Elephants and Illness

Ganesha Outside the Mall on Our Way to School

So India is still a crazy whirlwind, even though we have been here for over 5 weeks. It is crazy to think that 5 weeks can seem like such a short amount of time, but then again it feels like an eternity. I obviously can't deny that this trip has been, and will continue to be, an experience of a lifetime, but I still can't help but be a little excited that I will be back in good old Maine in about two months. I guess they were right when they told me "you can take the girl out of Maine, but you can't take Maine out of the girl." Well, since I haven't really updated this blog in a while, I will give you the low down on the going-ons here and also about my trip to Coorg!

Go Blue!

Alright, so besides me continuing to flip out over the GREs, and procrastinate studying regardless of how much I need and want to, school is pretty much the same. We have our first midterm on Monday, which shouldn't really be a problem because our professor gave us all the questions for the exam. I have high hopes for this semester and really wish my GPA was going to transfer over! I have also started my volunteer hours. I have to do 15 for my Service Learning class, 10 or my
Women's Issues class, and 10 for my Population and Poverty class. I am actually pretty excited about these because I picked two really neat places to volunteer at. For my Women's Issues and Service Learning classes I decided to volunteer at the recycling plant on campus. It turns out that Bangalore, although polluted beyond belief, has the best, biggest, and most efficient recycling centers in all of India! The center is right on campus and it employs eight women from the slum that is right outside of our apartment complex. What we do there is we help to make the paper (as in starting from the pulp), we press it, dry it, cut it, glue it, etc. It is really interesting and harder work than I thought. The women who work there are really nice, but don't speak a lick of English so us volunteers usually just strike up a conversation amongst ourselves and the ladies do the same. For my Population and Poverty class I decided to go into the slum and volunteer at an after school program. Here I help second thru sixth graders with their English homework. Now, I am in HEAVEN here, it is right up my alley, and I plan on doing way more than 10 hours of work here! Besides the volunteer work starting, classes are long and, well, classes.

Failed Attempt at a Titanic Pose

So onto much more exciting things, I went to Coorg last weekend and it was marvelous! Coorg is about 7 to 8 hours away from Bangalore, and so we decided to take a night bus there so we wouldn't take up time during the day to sight see. Well, that was a horrible idea because we got shoved way in the back, the bus was in really bad shape, the seats were horrid, and it took about two extra hours because the bus was apparently carting some illegal goods they had to sell or drop off or something. Well, we FINALLY got there, completely unrested, around 6:30am and headed to find a hotel nearby. Other people in our program had come along too, and by sheer coincidence we were on the same bus. We

Dream Come True!!

decided to all just stay in the same hotel, so we checked in, dumped our stuff off, and headed out for an adventure. My top priority, of course, was to ride an elephant. I told my roommates that as long as we did that, I was game for anything else. Of course, though, we were late because we went sight seeing first (the Titanic Pic fiasco), and we had to take a boat to the island where the elephants lived, so we missed bathing the elephants, HOWEVER, I did get to ride one which was amazing!!! I mean, the fact that I got to ride one was amazing, but the fact that the elephants aren't in the wild is always depressing. i tried to not let it get to me, though, because when they are not working they do live in a forest, and they only come out to work once in a while for tourism or festivals. Also the chains are to let them know that they are in work mode (the noise let's the know), so it's not like they are tying them up so they can't move, it's like putting their work hat on I suppose.

Stopping for a Quick Tree Pose

After we left the elephant camp we headed to a national park to do some "trekking," aka hiking. Lucky for me and my out-of-shape self it was actually just walking around on some trails, which was nice, although I was really full from the suer spicy curry and naan I had just wolfed down, super dehydrated, and wicked sunburned. I should have known this was a recipe for disaster later, but I pushed through anyways. We stopped once in a while for a few photo ops, some meditation, and then headed out to catch the bus back into town. Oh yes, this weekend we learned, well sort of learned, how to work the bus system. Basically you just ask every bus driver if that bus goes to where you want to go and then hop on. Easy enough, right? Yeah, except when the bus is so crowded you are literally hanging onto the outside of the bus from the doorway trying not to fall out. But anyways. We headed back into town and then I started feeling super sick. Everyone was heading to a fountain but I decided to stay in and get some sleep until later when everyone was going out. Well, turns out that super spicy curry mixed with hiking, a sunburn, no sleep, and no water makes a person very, very ill. So I stayed in the whole night sicky pants, which was NOT fun. Note to self: spicy curry is just as spicy coming out as it is going down.

Mysore Palace

Waking up the next morning was easy, mainly because there was a festival LITERALLY right outside our window. Starting at 5:30am. So needless to say the blaring Bollywood music woke me up nice. Luckily whatever had come over me was fixed with a good night's rest and some water, so we rushed to pack up and headed to Mysore, a city about three hours away. THere we split off from our friend Sandy, he wanted to go visit an old girlfriend, so me and my roomies headed to the Mysore Palace. It was beautiful and I wish we could have taken cameras inside, but no shoes or cameras were allowed! We admired it, and the many temples and shrines surrounding it, for a while, then headed inside to see the beautiful architecture. It really was spectacular, and we even got to buy little treats at the end. Beats me what they are called, but they were sugary and delicious!

Elephants at the Zoo

We then headed over to the zoo right down the road, which I have to say was one of the saddest experiences of my life. the animals enclosures were way too tiny, and most didn't have adequate water. I couldn't bear to stay at one exhibit long, although I couldn't pass up a photo op with the elephants, even though their enclosure wasn't even big enough for one. It really was a shame to see all those beautiful animals penned up like that, and I am almost positive that they were not rescued. I don't agree with that, and I didn't know what to expect when i got there, but I definitely would not recommend going there if you are an animal lover!

On the Train

Our last leg of the journey was the train ride back to Bangalore. It was under a dollar for the three hour ride (amazing, I know!), but we got there late (of course) so we didn't really have a seat the entire way. We had half a seat next to this woman so we all took turns sitting there. It was a sleeper cart, and the way it works is no one has a reserved spot, it's first come, first serve, so if you got there a little early, lucky you, you have a seat and maybe even a cushion bench to lay down on! We got to stand, but everyone on the train was really friendly and wanted to know about all the differences between India and America (most everyone here wants to know that). Merchants and food vendors kept making their way through the train, so we were never hungry which was nice, although we were awfully tired. When we finally made it to Bangalore we had to take yet another bus to the mall, then a rickshaw to our apartment. In total, however, to get to Coorg we spent 300 Rupees, which is only $6, and on the way back we only spent 200, so that's $4. In total we only spent $10 on travel, so I say that we made out pretty nice!


It was a very nice weekend, followed by a normally dull week at school. The cherry on top to this full week of school, though, is I am now plagued with illness and have to miss our program field trip to Hampi. My roommate Melissa is also really sick, we we are planning on going to Hampi another time (you should Google this place, it looks AMAZING!). Hopefully we will feel better soon and the adventures will pick up again!!

Today, my life is just Shelby.