Goa 07!!!!!

In leiu of an acutal Spring Break (which the University of Hyderabad refuses to give its students) my four closest girlfriends and I went to Goa, aka the "party/beach state of India." We fell in love with the place instantly-- lazing on the beaches, loving the sun, enjoying the nightlife, and getting a lovely tan, what's not to love?! These are mostly pictures of the Calangute Beach, where we stayed. The turquoise building is the beach house where we stayed-- only 70 meters away from the Indian Ocean. At many points during this trip we quite nearly killed ourselves/ each other, but looking back on it, Goa 07 was amazing!

HOLI!!!!

Holi… one of the coolest things that we’ve done here. Holi is the Festival of Colors, and it is basically celebrated by throwing colored powder at each other. On Holi, when one throws powder at another, all walls come down, and for the entire day you are equals—it doesn’t matter if the person is your servant or your master, on Holi you are both just people. Besides having a really cool principle behind it, this holiday is SOOOOO FREAKIN FUN TO CELEBRATE!! The SIP students took on our kitchen staff in an all out “Holi War” (get the pun, haha) and needless to say those little Indian men were sneaky! The first picture is one of us putting baby oil on ourselves pre-Holi, because then supposedly the Holi powder would come off easier. The other ones are in different stages of Holi fun, and you can see the powder and water being thrown at everyone. The last one is us at the end of the day—we were so colorful, kind of looked like rainbow blobs! Holi is by far one of the coolest things that we’ve done here the entire semester, love it :)

Chennai

Pictures of "The Chennai" (as our Indian-English speaking tour guide called it.... gah so annoying). Chennai was the city that we stayed in the whole time. The first picture is one of your typical Chennai street, with a billion shops an even more people-- bustling indeed, yet totally normal to us. The second is a picture of the inside of a church we went to at an old British Fort. The last three are all of Marina Beach, which we unfortunately didn't get to see much of at all. In any case, Chennai was a really neat city!

Pondicherry

Here are some pictures of Pondicherry, a town in Tamil Nadu that was first colonized by the French; that influence is still totally noticeable in the city today. The pictures are fairly unimpressive because of the crappy weather, but the city was beautiful, and it's right on the Indian Ocean!

Mammalapuram

These are all pictures from Mammalapuram, a little park-like town deal inbetween Chennai and Pondicherry. There's a ton of carved rocks all over the place, and they're all beautiful. There was a shrine inside the park, and a temple outside of it, but it's more of a touristy/historical place now than an actual religious site.

More temples...

The top picture is a close up of some of the ornate carvings on the temple pillars. If you can't tell, that's how basically the entire temple is-- so beautiful. The second picture is a pretty typical picture of what all temples have-- that huge structure with all sorts of carvings on it. The third picture is of me in the "courtyard" of the temple. This pond-like thing probably has a real name, but I don't know it. I'm also suuuuper sweaty from the sweltering Chennai heat, so don't look at my face too hard :) The last one is a picture right inside one of the temples where there were elephants, yes elephants!!

Temples temples temples!!

Here are some of the pictures of assorted temples that we saw in Chennai/ Pondicherry and the surrounding areas. The first one is a picture of devotees giving pooja (prayers) and the other ones are just of the temple. One of them is an idol that has been decorated.

Our room in the Guest House

(Top) the locks in our rooms that I absolutely DESPISE.... ugh.

(Second down) The view of my room from our beds.

(Middle) A view of my bed and our desk-- the bedding and table cloth we bought here, because the old ones were kind of icky.

(Fourth down) The bathroom on the third floor, so all purpose! The toilet is not in the picture, but would be in the opposite corner of the sink. You can also see the "shower" which doesn't actually work, so you can see the bucket, which is really what we use to bathe.

(Bottom) This is the SIP (Study India Program) Guest House, the dorm where I live. There are people from all over the world who live here, but it’s mostly Americans on the CIEE program. It’s supposed to be the nicest place to live on campus—but don’t worry, we still have cockroaches and lizards as frequent roommates, and a wild boar family that lives behind us.

