We're off (again!)

We leave for the temple city of Madurai tomorrow morning, where we'll visit Shri Meenakshi Temple, the Mahatma Gandhi Museum and the Thirumalai Nayak Palace. 

It's great to live in a place where students can learn about Hinduism in class during the week and then take a weekend and travel to a temple built somewhere around the 7th century. All of India is our classroom!

 We're hoping to see some more elephants this weekend, too!

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“They drove past buses that dripped people the way a sponge drips water, and arrived at a thick forest of human beings, a crowd of people sprouting in all directions like leaves on jungle trees.”

-Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Student Post: Mariah Van Wyk on Culture Shock

We've been talking a lot lately about culture shock, and how, why and when it affects people. Mariah offered to share a post compiled from a series of emails to friends and family back home. Here's her experience, written about 2 weeks ago:

Mariah gets a mehndi (henna) 'tattoo'

Almost 2 weeks in India and I have been pushed to what I thought was my “limit” more times than I can count.

Every taste, touch, and smell is another reminder that I’m not dreaming, and that this is all really happening. Although I have only been here a short time, It feels like time (or my perception of it) is determined upon all the experiences that I have been a part of, and the encounters I have had while here. So... basically it feels like I have been gone almost twice as long.  

A part of me can’t help but constantly think of how fast time flies, and before I know it, I will be on a plane back to Colorado for Christmas... but I am also beginning to see how easy it is to become attached to the people and culture here! I feel like I am starting to really enjoy it here, now that things are becoming more and more familiar each day... and I have gotten over my first wave of culture shock.  

To summarize... the first of my days here were very exciting, everything was so new and different. I was finally getting the adventure I had always wanted; and me and my enthusiasm wanted to try and experience it all. Clearly, there’s only so much that a person can absorb at one time, and sure enough... after a few days, the weight of my surroundings began to set in. The best way I can describe it is that it’s almost as if I had “traveler’s/ or tourist- tinted-glasses” on when I came here, and when I finally began to settle, the glasses came off and I was overcome with an Indian wave of culture shock. I became aware to so many things that I either hadn’t noticed before, or that I had seen, and chosen to ignore...or maybe I had seen these things before but they were just now affecting me differently? 

Either way, I couldn’t believe everything I had missed. I could go into so much more detail, but briefly some of the hardest things that I have dealt with so far have been: the pollution and smog, the heat and humidity; food-poisoning; an eardrum which still hasn't adjusted from one of my flights into India; the unconcealed staring from almost everyone, everywhere we go; the cultural difference of treatment between men and women; and the surprisingly blatant poverty found in places and times you may expect to see it, and often when you least expect it.

In Pictures: Marina Beach at Night

On our recent trip to Chennai, we were able to visit Marina Beach at night. There were all sorts of vendors, horseback rides for adults and mini carnival rides for small children. The entire beach had a carnival-like feel to it.

Lights from the vendors.

A woman selling mangos by the light of a lantern. (Mangos are delicious here!)

Puri, puffy bread, for sale.

Blurry, but fun- a woman selling corn roasted over a fire.

Vendors along the beach, all the way to the waterfront. This is some of the stretch of beach that was flooded in the 2005 tsunami.

Student Post: Sarah McDowell on Knowing God in an Indian Context

Student Sarah McDowell led ISP devos for us last week, and her topic was particularly relevant at a time when we're hitting a low point in our journey through culture shock. She reminds us to look to God for all that we need, trusting that He will provide us with things that are good. Enjoy!

If only it were this easy to find Jesus! {Click to see larger}

The first verse to look at is 2^nd Peter 1:3

“As we know Jesus better, his divine power gives us everything we need for living a Godly life. He has called us to receive His own glory and goodness.”

This means that we have everything that matters in our lives through Christ, and that should reflect in us through our attitudes. This specifically means that we have everything that is good spiritually. Christ will not equip us to do things that will pull us further from God, as He wants us to become more Godly, spiritual people. This also reflects into a different verse, in Colossians 2:10

“God gives us everything that we will ever need in Christ, we are complete in Him.”

