hello people,

well, after two months of dreaming about the day, I am back home in worthington minnesota sitting on the front porch listening to the birds chirp, and the utter quitness that is rural minnesota.

here is a book end to the last couple days of travel:

I took the night train from sivikasi to chennai, and I slept right next to the window of the train, watching my last bits of india past by in the moonlight.  After the train, I checked into a hotel and wen't to Chennai's museum of natural history.  I followed the advice from a sri lanken on the train ride.  The museum was literally the scariest museum I have ever been in.  Most of the displays there had been there since the british left, and there was no one else in the museum.  I swear I heard breathing in an empty room by myself.  But, the museum was terrifically Indian.  They had a "contemporary art" building which consisted of a floor with displays showing different indian businesses, and a top floor of really interesting art.  I came back to the hotel, and left in a taxi to the airport.  The taxi driver got into an argument with one of the staff of the hotel that turned into a yelling match that lasted for ten minutes, and continued into the taxi ride to the airport.  Which was really impresive.  I don't think I have ever seen anyone, yell at someone on the cellphone, shifting gears, making hand gestures, all while driving through traffic in chennai.  The two indian airports I was in, Chennai and New Dehli, kind of acted like an "acclimazation" time for me.  The India I saw in the airport was completely different than the India i saw in rajapalayam.  In the New Dehli airport, I saw a group of about twenty american students arrive, and I was so excited and curious to see so many white people at once in India.  I was literally gigling to myself.  By the way, the new dehli airport is one of the most confusing airports I have ever been in.  They have two airports, Domestic and International.  Which are about half an hour away from each other, via bus.  And I accidently took an extra hour and a half to see the domestic terminal, when I should have stayed in the international.  It was really weird arriving in Chicago and hearing loads of american accents.  After I cleared the customs I took a plane filled with american businessmen from Chicago to Minneapolis.  When I got off the plane in Minneapolis, I thought I recognized everyone I saw.  Just because I haven't seen white people in so long, they did kind of start to look all the same.  I ate brunch in a beutifully typical american dinner.  I had two plate size pancakes, italian sausage, eggs, and two big cups of coffee.  Oh yeah america. 

It was painful to leave India.  On the overnight train to chennai, watching the palm trees, bushes, and houses past by in the moonlight, I realized that I really did not want to leave India.  I think two months is just enough time to be able to operate in a different culture, to not be intimidated, and to start stretching your limbs.  So, it is hard to be pulled away from that.  Needless to say, I miss India.  It has helped me to come america realizing that this does not mean the end of my traveling, just another leg of my travels.

The last three days traveling have been spent soaked in self analyzation and examining and re-examing the last two months in India.  To really talk about my trip in India, I would prefer to do it with you in person.  But here are some of the re-occuring thoughts.

When I think about I enjoyed and didn't enjoy about India there are definetly some trends.  For certain I feel like I learned the most during India during the two weeks I spent at the orphanage.  When I look back at that time, it is probably seen in a tinted light of "the good ol' days."  But, I feel like I learned so much about who I was, and what I wanted out of life.  Everything that I learned there was only reinforced during the next month.  The biggest lesson I learned from the orphanage was I dont want to live my life for myself.  I realized that moments where I am the most nervous, scared, anxious, and angry are the moments where I am trying to work things to benefit me.  It is a really broad, encompassing statement that really requires allot of time, effort, places, exploring, and energy to know what it means, but "I wan't to pour out my life to others, and be filled with Christ."  I really have no idea how to accomplish that back here at home, but it was really clear how to do that at the orphanage.  I think that is what I enjoyed so much about the orphanage, is that it was so easy to confront the issues of service, and self preservation, because the needs of the children were so basic.  Here, back home, everything becomes more complicated, it requires a changing of gears.

As far as the orignal intent of my trip, to find out if I want to be a doctor or not, I guess the trip sort of served its purpose.  I know that I want to care for people, and I found out that I really enjoyed the knowledge of medicine. Sitting in the doctors office and having him explain to me the pathology of a disease, the cause, the treatment and how it works was really fascinating.  However, I have no idea how I want caring to manifest itself.  I do know that I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing general outpatient, dealing with diabetes, hypertension, arthritus, bronchitus.  Just perscribing medicine to take care of the problem, and seeing the next case.  I want to touch people, put myself at their feet, and heal them.  Whether that looks like a doctor, surgeon, nurse, physcian's assistant, or janitor, I don't know.  These last two months have indeed fleshed out what I thought to be true before I came here; the only thing that matters in life is abandoning myself to God.  I have no idea how I do this on a tuesday morning sitting on the front porch of my house listening to the birds and The Strokes.  I don't know, and thats ok.

