Taj Mahal and Agra Fort

During our second weekend here, we made a day trip to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and Agra fort. We hired a bus for the seven of us, which picked us up at 5 h 30 am outside our apartment. We arrived at the Taj late in the morning, and spent several hours wandering around. I was surprisingly not that excited to see the Taj, since it seems like one of those tourist things you are obligated to do. I ended up really loving it though, and was struck by its majestic nature and beauty. I was surprised to find that although there were so many people all around, it still had a sense of peace and serenity to it. After we went inside to see the tombs, we sat outside on the white marble for a while and soaked up some much needed sun (the sun is often obscured from fog or pollution in Delhi).  

After lunch, our tour guide (who our driver picked up on the side of the road, insisting we needed him and that he was his friend. We were assured we would only have to “tip according to how much we felt he was worth” afterwards) walked us through Agra fort, a beautiful, sprawling, 16^th century fort used when Agra was the country’s capital. The fort backs up against the Yamuna River, and has tons of open space and grassy park-like areas where monkeys love to play.

We returned to Delhi the same day after a five hour drive on a terrifying road in the dark. It took a little longer because we encountered bumper to bumper traffic coming into Delhi at 10 h 30 at night. Oh, India.

A Few Random Notes to Get Started

So, where to begin? Yes, I do realize it is February 7^th, which makes it a week and a month since I left the states, and thus I am clearly slacking in the blog department. In my defense, I created the url 3 weeks ago. Baby steps…

At this moment, I am sitting on my bed in my little bedroom that I share with my roommate Matthew. He’s a nice guy with a dry sense of humor and a huge beard, and he’s great. There’s 7 of us total in this apartment – 6 boys (or men?) and me, and together we make up the entire EAP program in India this semester. The fall program normally has over 40 students in it, but since this is the first spring semester in Delhi for the program, it is considerably smaller. Needless to say, we are the guinea pigs.

This is the group, minus Adam (taking the picture). Colin, me, Shane, Nick, Azzar, and Matt in front. 

Aside: There’s also a completely random rain/thunder/extreme lightning storm going on outside. We had to run home from dinner as the wind started swirling around us in powerful gusts.

Our apartment is in Old Delhi, only a few minute rickshaw ride away from the University of Delhi’s North Campus, where we take our classes. We have a 3 bedroom place on the third floor, and above us our own private rooftop. We did have to do a MASSIVE cleaning of the place when we moved in, but the place is great in Indian standards (and I would argue American, too) – we have running water after we fill the pump, electricity most of the time, hot water should we choose to turn it on after 20 minutes, and flushing toilets. 

Our bathroom has a squat toilet (a hole in the ground with two footrests - Matt is demonstrating how to use one above), which actually sounds a lot scarier than it actually is, and I’ve grown quite used to it. I can also pee virtually anywhere, FYI. Not to the extent that men can, for they can literally whip it out anywhere in public (and I mean anywhere). But I have acquired some mean squatting techniques, and I now fear nothing when it comes to gross bathrooms (trust me, you’ve seen nothing). I’m also getting really good at bucket showers (which consist of filling up a bucket with water and using a smaller one to pour it over yourself repeatedly) and am even starting to enjoy them. Now that the weather has warmed up, I find them relaxing and soothing, instead of just miserably cold.

So far, I haven’t really been able to establish much of a routine, unless you count trying to go to school everyday and traveling every weekend. School officially started a month ago, yet I have only had two days of class. The Anthropology department here started two weeks later than every other department, and is very unorganized and posted the class list the day classes started. On top of that, my professor literally never shows up for class. For three weeks in a row, I’ve been showing up every morning at school, only to wait for 2 hours and finally decide no one is coming that day. Today, for the first time since the first day of classes, he finally showed up (and hour late) and we had classes. Of course, the two classes took 7 hours to get through, since he kept taking tea breaks that lasted around 2 hours each.

But still, I’m hoping to have more of these schools days. In addition, we’re also taking Hindi class through the EAP Study Center. It’s very interesting, although it is going quite slow since we had to learn a whole new script and everything.

I know there’s so much more I should write about (like what I’ve been up to the last month, my travels, food, people, etc.) but I just wanted to finally  get this started. There’s definitely been some tough moments, and some parts of daily life here that are hard to get used to, but I’m having an amazing time. Every day I have moments where I just feel so overwhelmed with love and joy for life, and I am so thankful for these. I hope everything is going great back home (or wherever you are, abroad ladies), and know I am sending my love to all of you.

Also, I’m sorry for my excessive use of parentheses. They are just to effective for writing the way I think.