Hey McGill!
I know that if I start ranting about India and how fantastic it is I'll forget to do this later; besides this blog, I have my own blog which I update more regularly for friends and family; usually I write about my day-to-day doings, or funny little moments. If you are interested in following me along my journey in India, feel free: http://aminasamy.wordpress.com/
So it's my tenth day in India right now; I arrive on May 23rd and started my internship on May 25th (but my TN manager forgot to pick me up first day, so technically I started May 26th, and seeing as I still don't do that much I may not have started at all!). I decided to do my internship with a local NGO here in Jaipur, that aims to improve the livelihoods of the most deprived in the community, namely women and children. Specifically, my project was on improving the health status of rural women, but actually I do jack-all. I usually do the work that no one else wants to do. I've done a whole lot of reading and editing, and more recently some report writing (I'm in charge of the annual report right now- which I think is pretty dumb. I mean who gives that job to an intern?), marketing (designed a marketing package today) and tomorrow I start some HR (I'm interviewing a bunch of candidates for a position in social work- again, why get the unpaid intern to hire you a full-paid, qualified candidate; they also failed to realize I speak no Hindi). Regardless, I am enjoying my work, but I really hope that I do get assigned more challenging projects soon, and more projects related to what I actually came her to do; get hands-on, realistic experience in the vast world of development.
Even though work isn't exactly what I expected, I am having a ball of a time in India and have had no negative experiences to speak of, as of yet. On my first hour, my TN manager propped me up behind him on his itty bitty motorcycle, without providing me with a helmet and off we went; haven't looked back since. Surprisingly, I now love motorcycle rides, and in fact I am getting lessons soon!
At the moment, I live with 12 other interns in my house (though when I got here there were just 7), and there are around 15 others in Jaipur. My housemates are remarkably awesome, and definitely some of the coolest people I have ever met. So far, we have:
2 Russians
2 Dutch
2 Americans
2 French
1 Canadian (myself excluded, even though I'm not Canadian per se)
1 Mexican
1 Malaysian
1 Australian
in my house, and in the other house we have a few British interns, Portuguese, Kyrgyzstani, Ukrainian, French, Canadian, Japanese and American interns.
It's been such a treat getting to meet all these people, and learn about them and their interests and what not. And for the most part, everyone is so great and we all get along well! We keep getting new interns weekly, and it's so exciting. I feel like I get a new puppy each time! Every weekend we expand my around 4 interns per house. The LC estimates that there will be 150 interns in July. Crazy right!
Culture Shock? Surprisingly, I haven't had that much; I feel that I was very well prepared (shout out to Kathy, Curtis, Francois and Sebastien). Definitely, I've been a whole lot more prepared than some interns. Some of the other interns here have been terribly home sick and quite miserable to be frank. Some cannot stand spicy food, or vegetarian food (which is the first thing they will tell you about Rajasthani cuisine); there are some instances when I wonder how the other interns passed review board at all!
My biggest culture shocks so far:
1) The animals. Oh my god, there are all sorts of animals EVERYWHERE. I saw a peacock on my roof the first day, on the road I see dogs, chipmunks, cats, camels, elephants, horses, donkeys and cows (OMG cows, everywhere) on a daily basis. Even at work I see mice all the time. I never really imagined such a scene!
2) Transport. Yeah the motorcycles were a little bit surprising to me (but I totally love them now); also, you never see any cabs here. It's all auto-rickshaws or motorcycles. Cars are rare.
3) Hospitality. The people here are so, so, so friendly it's unbelievable. I don't think I've ever seen people so warm and hospitable. The intern house I stay in is rented out by an extended family who live on the ground floor. This family is so warm and welcoming! They invited me to lunch on my first hour, invited me to sleep there if I wanted to. Bring snacks up all the time. The cooked dinner for all the interns, and allowed us to help! We're even invited to their sons birthday party this Thursday!
4) Work and time culture. Derek and Kathy will know this all too well. Indian time. Is like, at least 10-15 minutes later than regular time. In most cases around 1-2 hours. Luckily for me, this means I get to sleep in most mornings, and I can get to work whatever I want. Like, work usually starts at 10am (technically); I got there at 10.20 today and the NGO was locked for a good 15 minutes. Also, I find that a lot of the time I spend at work is useless, as is a lot of other people's time. We get a lot of chai breaks, and internet email breaks. And big time lags with nothing to do. Most people get lile 3-4 hours of productive work on a 7 hour work day.
That's about it for shock. What else? The really cool thing about living with so many interns is that I get a lot of opportunities to travel and have some great travel buddies. Last weekend we went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which was great. This weekend we were hoping to go to Amritsar, Punjab but I don't think that's going to happen...
I now realize that the total of my post is a bit mis-leading. I haven't really touched on that subject. Something else I realized here is as a) a girl, and b) not indian I get stared at a whole lot. Like on the plane from Muscat to Jaipur, I was the only white female on the plane, and got a whole lot of awkward stares; I don't know if it's usual, or if it's cos I stand out or what, it was really just uncomfortable (unrelated but still worth a mention, because I was non-Indian, and looked like I knew what I was doing, about 90% of the Indian labourers on that plane gave me their passports to fill out both the swine flu cards and the customs cards, which was really, really not that fun). Anyway, pretty much all foreigners and moreso female foreigners get stared at a lot here. But that has nothing to do with Indian boyfriends.
Anyway, it seems that the non-Indian girl is pretty much a novelty in the eyes of the Jaipur-y boy. A few of the interns here (ok, well 2) have managed to make "friends" on planes, trips whatever, or with their travel agents, shop owners. These friends give them all sorts of special favours like dinners, air conditioned car rides, discounts, home-stays etc. And while they aren't boyfriends per se, they sure act like it- hence the term Indian boyfriend. It is really quite the privilege for the foreign AIESEC intern to acquire one of these. So yeah. That's where the term originates from.
Ok, although I can ramble a whole lot more- I think I'm going to stop and continue next time, with more info on the local committee and AIESEC stuff I learnt from abroad :)
Namaste AIESEC McGill!
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