were there we went to an IHOP meeting.

Our next location was Herrnhut, Germany. Technically, we slept in a manor house, but it still looked and felt like a castle to me.

This is Janko in front of the manor house, photo credit to Nicholas Baker.

Next, we moved on to Prague. We were welcomed with a dinner prepared by some Ohioans who have been living there for quite some time (and they had a daughter named Elizabeth)! We were in Prague for two days, and the schedule was packed so full of things to do and see, but we persevered through our drowsiness because it was the last stop on the trip.

B&L in downtown Prague.

This was our third trip to Prague together. If you don’t know our story very well, we became a couple while I was studying in France and Burke was attending university in California, and the first time we got to reconnect as a couple was in Prague! So despite a few trips to the city, one thing I’d always wanted to see and never had was the “eiffel tower!” I always joked about calling it that, but apparently, that’s what they call it, too!

At the base of the Eiffel Tower. There are rose gardens nearby, so the boys picked roses for the girls.

Credit to Alison.

I was pretty unmotivated to take photos on this trip because I’d been to all of these countries before and I was taking video (I’ve yet to decide if there will ever be a video). So a lot of these photos were taken by friends and imported. The next post will have many original photos so come back to see beautiful photos of the majestic country of Slovakia.