Goodbye India

I am currently holed up in the lovely hotel known as Cottage Yes Please in Delhi, awaiting my flight to London. I was supposed to fly out at 3:30 AM this morning, but the flight was cancelled because of snow in London, and there's a decent chance that my flight tonight will be cancelled as well. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be home for Christmas.

About two weeks ago, the second of the two projects I was working on (the Kings & Queens School for children of Christian ministry workers) was published, and here are some of the final drawings. The first two were done by the architects, fellow interns Mark & Cara, and the last three were done by me. I realize that about three of you even care to look at my boring engineering drawings, but I feel like I need to post them on here to prove that I have actually done some work this semester.

Master Plan for Campus

Community Center

Conceptual Water Supply Plan

Conceptual Rainwater Collection Plan

Conceptual Wastewater Disposal Plan

The last two weeks have been filled with about 7 different farewell dinner parties and various other wrap-up things. My emotions have been back and forth, sometimes very sad to be leaving Mussoorie and India, and other times incredibly eager to be home. Right now, being in Delhi, a very noisy and often stressful city, I'm quite ready to be home for Christmas. I feel like the mom on Home Alone who can't get home fast enough to be with her son. Only 3 more days!

More Adventures and Some Work

Two weekends ago, I played tourist with the other interns and went to Delhi and Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) for a few days of sight-seeing. I had fairly low expectations for the Taj because I had heard it's expensive, crowded, and stressful for tourists, but it was spectacular in person. It looks pretty big in pictures, but nothing compares to seeing it 100 feet in front of you.

View from the Jama Masjid in Delhi, the largest mosque in India

Obligatory pic of me in front of the Taj Mahal

Four Muslim men hanging out at the Taj

Other highlights from the weekend include sharing 2 beds with 6 other interns on an overnight train ride (which resulted in me sleeping on the nasty floor of the train), and catching my fellow intern Cara when she jumped off a moving train.

For Thanksgiving, our office had a delicious potluck, which turned out to be remarkably similar to an American Thanksgiving spread. Except we had grilled chicken instead of turkey, which I was thrilled about. Turkey is so overrated. I made the sweet potatoes (which tasted like candy) and mashed potatoes.

Since then, it has been crunch time around the office as we try to get our projects finished before all the interns head out. For a number of reasons, especially the inconsistency of our office computer network, the projects have taken longer to complete than we expected. Despite the obstacles, one of my projects was published two weeks ago, and the other will hopefully be published today! Here are some of the drawings from the first project, a new campus development that includes an orphanage and hospice care for the elderly. The first drawing was done by Architect Ivy, and the other two drawings were done by me.

Architectural Master Plan for the entire campus

Conceptual Water Supply & Rainwater Plan

Conceptual Wastewater Disposal Plan

My train ticket out of Mussoorie has been booked, and my official last day as an EMI intern is Monday, December 13^th. From Mussoorie, I will go to Delhi, to Jaipur, back to Delhi, to London, to Chicago, and finally to Milwaukee on December 23^rd.

Just as I was back in May, I'm trying to figure out where the last 4 months went. Yet as I reflect, I have so many amazing memories from my time here. This place has become my home, and it will no doubt be difficult to say goodbye. If you think of it, please pray that God would give me closure for my time here, that I would be able to wrap my head around everything I've learned here, and that my transition back to Western culture would be smooth.

I'm looking forward to seeing all y'all!

Chandigarh

This is going to be quick, because I don't have much time for things like blogging these days. Work has been keeping me busy, so much so that I even put in some overtime last week. Unfortunately, eMi doesn't pay time-and-a-half. :)

This past weekend, I went on a weekend excursion to the city of Chandigarh with my roommate and fellow intern Nate. We both had some wanderlust and felt like getting out of Mussoorie for the weekend. I had high expectations, since I had heard Chandigarh is unlike any other Indian city – architecturally distinct, very organized, with streets arranged in a grid, and somewhat like a Western city. Basically, I expected to enter the Chandigarh city limits and magically be transported into America...which wasn't the case. Unfortunately, the city was planned in the 1950s & 60s, a time in which some pretty bad architecture was produced, so there were a lot of boxy concrete buildings.

