Homestay & Gonpati

Namaskar!

The three days have been absolutely overwhelming (in a good way)! On Friday, we visited Sihagad (or something) fort, about 30 km from Pune. It was probably THE most beautiful place I've ever been, and Anju, one of the women who works for ACM and knows basically everything, told us that there are other forts and such even more beautiful. The 'fort' was miles and miles of stone ruins, built in the 14th century high in the mountains above Pune and eventually conquored by the Mughals. I was going to do a blog post featuring pictures from this trip, but the internet takes forever to upload pictures on blogspot, so instead those are the pictures I just loaded on facebook. Be sure to check them out!

Yesterday, I met and moved in with my host family! I was very shy at first, not knowing what to say, but after only a few hours I started feeling more at home. My Ahi (mother)'s name is Meghana, which is pretty much exactly what every Indian kid calls me here. They say they don't understand my name, so they say it just like hers. She has two daughters, Mahika who is 8 and Shrushti who is 5. Her husband is away in Saudi Arabia, so for now it is just the three of them, and now me. They have a wonderful flat about 20 mins by rickshaw from ACM.

At first, I was very overwhelmed. The girls know English but were shy with me yesterday, so they spoke only Marathi to their mother, who translated to me in English. She is such a nice lady and wonderfully accomodating. She knows I'm interested in food, so she tells me all sorts of things about what she's cooking and what the ingredients are in everything. My sisters quickly warmed to me when they realized I was willing to play tag and give them piggy-back rides. I ran around with them and their friends for more than an hour yesterday afternoon, and the effect with the heat was incredibly tiring. Soon though, Mahika, Shrushti and I were fast friends and now all they want to do is play Go Fish and Uno with me, or translate cartoons. Yesterday Mahika and I watched Tom and Jerry on Cartoon Network for more than an hour, and it was nice to watch something we both understood for a change! The girls like to watch a lot of Nickelodeon, which istead of showing Nick shows from home, seems to show imported Japanese TV shows for kids. TV is incredibly interesting, you can switch from one language to another since there are so many dialects here. English is an audio output option, but it just seems to make them speak Marathi.

I think that living here will help me learn Marathi very quickly. I think my accent on what little I know is already getting better, since the girls giggle at my feeble attempts to pronounce things like them. They also speak rapid Marathi with their mother, and I think I will have to learn quickly so I can actually participate in the family dialogue.

Today was the start of Gonpati, a Hindu holiday. Ganesh is the Hindu god that removes obstacles, and he is the patron saint of both students and Pune (you have probably seen a picture of him--he has the head of an elephant and rides on a rat). Gonpati is another name for him, and the name of the festival held in his honor. Hindus from all over India come to Maharasthra to enjoy Gonpati, because it is celebrated most heavily here. It is a 10-day festival where all the streets are decorated and special foods are eaten. Boys and men play huuge drums in the streets and people parade and move through the streets with camels and Ganesh idols. Apparently the party this year is seriously tuned down because of swine flu, which is a shame because the festival decorations are very beautiful.

For lunch, we visited my ahi's ahi and baba, so Mahika and Shrushti's grandparents. They were wonderfully accomidating and welcomed me into their home like one of their own children. They cooked for me and taught me how to eat everything, including one of the favorite foods that Hindus eat only during Gonpati. It is apprently Ganesh's favorite food. There is a dough made out of rice I believe, and it is folded up into a rounded dumpling shape and holds coconut and sugar inside. Ahi and Adji (grandmother) encourage me to try absolutely everything, giving me tastes of spices and sugars in the kitchen. I am absolutley a five-year-old again, and have the eating skills of one. Learning to eat properly with one's hands is proving difficult, so I have to be taught, not unlike Shrusti. The girls give me a taste of every cookie and sweet. It is wonderful to have Indians teaching me these things, and not minding that I'm making a fool of myself. They teach me the Marathi and English names for everything they cook, and make sure I like and enjoy everything.

I need to go now, I don't want to use Ahi's internet for too long, but I will be working on finding a cyber cafe somewhere near my new home so that I can plug in my laptop and upload more pictures as I take them.