This shows us that God has completed us and we are complete only in and through Him, and any other methods of attempting to find completeness in life will ultimately fail. In our discussion this week we talked specifically about the ways that some of us may use travel, relationships, or “seeing the world” to fulfill the completeness of ourselves. And though none of these things are bad, and all are fulfilling pursuits, they need to be endeavored with the understanding that they will not complete us, and we need to venture into them with the attitude of being subservient to Christ above all.

The objective, then, of realizing that we have all that we need in order to live a Godly life, is to become Godly people, in order to glorify the father. This reflects into the 5^th verse of 2^nd Peter, which (in a nutshell) says that if we attain Godly lives, we will then be on the path to moral excellence, which will lead to knowing God better, which leads to self control, which leads to patient endurance, which leads to Godliness, which leads to love for others, which finally leads to a genuine love for all people. As this is the second greatest commandment, after love the Lord your God with all your heart, this should therefore be one of our greatest aspirations in life.

2^nd Peter 1:4a says

“And by that same mighty power, He has given all of His rich and wonderful promises”

This means that “the gift” is God’s promise to be with us and to be a part of us, and that this promise exceeds any hardship that we will ever endure. And through the knowing of God we can gain knowledge of and access to His promise.

2^nd Peter 1:4b says

“He has promised that you will escape the decadence all around you caused by evil desires and that you will share in His divine nature.”

This is the verse that initially stood out to me as I researched this devotion, and it struck me because of the term “decadence,” which is something that we are learning to live without as we settle into our homes in India. This means that the escape is something pivotal in our lives, and it is something that we aspire to through the knowledge of Christ. This escape is something that became effective the moment that we believed in our savior, and nothing binds us to the Earth (and that which we aspire to escape from) except ourselves and our sinful nature.

Some other translations of the same verse translate “decadence” to “the corruption of this world,” which is further translated in other ways to being the “decomposition or rotting of an organism’s internal self.” This means that if we fail to detach ourselves from the reliance on the world (and thus not on God) we are condemning ourselves to a life away from Him.

As students of the ISP program we are learning to live in a new environment, and one that is so vastly different from the lives that we are used to at home. At the beginning of our meeting this week we all sat down and discussed things that we missed. Everyone wrote down a few significant things, like loved ones, familiar cities, or my cat Confucius, and we all wrote down several insignificant things, like good (American) coffee, water pressure, lack of cockroaches, and soft beds. So at the end of our discussion we were able to relate the “escape from decadence” to learning to embrace and appreciate the things that we so frequently miss from home. In this way we can hope to not only embrace our lives in India, but we can learn to love living with less, and we can use that experience to know God better.

- Sarah McDowell

Student Post: How to Kill a Cockroach by Brooklyn Walker

We're off traveling to the Elephant and Tiger Reserve at Mudumalai the next two days, but in the meantime, enjoy a little bit of student life here in Coimbatore!

Supplies:
1 fry pan
Toilet Paper
3+ people

Steps:

1. Scream
This ensures that people will come running so you won’t have to kill it yourself.

2. Smash it with a frying pan
The long handle works well for keeping distance.


3. Clean up the smashed cockroach with toilet paper
Paper towels are not commonly used here. But I guess toilet paper isn’t either.



4. Wash pan
Bug guts are not good fried.

I am really good at #1 and occasionally I do #4.

Another Recipe from Cooking Class

bhaturas/ bhaturey, fried punjabi bread

2c all purpose flour

¾ c plain yogurt

½ tsp baking soda

1 tbs sugar

veg oil or ghee for frying

salt to taste

mix flour, baking powder and salt. sift.

mix yogurt and sugar. add to flour and slowly add lukewarm water until you have a dough that sticks to itself, but nothing else. knead into soft dough.

cover dough in wet cloth and set aside to rise about 3-4 hours in warm place.

divide into 12 equal portions and roll into balls. set aside for 5 min covered.

grease palms with oil and flatten the balls. roll into 5-6 inch diameter.

heat oil in kadai and deep fry on high flame, turning until done.