Despite Chandigarh the city being a letdown, we had some unplanned fun that made it a great weekend. Highlights:

We found some government workers playing a cricket match in a parking lot and, after watching for less than a minute, were invited to play with them. We played a full, hour-long match, and Nate hit the winning run.

We toured the “Fantasy Rock Garden”, an outdoor museum full of one man's bizarre artwork, all fashioned from recycled junk and organic materials.

We stumbled across the most amazing produce market ever.

...after which we stumbled across a wedding processional with the groom on a horse. There was lots of dancing, so we watched the festivities until someone spotted us white folk, and then we were dragged into the middle of the dancing. And then I was hoisted onto some shoulders, after which we were asked to leave because we were stealing attention from the groom. It was surreal.

Great mustache.

Dreaming of Egg Nog

Last night, as I sat brushing my teeth, I starting daydreaming (nightdreaming?) about being home for Christmas – having a glass of egg nog in hand, sitting next to a warm fire in my parents' living room, and watching the Packers on their nice 40” flat screen TV. I realized how eager I am to be home (despite my continued enjoyment of life in India), and if my math is correct, it was about the same time last semester that I started looking forward to being home – 2-3 months into the semester, long after I've left home, but before I've started getting sentimental about leaving India. I think this highlights the difference between the short-term mentality versus the long-term mentality. Inevitably, everyone living abroad for an extended period of time will miss home at some point. But because I know exactly when I'll be home next, I can allow myself to envision and look forward to what I will do the moment I'm home. Long-termers are not afforded this luxury, since they generally go somewhere to stay indefinitely, so such wanderings of the mind are only a distraction from reality. In my case, because I'll be leaving here in a little over a month, I have less incentive to work through the difficulties of life here – the language barrier, cultural differences, personality differences with my co-workers – and less incentive to fully engage life here. On occasion, I have had the thought, “I shouldn't bother getting involved in [fill in the blank] because I'll be gone in a couple months anyways.” All this to say...I think I have a new respect for people who pick up and move abroad indefinitely without knowing the next time they'll be “home”.

In other news, Diwali, the Hindu "festival of lights", was last Friday, and I took a stroll through the Mussoorie bazaar with the other interns to check out the festivities. Firecrackers are a central part of the celebration, and these 'crackers are set off with little regard for passing pedestrians, so I very nearly had my leg blown off. At least it felt like that. Here are a few pictures from the festivities:

And these are some monkeys I saw on the road a couple days ago:

Busting Crackers and Cologne

This past week has been a fairly standard week in the life of an eMi intern; I'm still working on the civil design for the projects I've been assigned to, which are still about a week or two away from completion. There's really nothing that the average person finds exciting about the nitty gritty of my work (designing poop tanks and water systems), so I unapologetically devote very little blog space to discussing those things. Instead, here are a couple noteworthy things from my week outside of work:

• Diwali - This upcoming Friday is a Hindu holiday called Diwali, which I'm told is the Indian equivalent of Christmas. It's considered their "festival of lights", so there will supposedly be massive fireworks shows on Friday, and many have already been set off in the past few days. Yesterday morning, the neighbor kid set off a few firecrackers (known as "busting crackers" in these parts) at 7 AM, a slightly unwelcome start to my day.
• Hindi - My co-worker Graham recently said that his 2-year-old daughter Priya is going through a "language explosion", where she has all-of-a-sudden started talking all the time. Well, for whatever reason, I've had a little language explosion of my own in the past couple weeks with Hindi...which isn't to say that I've been speaking it well or even correctly, just that I've had lots of opportunities to speak it. Everything that I learned from my Hindi classes 6 months ago seems to be flooding my memory, and it's all making sense for once. It's been very exciting for me, and even though I'm rarely forced to speak Hindi, it's nice to have the language barrier broken somewhat.

And finally, here is a conversation from dinner tonight with Hudson, Graham's 5-year-old son:

Intern Katie: "...Maybe he should put some cologne on."

Hudson: "What?? What's that?"

Me: "It's something you put on that makes you smell good."

Hudson: "Boys don't need that!"

Amen Hudson.