University of Hyderabad Campus

(Top)This is what’s going up on campus—there’s actually a lot of green space on the University’s property, and this is just one of the places that they’re now converting into buildings. I think this is going to be where the new Gop’s is going, along with some other little general store type places.
(Second) This is our roof/ porch deal on the third floor. It looks pretty crappy from the picture, but it’s so nice to take a towel out there and tan, or read a book. At night time, especially, it’s really nice to go out because it’s so cool. We also dry most of our laundry out there (as you can see from the picture.

(Middle) This is the picture of Gopal’s, or “Gop’s” as it’s called here on campus. It’s the place to hang out between classes and at night. They serve chai, coffee, and chat—little snacks. It looks very makeshift, and it is, but that’s because they’re building a new building.

(Fourth) This is the social science building, where I have all of my classes (except for Urdu). It’s pretty nice by local standards, but it’s not air conditioned (even the new addition), and lots of the windows are broken out and haven’t been replaced. They have a beautiful courtyard inside, and the entire place is set up so that it’s all open to the outside.

(Last) This is the shopping complex on campus. The “bookstore,” tailor, cobbler, snack stores, Xerox place, hair cutters, and other random shops are all here. It’s a bit of a hike from where we live, but it has lots of stuff we need.

Festivals-- Pongal and Republic Day

There are three pictures are all from Pongal, the harvest festival celebrated here by flying kites. All across the city families were flying kites; we went to the Husain Sagar, the large lake in Hyderabad, to see the action. There were people alllll over flying their kites, and lots of boothes set up with food and stuff for the festival. One of the pictures is just a view of the city from the lake-- it's so pretty down there!

The middle one is a picture of the flag pole and flag that we flew outside of the SIP Guest House (where I live) for Republic Day, January 26. Setups like this were all over the city when we went out into town that day. The entire entrance to the Guest House was decorated with vibrant colors of crepe paper, and all the employees at the Guest House had little Indian flags pinned on their shirts.

The top picture was taken on our third floor roof. Every evening if you go outside on the porch you can see the most gorgeous sunsets ever. We watch them almost every day, but this was the first time I actually remembered to bring my camera out!

Hyderabad Favorites!

(Fourth down) This picture is a leftover from Delhi, where we went to Raj Ghat. Raj Ghat is home to Gandhi's grave; it is built on a beautiful part of green land, and has the grave in the center. The inscription on the grave written in Hindi says "Hey Ram," translated "Oh God," which were the last words that Gandhi uttered right after he was assasinated before he died.

(Bottom) This is a picture of the Hyderabad city skyline that I took while we were on a bus on the way into the city. Hyderabad is, population-wise, about the size of Chicago. One part of the city, called "Hitech City" is very new and Westernized, while other parts, like the Old City, are quite traditional.

(Middle) The Charminar is what most people think of when they hear the name Hyderabad. "Charminar" literally means four towers (Char=four, minar=towers). It was built by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah in 1591, and is located in what is considered the "Old City"-- also the Urdu speaking part of the city. Each of the four towers stand 180 feet tall. We got to go up the most frightening spiral "staircase"-- if you could even call it that-- and go to the top level. There you can see pretty much all of Hyderabad and its bustling bazaars!!

(Top) This is the view off of one of the sides of Charminar. Just a little taste of what traffic is like in India! (Awful, I hate it). All the little piddly cars that are yellow and black are autorickshaws. They're kind of sketchy, but if you're talented you can fit four or five people in them (on laps of course), and for a half hour ride it's only about 100 rupees, or a little over $2. Definitely cheaper then Madison cabs!!

(Second down) This is of my two roommates from Delhi, Dia and Marissa, and I sitting on the Black Bench. The Black Bench is in Mecca Masjid, the second largest mosque in India. It is said that if you sit on the Black Bench, you are destined to return to Hyderabad some day and sit on it again-- I guess only time will tell if the magic of the Black Bench brings Dia, Marissa, and I back to Hyderabad.