My bad? No, A'bad

We left Cambodia for India the day after Christmas. We had a brutal six-hour lay over in Mumbai from midnight to 6 AM. Many of the students slept directly on the tile floor. When we arrived in Ahmadabad, there were a few hundred people in traditional Islamic clothing on their way to Mecca for the Haj. It was very foreign, unexpected, and rather dream like after the long hours of travel. When we stepped outside there were a few hundred more people pushed together, shouting for attention, basically a realistic introduction to India.

Ahmadabad (or A’bad, as the kids say) is in Gujarat, which is in the northeast of India, bordering Pakistan. It’s a monsoon climate, so I was surprised to see camels pulling carts in the traffic. I guess we’re here during the dry winter months, so it works. Although it is majority Hindu state, there is a significant Muslim minority. It’s a dry state, which goes well with our program’s no drinking for students policy. Our food has been almost exclusively vegetarian (a few students found McDonald's- it’s a sixth sense with teenagers). While the veggie diet has lead some students to talk about being tired all the time, this combination means I’m losing some of my baby fat.

Our partner organization planned a pack week for orientation, including unexpected language classes. Our Gujarati teacher, Mr. Shukla is straight out of a Seinfeld episode. I can't tell if it's his English, or a cultural thing, but there is definitely a lot of back and forth to get anything across. For example, he asked what do we want to know how to say in Gujarati. I said "Where is the bathroom?" He says...well, it's down the hall. We asked him how to say "Can you show me?" So he puts up "can you show me the hillside?" Who, you might ask, is asking about the hillside? Well, Mr. Shukla is asking, and don't try to stop him- it'll just take another ten minutes. One student asked how do you say "Why?", so he taught us "Why are you screaming at me?" Actually,that might be a useful phrase based on his personal experience. Last one- someone asked how do you say "Is it far?" He pauses, then asks, "You want me to teach you...in Gujarati?" In any case, it seems like the students learned enough to say a few things to their host families, it's all charades from there.