The driver looked back at me sitting in the back seat and said something I didn’t understand in Marathi. “What?” I asked him confused. He gestured to the brake handles as we continued gaining speed down the hill. Oh, crap. His brakes are broken. He pulled over to the side of the road, slowly rolling … Continue reading
A couple nights ago, Emelia and I got into a rickshaw to travel back home for the evening. The driver asked for a flat rate probably twice what we would have paid if he had agreed to use the meter, and we begrudgingly got into the auto. Little did we know, we had just picked … Continue reading
One of the greatest things about traveling and living in a new place is its ability to take your breath away with an unfamiliar beauty. When I first arrive somewhere new, I have a tendency to see the world through rose-colored glasses. The sky seems bluer, the water clearer, the people more fascinating. And then … Continue reading
I’m pretty sure it’s a sin and I’m fairly embarrassed to admit it, but before I came to India I had never seen a Bollywood movie. The closest I’d come is the final dance number in Slumdog Millionaire and somehow I don’t really think that qualifies. So when our program planned an outing for us … Continue reading
“We’ll be having a guest for dinner tomorrow night,” Baba told us last week. “He’s a very famous international consultant and will be staying with us because he has a speech in Pune tomorrow.” Baba didn’t tell us too much beyond that, just that this consultant had met Barack Obama, he would be coming the … Continue reading
One of the things I am always most nervous about when I travel is if I’ll be able to find gluten-free food and whether or not people will understand me when I ask for it. Going to India has been no different. During our first week at the hotel I had a pretty difficult time … Continue reading
Since the article was published on CNN.com a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been asked this question a dozen times. It seems like everyone in Pune has read it and I watched as the article spread like wildfire across my social media sites last week when I had internet access. In the article, a girl … Continue reading
Last Wednesday night most of the members of our group waited anxiously outside the entrance to Hotel Raviraj to meet their host parents. We will call them aai (mom) and baba (dad) for the rest of the program. Although I wouldn’t meet my host family until Friday, I joined the other students on the steps … Continue reading
Before our trip to the caves this past week, Kelsey (our student ambassador) took a few minutes to talk to us about visiting our first truly “touristy” site. “You will get stared at,” she told us bluntly. “And people may want to take pictures with you.” She explained that it was up to each of … Continue reading
The woman knelt down at the entrance to the temple. At exactly the point where the concrete pattern changed, she took to her knees in her beautiful green silk sari. She pressed her palms together in front of her chest and closed her eyes in a moment of intense inward focus and then she began … Continue reading
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