First Impressions: It is interesting moving to a new place, with new people and learning more about the kind of persona that you put forth on meeting new people. This spurs from a comment Kevin made one day. He came home and said “I think people think we are a lot more conservative then we really are”. At first this made me laugh, but then I got to thinking about it because although we are not extreme left on the liberal scale, we are by no means conservative. Since moving here we have mentioned several times that we don’t drink, as well as talking about going to church here in Mumbai. I have since talked to the person who sparked the “conservative” comment from Kevin and I think it was less about us being non-drinking church goers, and more to do with a general respect for those around us, but still it made me think: what kind of assumptions do we make about people based on every day interactions or ideas? I hope that the more we get to know people, the more others are able to see and hear the true us, based on our words and actions, instead of assumptions. And the same goes for us. I hope we take more time to get to know people before assuming we know who they are and what they believe.
Funny Statements: I got a kick out hearing Kevin’s principal say “You should be sick more often”. If you read the post about Kevin teaching class from home, this is what I am referring to. The principals son is in Kevin’s class and thought it was really fun to have a class being taught from home, so the next day when Kevin returned, this is what he was told. Only at a laptop school would this be possible and only at a school like ASB would you hear something like that.
Shopping: Today (13th of Sept) we went to Chor Bazaar. We were excited to go and find bookshelve
s for our boxes of books that came in our shipment. Indeed it was fun walking through all the tiny shops (and I mean tiny) checking out the old furniture. We did end up buying one book shelf, which should arrived all cleaned up and ready to use on Monday. We saw another piece we liked, which was a large armoire/cabinet type piece with doors that had Chinese art inlaid in it. It looks a lot like the picture to the right, although the artwork is quite different. When we asked about it, there was just one young man there, who told us it cost 1 lak 5, 000 rupees, which is about $2,650. He also didn’t speak that much English, so when we tried to inquire about the age, type of wood and where it was from, we could not get any info. We really like it though, so we might do some research into what something like this should cost if it’s actually an antique. Unfortunately, we were in such a rush this morning to get out of the house we forgot both our camera, (so no pictures from the day) and our keys. Luckily, we have nice building mates, who let us hang out with them while we waited for the school to come open our door for us.
Travel: We have started to plan our travels for the two upcoming breaks. We have a 4 day weekend in the beginning of October as well as a full week off at the end of October. Kevin and I both realized, once we were here and starting to think about our travels, that neither of us have been on many international trips that weren’t completely organized for us. We did however book both a train trip down to Goa and a flight back for the 4 day weekend, so once we get that under our belt, I think we might be more confident in our trip planning. It is nice that we work with so many other people who have been traveling that can give us advice and at least send us in the right direction. I’m sure we will have lots of “adventure” stories from our travels so look forward to some interesting reads in the future.
Ganesh: Back to the Ganesh festival, we have learned more about it in the last week and wanted to share a little more about the experience Kevin starting sharing last week. As I am writing this, Kevin is working on the pictures we took last week as well as the video. So this might all be clear when you see the pictures. When we went to check things out last week, we were quite amazed at the party. Our neighbor, who lives in a giant house/mansion next door, happens to be the owner of one of the big malls in town. So, not only is his house quite the show of wealth, but his Ganesh procession was as well. We went out to see the fireworks and drum line that were playing and started following them down the street a bit. They had three very large flats for the parade. The first was the one with Ganesh and the family and friends riding along. Imagine a large parade float fully decked out with floral arrangements, lights, music and fireworks going off in front of the float every couple yards. Right behind this float was the giant generator truck that was providing power to it. Behind that truck was another float with the drummers doing their thing. Behind them was another float with a DJ and huge speakers, and behind that was another generator truck for the DJ system. Finally they had a truck carrying more people giving out gifts randomly. We never were in the right place to get one, so I’m not sure what they were, but they looked like boxes of candy. Now this all started at around 10pm, noise and all. They were walking at a snail’s pace, we walked along with them for about a half hour and they probably only made it 200 yards or so. We have no idea if they were going to keep that pace or not, but we were told they were walking it all the way to Chowpatty beach, with is around 8 miles away. During the day, not during festival time, it takes us 45 minutes to drive at a more normal pace, so we are guessing it took at least a couple of hours to get down there. They also had several policemen walking along to help control traffic and generally get them to where they wanted to be. We also received an email this week from the security guy at our school with a link to the town's traffic police. Click here to check it out. It’s interesting to look at the sight because they actually shut down streets just for the processions as well as restricting parking and have a detailed map of where to go if yo
u are bring your idol to the beach for immersion. Here is the map:
We also learned more this week, that about the history of the festival. Ganesh Chaturthi did not actually become a large celebration until the early 1900’s. It became big as a sort of resistance to British rule. If the whole tradition of parading it down to the water and immersing it into the water sounds a little random, it kind of is. Check out the history portion of the Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh_Chaturthi. Different people choose different times during the week to take their journey to the beach but the most common days were last Sunday and this Sunday (tomorrow). So we are looking forward to more of the same excitment and noise tomorrow, as it is apparently the biggest of the immersion days. We will see how early we can get to bed tomorrow.
Side Note: New Pictures and Video from Ganesh Chaturthi. Check it out! --->
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