Thanks for reading and praying for me.  And I hope to talk with you all soon.

you can stop reading now.

-dan

hello from the other side of the world!

I just got done reading about others peoples summers in America, and moldova (you go anna!) and I am kind of jealous because all of your summers sound so great and interesting.

ok, so let me begin by saying that the last week has been crazy.  so many cities, in so little time.  That accompanied by the small voice in the back of my head saying, "this is your last time in India."  I think leaving this country is going to be harder than I thought.  There are so many fantastic things about here that I have gotten used to, and there is still so much about the culture that confuses me.  I am really glad I stayed for two months, but I feel like two months is a good amount of time to allow you to get used to the culture and start making connections and to start living life like an indian.  So needless to say, I feel like I am leaving my trip early.

So, I have about ten pages written in my journal about the last week, but I will try to sum it up for you here shortly.  In about a week I should have pictures posted on Facebook, which would be the best way to explain how my trip has been, but here we go.

After Pondicherry, where we ate french cuisine and King Fischer, we took a two hour bus to mamalapuram.  On the bus ride there, there was an argument with some indians on the bus, that ended by one man and two women stepping off the bus in the middle of nowhere.  When we asked what happend one Indian just replied, "brothel."

In mamallapurm we first visited this park filled with ancient rock carvings and temples.  It was really amazing, all of it was.  It was also amazing because it had grass, wow!  After that we went to the beach and talked with this middle aged israile computer engineer turned vagabond/artist.  It was really funny, but kind of sad.  He had been traveling for about two years or so, and it made me realize that no matter how fun and enlightening traveling is, it is all kind of useless if you can't bring it back home.  or at least have a home in some country.

In the morning we had a pancake at this weird psuedo western/Indian resturaunt.  Basically, all of mamallapuram was like that, it is a really big tourist town so there are allot of stores that cater to westeners but at the same time there is a completely distictive indian feel, and the rest of the town is just like any other in india.  After breakfast we saw two more historic, ancient, amazing stone carvings.  I can't really describe them, but needless to say they reminded me of Indian Jones, "Temple of Doom."

After that we went to the beach for a little bit, not for that long because it smelt like dead fish wrapped in curry.  not a good smell.  But it was my last time swimming in the bay of bengal, so it was still a little sentamental.  Oh, by the way, it was the hottest city I have ever been.  I was sweating just laying down.  And the shower in our homestay didn't work.  awesome!

We took a bus to kallpakkum, which apparantly has a nuclear power plant.  So the whole town was suprisingly really nice and really small.  It felt like we stumbled on this secret community whith loads of money.  it was great.  From there we took a nine hour bus ride to bangalore.  Needless to say, this was not the best part of our trip.  Sweaty back, bruised knees, sore back, even sorer butt.  good times.

From bangalore we took a two hour bus to mysore.  When we arrived in mysore we took a rickshaw to a youth hostel, but our rickshaw driver told us he could get a hotel in the city for cheaper.  So, we took his word on it, and he did.  The only thing was, he was kind of a total creep, and treated us like stupid foriegners.  So when he asked us what we wanted to pay him for the rickshaw, we ripped him off.  It felt good to rip an Indian off, even though, he probably ripped us off.  That day we saw the Mahrajas palace ( really fricken awesome, again, wait for pictures) it is a mix between indian, muslim, and european architecture.  And we say an incencse rolling factory and a beedi factory.  Beedi is like the homegrown indian cigarette.  So one of the workers allowed me to roll my own cig and smoke it.  good times.  The guy who showed us around to the incencse, beedi, and silk stores was again probably ripping us off.  After that we climbed up 1000 steps to this temple at a hill that overlooks the city.  only to find the temple closed.  Which was ok because the view was amazing and I got a bracelet tied on by an Indian priest.  Hinduism is something that I completely dont understand.  That night we ate at a pizza corner, and had distictly indian western pizza.  it was tasty, tasty, tasty.