Newsletter

Here is a newsletter that the EMI-India office puts out every quarter. It has some great photos and articles that give a little more info on the projects I'm working on and the rest of the staff here.

Himalayan Trekking

Early last Sunday morning, I set out in a taxi with 5 other interns from eMi for a week of trekking in the Himalayas. As some of you may remember from a blog post last April, my weak stomach is apparently no match for the winding roads of India, especially when they are driven like a race car driver. I was reminded of this at the start of our journey when I threw up 5 to 10 times within the first couple hours of our 6-hour taxi ride. It wasn't pretty, but I felt great the rest of the week after that.

Without getting into too much detail about the trek, I'll just say that it didn't go quite as planned. Overall, it was about 5 days and 40 miles of hiking, 5 miles longer than it was supposed to be. Days 1 and 2 of hiking were great – the weather was perfect, the paths were clearly marked, and we made it to our destinations with relative ease. Day 3 we spent near a secluded lake in the mountains known as Dodital, resting up for our big hike the next day. Day 4 started at 6:30 AM with a demanding, steep, 3-hour hike to reach the Darwa Pass, a 13,000 foot high crossing from one river valley to another. Despite a few clouds, the views from the pass were incredible; we saw a number of large snow-capped mountains from just a couple miles away, including a couple peaks that I normally see from about 50 miles away on my walk to work every day. I spent a couple hours just sitting and staring at them and probably could've spent a couple more. It's cliché, but the pictures truly don't do them justice.

Views from Darwa Pass

Day 4b is where things got a little crazy. Once we got to the other side of the pass in the afternoon, the path that we were supposed to follow became really difficult to find. I unofficially served as co-leader of the trek with my roommate and fellow intern Nate, a very smart and nature-savvy guy. (Check out Nate's blog for his perspective and greater detail on the trek.) Those of you who know me well know that, in the heat of a debate or argument, I almost always insist that I'm right. Well...it turns out that I am not right all the time. I learned this the hard way when Nate and I disagreed about which way to go, I insisted that we go the way I think we should go until he relented, and it ended up being the wrong way. It was very humbling to say the least.

Because of our wrong turn, we ended up wandering through the forest for about a day and a half, somewhat lost. We knew where we were and where we had to go, but not how to get there. I kept reminding myself that we had plenty of food, water, and shelter to survive for a while, but my emotions told me there was a chance I would die.

The exact moment when we first went the wrong way

At the critical point of our hike, when we basically had nowhere to go, we decided to head back the way we came. It was frustrating to call it quits but ultimately the right decision. Day 5 ended up being 14 hours of hiking in rain, hail, and snow, through dense forest and seemingly impassable bushes, and for a few hours after the sun had set. It was miserable at the time, but as I describe it from the warmth of my office desk, I have to say it was a pretty epic hike. For all that went wrong, God's providence was apparent through all of it. For example, the same snow that soaked through my shoes and two pairs of socks also reflected the moonlight to light our path as we hiked in the dark. We also saw some amazing landscape that we wouldn't have seen if we hadn't been lost. And the fact that nobody got hurt is pretty incredible given the treacherous route we took. It would've been an infinitely more difficult hike had anyone gotten injured. Eventually, we made it back over the pass, back to the secluded lake, and back onto a bus that took us to the comforts of Mussoorie.

Dead water buffalo, straight out of The Lion King

I think that's the shortest version of the story that I can tell without omitting important details. Now that I am back in Mussoorie, safe and sound, I can say that I'm glad it happened the way it did. I gained more from the trip than I would've if everything had gone as planned – namely, a healthy respect for Mother Nature and a reminder to not think so highly of my own knowledge and opinions.

Lest anyone think that I'm only in India to have fun and hang out in the Himalayas, today I returned to the office, where I have plenty of work awaiting me. Both of the projects I'm working on (KIM and the Kings & Queens School) are still a week or two away from completion, so I will be busy working on the civil engineering aspects and writing the reports for those projects. It was great to have a week off of work, but I can't say I feel too rested. :)

Pinecone Hunt

Just as the squirrels gather acorns for the winter, so too do we at EMI gather pinecones to use in the bucari, a wood stove that serves as our source of heat for the winter months. Last Saturday, we had our annual pinecone hunt on the Mussoorie mountainside, where we collected about 70o pinecones for the winter. I personally collected 58, good enough for 3rd in our friendly office competition.

