out to the village

Hello today.

This past week has been very busy. We moved into the village, went to a big fancy party, and kept up our time at Mama T's home.

We moved in with a family in the village. The village is pretty much like a rural suburb of Kolkata. It takes at least an hour to get anywhere, through a combination of auto-rickshaw, bus, local train, and metro. It has been really hard to adjust to a new place again. It seems as though no one in the village has seen white girls before, they have only read about them in textbooks and such. The stares never really stop and they are never hidden. Crowds form, people point, little kids run away, its exhausting. We are living with a great young lady named Gita though and she really stands up for us. She said that people will get used to having us around and then they will all look out for us.
The best village experience so far was taking the local train. Picture the stereotypical Indian train packed to the brim with people in every corner just sweating bullets, and will lots of people hanging on the outside. Us girls took an early morning train to get to Mama T's and it was such an adventure. When the train is nearing all the girls stand on the edge and really give the stare down. Some puff their shoulders, some spit a bit, and some just shoot the stink eye, all to tell other girls that they are going down and that the train has no room for the two of them. As soon as the train arrives all I knew to do was to grab some sort of post or rail and then hope that the mob would just carry me. This is true. We floated right on. So crazy though. I thought it was hysterical, while all the Indian women were screaming at each other.
Gita's mom cooks for us everyday and that takes some getting used to as well. She is a fantastic cook, but she tries to get us to eat so much food. Also, dinner is not served until 10 or 11pm.

This week we went to a huge celebration for the Indian women who have started a business in order to get out of working on the streets. It was their 3rd anniversary this week and so we went out to get decked out in our Sari outfits for the occasion. It was a big morning for Gita, she is obsessed with pink and her mom had such a fun time dressing us. It felt like some sort of prom. We went out with the ladies to this really nice garden and then went for a nice lunch. We all ate with our (right) hand at lunch even though there was fancy silverware, and a lot of the ladies took leftovers home in tins for their children.

I have a couple of pictures here from the garden:





I had such a great time working at Mama T's this week. I feel like some of the ladies that work there are become familiar with having us around and so they rely on us a bit more. This week as I was walking in in the morning, one of the sisters said "Aunti Aunti come come!". I followed her and she threw this old shriveled lady into my arms and we started walking down a dirt path. We walked down this road with about 10 other ladies from the home, some of them had to be carried, some crawled a bit. We arrived at this gigantic ambulance and the sisters asked me if I could come. We ended up going to get the ladies eye's checked at this big community eye checking event... haha. That was such an ordeal. Some of the ladies only have one eye, some of the ladies eyes go in two directions, and some of them refused to even open their eyes. It was good to be there for it though, I am always reminded of how much care and company these people need. Even the littlest tasks could be embarrassing for them or make them feel strange I think.

oh yeah. a secret for the week.
be bold. We have had to be bold when everyone tries to rip us off.
We have had to be bold when a taxi is about to run us over but we slam our hand on the hood of it to stop instead.
We have had to be especially bold when Indian men think we will share an auto rickshaw with them. (haha a you go girl moment for sure).

thats all for now, I am off to language class.
lots of love,