The next day we went to a railway museum, then an art gallery, and randomly saw a student conert.  There were about ten muscians on stage playing sweet indian music, and about 500 people watching.  it was awesomely random, and it sounded great.  Then we went to a market that this boy took us two, which turned out to be completely not the market he said he was taking us too.  He wanted to show us people rolling incense, beedi, and silk.  When we told him that we had seen all of that he then offered us drugs.  That happend about three times in mysore. when we got to Devaraja market, our goal market, we walked around took pictures and bought these amazing oils.  it was so good.  Then afterwords, we randomly saw another projects abroad volunteer who has been traveling for a month in the north.  Ed is meeting up with her like now, to do some more traveling on the west coast.  after lunch together, we went back to the market and bought more oils.  It was a moment where i was like, yeah i am in india.  Sitting in this dirty shop smelling these amazing oils that literally encompuss your whole thought when you smell them, and watching the market go by.

After that we took a 4 hour bus to Ooty.  Ooty is an old hill station that the british used, and it is the rainy season.  so it was fricken freezing up there.  and raining.  but it was still my favorite place we visited.  We stayed at a YWCA youth hostel, that was really nice.  We had tomato soup.  that sounds very unimpressive, but to be cold, and to eat hot tomato soup after spending two months constantly sweating, it was magic.  The next morning we woke up to do a hike with a guide.  We started the hike at it was like we were in scotland.  it was so weird, because here we are in the Ghats in india, but with the cool rainy wheather and the rolling green hills, it felt allot like scotland.  only everyone was wearing saris.  We then walked through a tea plantation, saw amazing views at every turn, ate lunch in a small mountain village, walked through some more fields, got to the top of a mountain that overlooked the valley below, and came back to the village and got a bus back to ooty.  You really need to see pictures, I can't describe it to you.  That night we watched criket, chatted with some french tourists, ate more tomato soup, and slept under thick wool blankets.

In the morning we went to an ayuverdic massage.  the most luxurious thing I have ever done.  You go in this room and this man hands you a skinny piece of cloth with two strings attatched to it and says, "do you know how to wear this?"  My first thought was that it looked like a blind fold.  But then he did a U shaped motion with his finger, and I figured out that this was not something to cover my eyes.  After putting on the prehistoric speedo/thong.  You sit in a chair and he massages your head and neck.  I was like, "so why did I need to put on a speedo when all you do is rub my head?"  After that I laid on my belly on a table, where he proceeded to take of the tunic.  Then he rubbed oil all over my arms, back, neck, legs, feet, and cheeks.  oh yeah.  he flipped me over and did the same thing.  It was a little bit awkward, but afterwords, my body felt soft, supple, and relaxed. 

After that we took a 3 hour steam train ride down from ooty into the valley.  The steam train was beutifully stereotypical, and so was the jungle.  Apparantly this train journey is one of the best in all of India.  I whole heartedly agree.  three hours of valleys and misty mountains. 

after that me and ed parted ways and I spent the next ten hours getting back to rajapalayam via trains.  whew.  thats it for now, I won't bore you with more details, this is already a long post.

Final thoughts while in india.  holy cow. So much of me doesn't want to leave, but so much of me wants to start putting to practice what I have been taught here.  The best and hardest part about traveling for so long is returning home.  see you soon.

Hello all,

not really much to update you on, but thats why I started a blog, to talk about nothing.  The past couple days in rajapalayam have been good.  Just plain and simple going to placement, sleeping away the afternoon, gorging myself with food, and sleeping.  It has been nice to have a renewed sense of pattern in my life.  But all of that is going to be shattered tomorow.  Me and another volunteer Ed, are going traveling for a week.  Our itinarary, just in case you want to meet up with us, is Ponducherry, Bangalore, Mysore, and Ooty.  Needless to say I am really excited.  There is something about moving, traveling, that gets me excited and allows me to reflect.  But I will be sad to go.  Today was my second to last day at placement.  And I realized how familar I had become to the hospital, and the doctor.  I think leaving will be harder than I thought, the past couple of days have been filled with sentamentality.  It seems like I have been here for just two weeks, but now I am double checking my flights to leave.  It is weird, I guess its a testament to how fast, but slow, time moves for all of us.  I dont really want to do any serious reflection on what I have learned so far these past two months, because I dont really have the time.  I know that the minute I start, i will be rambling here for the next two hours.  I dont know how often I will be able to use the internet while I am traveling, we will be rushed in each city that we are in.  but i will be sure to update you when I get back, via photos, but hopefully a good conversation.  So, cheers for now, and happy trails.