The other major highlight of the past couple weeks for me was that the other male EMI interns and I have started tutoring a few Indian guys in English 3 days a week. It's a test of my patience at times and a reminder of how convoluted the English language is, but it's been fun getting to know those guys and seeing their English skills progress (ever-so-slightly). It's also been a good way for me to practice my Hindi.

This upcoming week is our intern holiday, our week of vacation for the semester, and we are using the time off to trek the Himalayas, where I hope to take pictures similar to this one:

Please pray that we don't get lost.

Project Trip #2

Picking up where I left off...after hanging out it Chennai for a couple days, I picked up 2 volunteer architects from Hong Kong at the airport and met up with Matthew & Ivy, project leaders for the trip. The next day, we met up with another eMi team from the UK office, and the 12 of us loaded up in a mini-bus and took a 4-hour road trip to our home for the next week, thus beginning project trip #2 for me.

UK-India superteam

The ministry that we partnered with is known as KIM and is run by a widow of 13 years:

KIM already has 8 ministry centers throughout the state of Tamil Nadu, all of them with various functions (church, daycare, school, and vocational training, to name a few), and all of them sharing the general mission of empowering Indian women.

The ministry has recently been given a blank piece of land that will hopefully become a children's hostel and a hospice care center for elderly folks, which is where eMi comes in to help with the design. Our team checked out the site the first day, and the second day, I surveyed the site with Adam from the UK team.

Check out that farmer's tan.

That was about the extent of my work for the KIM project. The next day, I took a train with Matthew and 2 others to work with a different ministry called Mssionary Upholders Trust (MUT), whom eMi has been working with for about 5 years. They are a fairly unique ministry that focuses on meeting the needs of Indian Christian ministry workers through various means, but primarily through providing them a place to take sabbatical and get affordable health care.

MUT Campus

Head honcho at MUT

The MUT squad

The purpose of our visit was to check up on construction around the campus, provide a gentle nudge to take care of some water & wastewater issues on the site, and discuss future development of the campus.

...and do a little manual labor.

After our 3-day visit to MUT, our mini-team reunited with the rest of the team to finish up design for the KIM project and present our design to the KIM board of trustees.

A few more snapshots from the week:

Some guys let me take a turn with the cricket bat. I swung and missed twice.

Local wildlife.

The many fruits we ate throughout the week.

The south Indian dosa, my new favorite food ever.

And now, after another 2 days of traversing the subcontinent, I am back at the office in Mussoorie, eager to stay put for a little while. I really enjoyed my 3 weeks in Tamil Nadu on many levels - getting to explore the city of Chennai, getting to know a little about south Indian culture, meeting some fellow eMi folks from the UK, and discovering an incredible number of ministries that are doing legit Kingdom-building work in south India.

Chillin in Chennai

After my comrades from project trip #1 left to go back to our office in Mussoorie, I had a couple days to hang out in Chennai by myself while waiting for the next project team to arrive. Here is a brief pictorial summary of my activities for the 2 days:

Sight-seeing:

(From top to bottom: Santhome Cathedral, where Saint Thomas is supposedly buried; statue of the great Mahatma Gandhi-ji; and a large Hindu temple)

Golfing:

The course wasn't nearly as nice as it looks, but the novelty of golfing in India was easily worth the $7 I spent on it.

Making friends with my blond hair and blue eyes:

This guy was quite the comedian and made me take his picture.

Going to the beach:

This was people-watching paradise, and probably my favorite activity of the two days. I liked it so much I went 3 times.

Riding in rickshaws:

This was my least favorite activity, mainly because of the extravagant fares I had to pay and the hassle of negotiating prices. On this particular ride, the driver insisted he take my picture in front of his rickshaw.

That's my mini-vacation in a nutshell. I found it pretty enjoyable trying to navigate a big new city by myself, figuring out where to go and what to do, and it was a nice break between projects. Stay tuned for an update on project trip #2.