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: