Mockba, St. Pete's and Finlandia! Ja!

I (Julia) am writing from a train headed to Helsinki, Finland at the moment.

Two weeks ago exactly Esack and I flew from shanghai to Moscow. And let me tell you, the way I felt about Russia from then until now has COMPLETELY changed!  I was absolutely terrified to get to Russia when we first arrived. To be fair, while we were in china Esack and I talked to a friend of Trevor's named Peter, who has spent a lot of time in Russia, and after hearing of our plans to spend ten days in Russia his response was: "oh, you're definitely going to get robbed."

 Nice.

 So with my base knowledge of Russia from American movies, I figured that 80% of Russia's population is made up of KGB assassins, and the other twenty of babushkas who look like life size nesting dolls. Well I was wrong, apparently, the other twenty are there to rob us.

As you can imagine, I really was wrong. About everything. Our first interaction with a Russian was our taxi driver, hired to take us to the Moscow hostel for 1700 rubles. I'll let you figure out how many dollars that is. Fine, 35. He was a large man named George who expressed his love of American music very enthusiastically by cranking up the billy Joel, Celine dion, aretha franklin, and Barbara Streisand for the ride home. He gave me a giant bottle of iced green tea to keep me occupied while he and Esack grunted to each other in the front seat. It's really lucky Esack speaks fluent Male.

The hostel was homey and had free tea. We met some friendly Kazakhs and Nepalese guys. Then the next day we were scheduled to be picked up by a driver to take us to an apartment owned by my friend Varya, who I know through my dad. She and her husband live in st. Petersburg but offered to let us stay in their apartment in Moscow that they use when in town for business. It was a luxury having a place to ourselves even for just 36 hours or so! We cooked, watched Police Academy dubbed in Russian, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We hit the major tourist attractions of Moscow: st. Basils, red square, and of course, saw lenin's embalmed body. Creepy.

 Then we took an overnight train to st. Petersburg. We slept well and awoke to watch the obese Russian man across from us eat half a chicken and guzzle vodka. Like it was water. But he was nice and helped us order tea, which is some word like "cha" which is how you say tea in Chinese. Wow. Cultures colliding!

 Varya picked us up on the platform and drove us back to her home in st. Petersburg. Esack and I both liked her right away and really she's wonderful! Friendly and intelligent and so welcoming... Really we could not have been luckier to know someone like her in Russia.  We stayed with Varya for a week. Her children were at their summer home in Finland with their nanny, so we stayed in their room. She encouraged us to spend our time sightseeing while she worked during the day and then she cooked us amazing meals in the evening. Varya's husband Kirill came home a few days after we arrived because he was in finland as well.  Both understand English very well but he didn't seem as comfortable speaking as Varya was. Esack and kirill really seemed to connect though.

 So we did see the sights in st. Pete's. We went to pieterhof (the Russian Versailles sort of), Peter and Paul's cathedral, church of Christ on spilled blood, Nievsky prospekt (main st), artillery museum, and spent a whole day at the hermitage. We also walked around on the city's birthday, so there was a celebration with music and dancing and food. We saw two adorable kids doing traditional Russian dancing, and this really strange contemporary dance where this guy wearing a beige sheet and a helmet danced with a giant gold ball to a Tool song. The fair was a great place to people watch too... We noticed that Russian women really love to dress glamorously. They wear high heels always! It doesn't surprise me that a lot of models come from Russia. We also saw a lot of women pose really dramatically when having their photos taken. We started doing it for our own photos :) Varya told us a Russian saying that basically says, even in the morning, Russian women are dressed for the night. Oh and apparently it's very stylish to be taller than your man in your heels.

Our friend Peter also kindly sent us a huge list of Russian food that we had to try. We showed it to Varya and she took it on to help us try everything! She made incredible homemade borscht, which we drank with frozen vodka.  We had several kinds of pickled fishes, including sturgeon which only comes from st. Petersburg area.  We had two kinds of blini, sweet and savory with salmon caviar, piroshkee or dumplings, shashlik (meat cooked over open fire), buckwheat, Russian black bread, kvass which is bread soda and kind of tastes like sweet nonalcoholic beer and so many more things! If you are reading this Peter, thank you for the list, and I think we did you proud! I didn't really understand Russian food before, or at least had heard it was nothing special, but that's totally untrue! It's earthy and wholesome and so delicious.

 So then, towards the end of our stay with Varya, the four of us were sitting around their dining room table drinking wine. Varya and kirill were leaving for Finland the next day and we had a train scheduled for Helsinki, where we were going to spend a few days then take a ferry to Rostock and then Berlin. Working through the logistics we realized it was going to be a little complicated, and Varya suggested we just trade in our rail tickets and spend the weekend with them in Finland and then go to Helsinki and fly to Berlin from there!

 So that was that and we drove to Finland the next day.  They have a beautiful wooden cabin on a lake. It's next to their friends who also have a cabin. The two cabins are secluded among a forest of beautiful birch trees.  One of the best things about staying the weekend was getting to spend some time with varya's children, Tima and Gregory, ages ten and two. Tima is smart and well mannered, and totally relished his time with Esack. They played chess and soccer together. Tima loves to eat and one night he agreed to workout in order to have extra scoops of ice cream for dessert and so he and Esack did push ups together! Tima speaks excellent English and we had a lot of fun with him. Gregory, who everyone calls greisha, is funny and loud and very energetic. For some reason he really took a liking to me... Varya often told me he would ask "where is Julia?" in Russian when i wasn't around. He was shy around me, but Warmed up slowly. He would climb up on the couch between Esack and I and get cozy. It was really nice to be around kids for awhile.

 Our first night in Finland kirill made salmon that was grilled on a cedar plank so it partially smoked, and was the most amazing fish I've ever eaten! It was so moist and juicy and had tons of flavor! Kirill was also very generous with his extensive liquor collection. I tried port for the first time, we had lots of different whiskeys brewed different ways, and good Cointreau drizzled over ice cream! It was so luxurious to spend a weekend this way, especially since Esack and I have been trying to be conservative with money since we are traveling.

But possibly the MOST amazing part of Finland was the sauna. Both Varya and her neighbors have their own sauna houses. So Esack went with kirill, Tima, and misha (the nanny's husband) and I went with Varya's friend anya, her friend Alissa, and a girl named Olga who is my age.  The saunas were about 80 degrees Celsius and the process was basically: go in the sauna as long as you can stand it, then run and jump in the lake, Get out and drink some water, spend a few minutes outside, then back in the sauna. I think I went four or five times. They also do a special practice where they dry birch branches and do and combination of fanning someone and hitting them with the leaves. Anja did it to me and it was intense but felt good! Esack said kirill did it to him too. The best part was the smell the dried birch emitted... Like the best pine tree in the world!  Doing the sauna was the most relaxed I've felt in months. It felt so nourishing too... To go from super hot to super cold. Anja said they even do it in winter, cutting a hole in the ice which can be up to a meter thick.  Yikes.

And so here we are.  On the train to Helsinki. Esack and I have a busy six weeks in front of us but we are so excited and ready for an adventure. We sent a bunch of stuff home while we were in china, so our packs are light, and we are well rested. We are over halfway through our trip now and plan on moving every five days or so in Europe.  Our plan is helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Leiden, Barcelona, Italy (cinque terre, Florence, parma, maybe Siena), Switzerland, maybe austria, trier, and finally Paris!  

Europe, bring it on!

Love,

Julia & Esack

This. Is. CHINA. (contributed lovingly by Esack)

Shanghai was a different experience entirely. My great ally-in-the-Orient, Lord Vor (note from Julia: that's our friend Trevor Smith who we know from Iowa), met us at the airport, so there was no “where the hell are we?” period. This was a good thing. In the other cities we’ve seen so far there was definitely a feeling out process, a sort of wandering around time. It was necessary to cut this out in China, as any sort of aimless strolling would see us mostly pretending to look at signs (not in English) and hiding our fear of the unknown (note from Julia: though we blended in very well). Thankfully, Lord Vor had our backs. That isn’t to say “where the hell are we?” wasn’t one of the first questions out of my mouth.

Vor had set us up with a hotel room for most of our stay. The most notable things about the hotel were the view, and the mattress. There was a lovely, large window which looked out directly onto a concrete wall. Not as in, we could see across the parking lot to a concrete wall, but as in: we could see a concrete wall less than a foot outside the window. I have suspicions that the mattress was also made out of some sort of concrete. I was told that in general, the Chinese prefer firm surfaces for sitting and lying down. I was skeptical about this only until our first night of sleep. I slept straight through the night and awoke feeling refreshed. The concrete wall gave the room a constant 7-in-the-morning vibe, even at our usual waking hour of noon (note from Julia: If we set an alarm…) Come to think of it maybe getting up at the crack of noon led to the feeling of refreshment…

We stayed up late and got up late. Honestly it felt like the right schedule to be on for Shanghai. By the time we got up Lord Vor was usually about ready to shuttle us around town. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go to China without someone who speaks Mandarin. You can definitely survive by smiling, pointing, and either nodding or shaking your head, but you would definitely miss a LOT of fantastic stuff heading around town without a proper guide. We got up earlier a couple of times to experience the Shanghai morning, but mostly we stayed out late. Probably never made it to bed earlier than 2 or 3 am. More than once it was 4-5 am. So, I think we can be forgiven for sleeping in a little.

If I had to summarize what we did in Shanghai, I would say that we ate. We ate all day, we ate everything we came across, and we ate oh-so-affordably. I mean, really affordably, most of the things we tried cost 7-30 yuan ($1-5). Noodles, noodles, dumplings and noodles. So many different kinds of noodles. I won’t tease all of you who don’t get to try the goodness with detailed descriptions of everything we ate. I DO need to mention a tasty little dish called chow see fun. No promises on the spelling (cut me some slack, they’re characters not words), but I can promise chow see fun is $1 you’ll never want back. Very simple, vermicelli noodles fried up in a wok with cabbage and fried eggs. It’s advisable to eat it with plenty of the hot chili and the vinegar sauce, condiments you can find at just about any of the eateries we tried. Also bearing mention, thanks to a learned friend of Vor’s we went to a little hidden restaurant with a chef serving the best unagi (Japanese BBQ eel) outside of Tokyo (according to Japanese folks, I haven’t been to Japan, YET). Seriously, truly and unbelievably delicious. (Note from Julia: also home to an amazing beef appetizer that had broth made by angels and what tasted like bread soaked in it.  Although for all I know I was eating duck brains).

I almost hesitate to mention the wang bars. Wang bar. The very name conjures images of scatological humor and a certain 80’s one-hit wonder. What do you do at a wang bar? You play computer games. “Who’s down for wanging it?” or, “let’s go wang it” were phrases frequently thrown around that hid the benign and undeniably nerdy intentions of the group. The game of choice was Warcraft 3. For those of you losers who have never spent 6-10 hours straight playing this game, it’s of the RTS family of games. Or, to the layman, you build an army and go attack the opponent’s army. I’m sure many of you readers will laugh, assuming that 6-10 hours is some sort of hyperbole. Not so beloved followers of this blog, not so. Seeing as I spent much of my childhood playing games like Warcraft 3 (including Warcraft 3), I wasn’t surprised (but “maybe” a little disappointed) with my capacity to drop that amount of time in a computer bar. What DID surprise me (any members of the Gouge family may want to skip this next part) was Julia’s capacity to do the same. Julia not only went along with the Warcrafting, she ate it up. Never in my wildest, lamest dreams did I dream of a girl who would spend 7 hours in a computer bar playing Warcraft with me. But spend the 7 hours she did, and I fell in love. Julia, Lord Vor and I wanged it hard.

This is where Esack’s contribution ends… mostly because he is napping.

Now, I, Julia must explain that wang bars are certainly gross, but I think anyone can admit there’s a certain appeal to hanging out in a place where you can veg out totally uninterrupted. Plus we always had supplies (milk tea, candy bars, seaweed crackers, and “Ethnican” flavored Inca chips).  The game is like the Sims, except you get to battle!  Why would I ever not like that?!

So anyway, Esack did a great job describing Shanghai.  My favorite thing we ate were called xiao long bao.  They are small steamed dumplings filled with pork and this absolutely amazing broth!  A friend of Trevor’s named Michaela told us that they put an ice cube of the broth in the dumplings before they steam, and voila!  Broth dumplings. (pictured below)

What was interesting for me about Shanghai is that although we stuck out like sore thumbs, sore white thumbs to be exact, I came to really love China.  We got plenty of stares, and heard murmurs of “lao wai…” (foreigners…) everywhere we went, the Chinese people we met were always put up with us and did their best to communicate.  I felt safe 100% of the time.  Now that Esack and I are in Russia I notice that I feel nostalgic whenever I hear Chinese.  It is a beautiful language and one that I’ve never understood.  I never thought I’d be interested in learning Chinese but I am!  It’s an entirely different way of communicating and it totally changed the way I think about language.  More to come on this as I work it out in my head.

Look forward to a Russia post coming soon. 

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Julia&Esack

Esack and Trevor in Hangzhou

Wanging it hard in the Wang bar

A boat on Hangzhou lake

A catfish from the collection of them swimming in a container just outside the window on the left

Xiao long bao.  Food from Chinese heaven.

Singa...rich

Hello! My goal is to do at least one post for each location of my travels. Tonight is only my second night in Singapore, although it happens to be my last as well. Esack and I arrived late from Auckland and we leave early tomorrow for shanghai so that left only two full days here. My first impressions of Singapore were very positive. It's hot and tropical, really close to the equator. It's clean and easy to navigate. Everyone speaks English and is helpful. It's safe and everything is cheap! I titled my post Singarich not because it's particularly over the top or anything, but really, it seems like most of the people here are wealthy. Im sure it doesn't help that one of the first things Esack and I did was go see art at the ritz-Carlton hotel. But anyway, the nice cars, well dressed people, plethora of banks, and sparkling streets all lend to an atmosphere of wealth. Unfortunately, it also lends itself to a resort-like, touristy vibe. Singapore in itself doesn't really have much local history, and it comes through. There doesn't seem to be much in terms of localness anyway. The whole city is representations of other cultures: Malay, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, and European. I'm sure Esack and I still stick out as tourists, but there are just as many white people here as everyone else. Everyone sort of looks like a tourist! I read online that the best place to get authentic Singaporean food is at the Chinese heritage center in Chinatown. Ok... I feel like Singapore has taken bits of other cultures, polished them up a bit, and then sewed them on to other cultures. It hasn't all quite blended together. I told Esack that this is what I imagine Dubai to be like. All this said, I really have enjoyed my two days here. I'm excited to go to shanghai and get a little terrified though. And Russia too. Scary. Will I miss the ease of Singapore in about a week? Most definitely.

 Esack and I are staying in an adorable hostel called pillows and toast, which has really comfy beds, free toast in the morning, friendly staff, air cnditioning, and a no shoe policy. I really like it here! We are staying just down the street for a street food center where we have eaten just about every meal. They have over a hundred stands and we've tried tons of new foods, like Rojak, fried bananas, popiah, sardine curry puffs, kachanga, and laksa. The most bizarre thing for sure was the kachanga, strawberry kachanga to be exact, which is a Chinese dessert. It cost about a dollar and twenty cents and is a huge bowl of shaved ice, with three different kinds of syrup on it, like an American snow cone, and then strawberry syrup over top. At first we were like ok, kinda sweet, not too bad. Then we dug down under the ice, and lo and behold, we discover spoonfuls of red beans and corn. Then we come up with three different kinds of gelatin treats, these white gelatin balls, red cubes, and black strips. It was SO bizarre. Haha Esack definitely liked it better than I did, but I think i was just psychologically confused. Taste wise, it really was pretty good. My strangest dessert experience to date.

 So the other way we have been spending our time and money is on the fresh juice! It's amahhhhhzing. There are the standards: orange, pineapple, mango. Apple, lime, mint, ginger, blah blah yum yum but then more unusual things like bitter gourd and honey, balonglong and sour plum. I wish I could try everything!

 We checked out the nightlife last night at a place called Clarke quay by the water and it was unbelievable! Full blown concerts going on next to each other, what seemed like hundreds of bars. So much live music, restaurants, everything. We ended up at a live blues bar and watched a pretty good band with a great guitarist cover al green, bb king, and lynyrd skynyrd. People watching was especially fun, particularly these two drunk guys who were just a hair away from moshing.

Then today, Esack and I spent most of our time at the botanic gardens where we walked around all afternoon and I took about 200 hundred pictures of orchids. For dinner we tried a new street food market which wasn't very good. I got very mediocre chicken biryani and Esack got decent nasi lemak. Disappointing, but then I got some good Indian tea, so no harm done! Ive also turned Esack on to the wonders of fresh coconuts, so we got those twice today. They're more expensive than in India, but sometimes tastier :) I have lots of pictures to upload and show you all, but unfortunately I can't do it from my iPad, somill wait until I can use esacks computer. Im sure I'll have plenty of time to do it during my two week stay in china. But look out for those soon!

 Love, Julia

Out of the Mountains

So let's see... Lots has happened since I last wrote.  Esack and I are back in Auckland, at a different hostel this time around.  We are in a room with 8 other people or so.  One of whom is an unbelievably loud snorer, and one who is an unbelievably sleazy Italian.  The other six don't really speak.  So anyway, we are happy and enjoying some down time before we move onto Singapore on May 3 (happy bday L).

We loved our time in Queenstown.  It was much colder there, but the leaves were turning colors and it's situated on Lake Wakitipu, which is absolutely gorgeous and you can see it in The Two Towers!  I seriously considered doing an LOTR tour but it was waaay too expensive and plus they really just take you to the top of a leafy hill.  I don't really know but I'm telling myself that.  Anyway, this one bus driver did point out a hill where they filmed the epic battle in the woods (the one where Boromir gets shot... sorry if that's a spoiler, but it's been like 7 years so...).  If you watch the scene (which Esack and I did, along with the rest of the movie and the first and third movies #timewellspent) you can see the lake in the background.  So long story short, Queenstown is pretty.

Esack and I did the Caples and Greenstone tracks from there.  It's essentially a big loop with a saddle about halfway between.  The Caples was beautiful, all different kinds of landscapes, flatlands, hills, mountains, forests, plains.  At one point we felt we were in Rohan.  And I'm officially done with the LOTR references.  Oh, except we were also in the Shire once too.  Ok now done!  We got eaten alive by sandflies the first night but then we figured out them out a bit and struck a deal.  It got COLD at night. I think we were out there for 7 nights.  The very last night we stayed in a hut, but every other night we camped.  

On the second day we came across this unbelievable little campsite.  It was small and right next to a really rocky part of the river.  We found the perfect little square of red moss where we layed our tent and it was sooo comfortable.  We slept for 14 hours that night!  There was a giant rock dividing the river and sort of worked as a dam, so there was this crystal clear water pool right next to us.  I wanted to swim so badly, and Esack frequently egged me on, but in the end it was just too cold.  It might've been fun at first, but then I would've just been cold for like five days and so I just got into my sleeping bag and pretended to swim in that.  "I wish it was summer!" was probably the most frequently said thing at that camp site.  Or maybe "this place is so beautiful."  One of the two.  We decided to stay there for a second night, partially cause we loved it, and partially cause we woke up really late after our 14 hour nap.  We made chocolate chip pancakes and tea that day.  Plus we really didn't need so many days to do the trek.  The day after that we hiked up the saddle, which is a just a crossable area between two mountains.  We went down the other side and camped in the plains-ey area.  Then we took another day off the next day and did a day hike up to the beginning of the Routeburn track.  On the map it's a place called the Divide.  We thought it was going to be some epic crater in the earth or something.  But... it was a parking lot.  Haha so we had lunch in a parking lot and enjoyed semi-civilization for an hour or so.  Then we hiked back in.  We walked the Greenstone pretty quickly.  It was relatively easy and mostly on the flatlands by the river.  There were lots of cows and sheep, but it wasn't easy to make friends.  We did make some bird friends though.  Esack got one to eat a noodle out of his hand.  I got one to mimic my singing voice perfectly and carry small objects for me.  Ok I didn't, I'm just jealous of Esack.  But I left a few sunflower seeds for them :)

After we came down from the formidable hills of lower NZ we had a couple days to kill in Queenstown.  We did a soak in the Onsen hot pools, which were a major highlight.  It felt great on our very tired leg muscles.  Now, back in Auckland.

Yesterday Esack and I saw the Avengers, cause apparently movies come out earlier here.  It was 20 bucks to see it in 3D but we figured why not?  It was a lot of fun and a rainy day so it was a good way to spend it.  We went back to Food Alley for lunch and I tried Korean this time.  

Today we got together with Maggie Grueskin's (Esack's stepmother) friend John who lives in Auckland with his family.  He took us out on his boat and it was amazing to see a whole other side of Auckland!  We circled Rangitoto, a volcano island in the bay, and then went out to Waiheke, an island with lots of vineyards we plan to visit again.  We have just a few more days here, but honestly, I'm getting ready to go.  I love the scenery of NZ and the people are great.  But everything is so expensive and it's exhausting trying to balance having fun versus counting coins.  

So anyway, onto Singapore next and then China for a whole two weeks to visit Trevor!  Both Esack and I are very excited for China.  It's gonna make a huge difference having a guide who speaks Mandarin and just another friend to talk to.  Esack and I haven't gotten sick of each other or anything.  But we are literally together 24 hours a day and it will be nice to have another friend.  It's a good thing we make each other laugh so much.  Lately Esack has been particularly entertaining by singing death metal versions of musical theater numbers, or really any non-death metal song.  

I hope you enjoy reading this post and if any of you ever have questions about our trip or something specific you want me to write about, I'd love it!  Sometimes I feel like this is Live Journal or something, so I have to at least try to make it entertaining.  

Esack and I already had an early dinner of Bento boxes, so tonight the menu is: read, hang out, and most importantly... track down ear plugs!  

Peace love and meows xoxoxo

A note about the pics:  for now I can't easily upload pics from my phone, only Esack's.  I'll upload more when I can, and check my facebook for a few more.  

The first memorable bite of a Ferg Burger.  The best burger I've probably ever eaten.  

Lake Wakitipu from Queenstown

Day 1 of our hike!

Making friends.  

The Caples river

There is fungus among us!

On top of McKellar saddle

In the Greenstone River valley.  The tent is our bedroom and there is Esack in the kitchen, making something scrumptious!

Beginnings

Hello family friends and followers!

I am blogging from the Nomads Fat Camel hostel in Auckland, New Zealand. Esack and I arrived yesterday, me from San Francisco, and Esack from Perth. Our flights went smoothly and we found each other relatively easily in the airport, although we each described moments of panic when we frantically searched for each other, looking wildly suspicious in an airport I'm sure. But we found each other, hugged for a solid 15 minutes, then hopped on a bus for downtown Auckland. It was only 7:30 am when we arrived and unfortunately check in wasnt til one. So we walked around downtown, got breakfast and coffee at two different cafes, and still had two hours to kill before check in. We napped in the hostel common room for awhile and then finally it became one o clock.

The hostel is interesting. We have a tiny, windowless room on the sixth floor for 50 dollars a night. We splurged. There are people from all over the world. We haven't really made any friends yet. But that's ok. We are only here for one more night. Today, we are going to check out this Asian food hall place, where apparently you can get any kind of Asian food on the cheaps.

Tomorrow morning we leave for queenstown, on the south island. From there, we'll be doing a 5-6 day trek called the greenstone trek, same one my dad did several years ago (shout out!). I've heard great things about QT and we're really excited. Bungee jumping and other things that make me nervous are alo in discussion.

Most of you know that Esack and I are doing this trip for fun after spending way too much time getting our degrees from the university of Iowa. Here is what we have planned so far:

April 17-27 queenstown
April 28-may 3 Auckland again, didn't have a choice about it. But we're thinking of checking out a hostel away from downtown, in a more relaxed suburb. And maybe some day trips to volcanos!
May 3- may6 Singapore
May 6- may 22 shanghai, china to visit the famous Trevor smith. You should read his blog. Www.gristlehedgeunderground.wordpress.com. I think.
May22- may25 Moscow
May 25- June 1 st. Petersburg
June 1 - July 22 Europe!
Finland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, spain, France, etc etc maybe maybe it's all up in the air! But we will figure it out.

So, after only one day of travel, I already feel like I've been gone forever. But my lack of jet lag is great! I feel energized and excited. Esack and I have a huge adventure before us and this blog is a way for you to come along with us. We wouldn't have been able to put it together without everyone's support, and at times, financial help :)

It's about time we start our day but thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the blog. I'll update as often as possible. Feel free to email anytime at gougejk@yahoo.com but if you call or text I can't respond.

I love you all!!!

Farm Life

The title to this blog post is kind of ironic given that yesterday was day 10 out of 16 of being on the farm, and was the first day that I did any kind of actual farm work.  But here I am!  I arrived on November 12 to Melkote, Karnataka, India, and I'm here for about a month to work for Janapada Seva Trust (janapada.net). Their website describes the NGO and what they do and is actually a great website if you feel like checking it out! 

I am sorry it has been so many weeks since my last blog post.  I went on my 3-week vacation which was wonderful!  I traveled with my friend Justin and though our plans changed a LOT, it ended up being great.  We went to three beaches in Goa, then to Mumbai, Amritsar, Shimla, and Manali.  We were also in Delhi for about a day.  I will write more about that at another time, and post pics eventually!

So, my intention in coming to Melkote was to learn about organic farming.  My organic guru is named Santhosh Kaulagi, and he runs Janapada, which his parents started some 50 years ago.  Most of his family lives together in Melkote, and I am staying in an empty family member's house just a five minute walk from their house.  Santhosh and his wife and three children live a few kms away on their own farm.  As I said, the first ten days I did no farm work.  Santhosh seemed more intent on teaching me more about holistic, sustainable living.  At least that's what he said.  This translated into over a week of me doing rather menial chores: sweeping out rooms, learning to spin thread on a hand loom, and chopping vegetables.  This wasn't really a problem for me, but I am paying HIM $200 plus other expenses to do work on his farm.  I don't know whether it's because I am a woman, or what, but he didn't seem to want to give me physical labor to do.  Finally I started to yesterday.  To be fair, it seems there isn't all that much physical labor to do.  Plus, he has field hands who do it, he doesn't do it at all.  Yesterday, me and two other guys named Naga and Gopalla weeded onion fields, and today we cleared land.  Overall, I am much slower than them, but they are so patient with me, and as long as I'm not getting in their way I'm happy.  It feels so good to be out in the sun doing work!  I have been stuck in a classroom for too long.

I would say the biggest challenge here is communication.  Santhosh speaks good English, and some of his family knows enough to make simple sentences with me, and then most people know a few words.  My Kannada has gotten a lot better just in 10 days!  I know a lot of important phrases now and can usually come up with a word or two to get what I want.  For example, I got a sari today!  I am really excited because a lot of women here asked me why I don't wear one.  I didn't have a good reason besides the fact that I've been with Americans up until now.  Coming to Melkote has sort of been like been thrown into shark-infested waters.  I'm definitely the only non-Indian in the whole village.  And it's been reiterated several times that Melkote is very traditional.  It's a beautiful little temple town though, with the temple overlooking the village from a huge rocky hill.  There are several sacred ponds scattered around, and it's not very busy.  Most people are always barefoot and there are always baby goats in the streets, which are also my new favorite animal cause they are so adorable!

I try to challenge myself by asking people questions and things like that, but honestly, I am silent probably 80% of my day.  In a way, it makes the days drag on, but in another way, it's really peaceful.  It's good that I don't mind being quiet... but sometimes I feel a little bit like a bump on a log.  I hate when I feel like a burden to Santhosh and his family, which is sometimes a lot.  But I have tried to make myself clear that I want to be put to work, and that's becoming more frequent.  

Another challenge is the food.  Indian food is and always will be fantastic.  But traditional South Indian food is  an entirely different being.. a being which I have called: white rice.  Generally, I am served rice three meals a day.  And the amount that I eat is about half of what other Indians eat.  It's served with a soup/sauce called sambar which usually has some vegetables in it.  It has been so hard on my system though.  The second night I was here I got really sick, and I have no idea what from, maybe the water.  I was up all night throwing up for 8 hours straight.  That was a blow to my positive attitude for sure.  I recovered pretty quickly though, and I think the family has learned that I can't eat quite as much as them.  I go out and buy my own cucumbers, tomatos, apples, and bananas too.  Eating raw fruits and veggies, even just one thing a day has helped me so much!

I could probably write for another hour, there is so much to describe.  I wish you all could be here with me.  It's amazing the prolific cow poop, blaring horns, pushing to get on the bus, trash on the street, chattering Kannada, and tiny cups of tea have all become like characteristics of home to me.  I'm sure that I'm going to think America is remarkably clean, quiet, and empty.  You'd be surprised at the assumptions made about America here: that everyone is extremely rich, fat, and happy; and in some cases, that it is the same place as England!  I cleared up that last one though.  

Anyway, I miss you all so much.  I can't wait to be home... only three weeks!  Oh, and happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!  Save me some turkey.

Love,

Julia  

Happy Journey!

It's about that time... I'm strappin on my boot straps and getting ready to leave for a three week long vacation in India!  I am traveling with Alex, my room mate, and the five boys in my group to Goa for 6 days, then my friend Justin and I are heading north to visit Jaipur, then we're skipping over to Delhi where we'll meet our other friend, Jackson, and then the three of us are heading to Kathmandu in Nepal to see a few mountains and hit the club scene...... crickets.....

Anyway!  I am so excited for all of it.  Beaches in Goa, pink sand in Jaipur, a billion people in Delhi, and the Himalayas in Nepal, what more could I ask for?  Before I return I want to ride a camel AND an elephant.  Other than that I don't have many trip goals.  I suppose avoiding kidnappers and wherever those people in the movie Hostel went are on my list.  Mainly I'm excited to get out of Mysore, away from annoying chaperones and get to see some more of India!

I won't be taking my laptop with me on my vacation, so this might be my last blog post for a few weeks.  I'm sure I'll be stopping at an internet cafe sometime, so that might be a good opportunity to let you, dear fans, know that I'm still alive. 

Love,
Julia