Somehow, it's already been an entire month since I've been home from India and I guess I'm still not over it. Taking a class on Hinduism isn't helping my case too much, because all I do is sit there, listen to my professor lecture, and think about India.

Here's a video we made on the way to Sarnath, a sacred Buddhist pilgrimage destination outside of Varanasi, India. In this video you can get the real essence of what big cities in India are like: loud, hot, and crowded! There's a saying that in India, drivers use their horn more than their brakes. The biggest shock a month ago when I was driving home from the airport in Boston was how quiet the roads were! You can also hear in my voice how sick I was (I was really sick for the first week that we were in India, after our crazy bus ride from the border). Above all though, this video really illustrates the colors, sights, and sounds of India. I miss it so much!

Why I can't stop talking about India....

"There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won't go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds... I had been seeing the world in black & white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor."--Keith Bellows, National Geographic Society

The Camel Safari

A month ago I was in Jaisalmer getting ready to begin my day and a half long camel safari through the Thar Desert. I found this video on YouTube that shows EXACTLY what my trek was like. It's a little bit long, but worth watching because it's so hard to describe to people what it was like, and it literally changed my life. Not a day goes by where I don't think about riding in the sand dunes on the back of a camel, or sleeping under that amazing night sky full of shooting stars.
Actually I wasn't sleeping because the bugs really WERE that big, our camel fur blanket was EXTREMELY itchy, I kept getting sand in my mouth, and I was terrified of the snakes. But it was AMAZING.

Mt. Holyoke vs. Uni Freiburg

Vs.
I thought maybe I should say a few words about being back at Mt Holyoke, since I've been away for so long. I also want talk a little bit about the differences between going to school here and going to school in Germany.

Going to Freiburg was definitely the best thing I ever did. Back in the fall before I left for Germany, I was pretty miserable here and I needed to get away for a while. When I returned to campus a week ago yesterday, I couldn't stop smiling. Even the door in the campus center that has had the same squeak for the past 4 years made me smile. For the first time, returning to Mt. Holyoke felt like I was returning home.

I have a large single in a beautiful old dorm with a dining hall, but it's kind of a downgrade from living in an apartment in Germany where I shared the bathroom with 3 other girls instead of 20+. I definitely am glad to have a dining hall again because I don't have to worry about my lack of cooking skills, although I do miss having a kitchen and being able to eat when I wanted. The internet is sooo much better here, even if we have to share it with everyone at UMass (in Germany our internet would randomly shut off all the time, I got shut down every night at 11:23pm, no idea why). I have a lot of "stuff" here: my rug, my TV, my fridge, tons of clothes, a printer, etc. It's nice to be able to live so comfortably, but I also now know that I can live on next to nothing: in Germany I brought just 1 suitcase with me and in India I only had a backpack!

I like Mt. Holyoke because I'm back to being Liz, and not 2817676 like I was at Uni Freiburg. There is much more of a campus/community feel since everyone lives here. The bureaucracy is not nearly as annoying, and even when it is, it's in English so I feel like I can deal with it. It's weird because in Germany all the students were older than me and I felt really young. Here, now that I'm a senior, everyone seems really young to me. There, I lived in an apartment and commuted to class by tram and it made me feel like an adult. Being here kind of feels like I'm going backward because I live in a dorm and I'm told when I have to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

A few things have struck me as strange. First of all, American students (especially at an all women's college) don't care about how they look when they go to class, and it was kind of shocking to see people showing up in pajamas because that would never happen in Germany because students see going to university as a job and dress up for class. When class ended in Germany, everyone knocked on the desks to show appreciation for the professor's lecture. That doesn't happen here and I think it's kind of sad that no one acknowledges the class, and getting up and just leaving feels a little awkward. I'm not sure about this all girls thing either. I hung out with mostly guys in Germany and it was a lot funnier and there was a lot less drama. I don't like actually having to do homework now.

All in all, it's nice to be back though. I kind of feel like I never left.

First Drama of the Year

Two things you have to know about Mt. Holyoke are 1.) it's a women's college and 2.) we are literally in the middle of nowhere in Western MA. Because of this, there is always ridiculous drama that gets the entire school up in a tizzy for a few days until the next big issue comes around. Yesterday was the first big drama of the year.

Another thing you have to know about Mt. Holyoke is that we are serious about Sunday Brunch. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to the four dining halls that open up on Sunday mornings with different but equally delicious brunch choices. People look forward to it all week and when the doors open, there are long lines, packed tables, and of course, random boys thrown in here and there.

Yesterday we showed up to brunch like we usually do, just a few minutes after it opens at 11:00. When we got there, we discovered there was a huge line, but the dining hall wasn't open. Some girl waiting informed us that brunch doesn't start now until 11:30 because Mt. Holyoke needs to cut costs so they're making meal times shorter. How ridiculous is that? No one told us about it and even in the first years' orientation booklet it said that brunch starts at 11am. You can imagine the outrage as more and more hungry women entered the dorm to find the dining hall was not open. I'm sure this is going to become a bigger issue in the coming weeks. Ahhh it's great to be back.

Gone Too Long?

Today I got up early and went to Staples, because I needed new ink for my printer. When I got there, I discovered that it had become Circuit City. I figured that was ok because they probably still sell ink. Then I got even closer and discovered that all the Circuit City signs were covered over with those Halloween costume shop signs. I had forgotten that Circuit City went out of business, and how does a place change three times since December?

I Convocated!

The class of 2010 at Mt. Holyoke is the class of the Red Pegasus, and yesterday was our convocation before the first day of classes! We met as a class in the morning for a special senior breakfast, and then lined up and marched into the ampitheatre in our graduation gowns all decked out in red. The speeches were inspirational, and the entire event was posted on Twitter as it was happening! Afterward, the school gathered on Skinner Green for a class picnic. It's hard to believe that just 4 years ago as a confused first year I watched the yellow senior class come into the ampitheatre screaming just as loud as we were yesterday. Back then, I had no idea what I was in for.

The Taj Mahal

These past 6 months I've been to a bunch of famous landmarks all over the world: the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the remains of the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, Kathmandu's Durbar Square etc, but nothing was quite as amazing as the Taj Mahal. Walking in was totally breathtaking.
It was built in 1632 by Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, after she died giving birth to their fourteenth child. It took 20 years to complete, and soon after it was finished, the emperor's son put him under house arrest in Agra Fort, which was across the river.
I try to (unintelligently) explain all of this in the following video:



It costs $.50 for Indians to get into the Taj and $17 for non-Indians. We went twice because the first time we took so many pictures that it closed before we actually got inside the mausoleum. In order to protect the monument, only cars with electric motors are allowed within a certain distance of the Taj Mahal all the way around. This is good because it will allow it to be preserved for generations to come, but bad because then you have to walk, and the touts in Agra are out of control. Every time we got anywhere near the Taj Mahal, we would be surrounded 360 degrees with guys trying to get us to buy Taj Mahal snowglobes, magnets, keychains, Heena sets, postcards, and trying to get us to go into their shop. One kid would somehow FIND us every time we were anywhere in the area and beg us to come see his shop. He even asked us to go to the movies with him and his girlfriend! Haha!

Later, we went to Agra Fort, where the Emperor was put under house arrest. This was the hottest day the entire time we were in India. I think it must have been about 120 degrees. We could barely move.

The Last Freiburg Pictures

Courtesy of Mr. Mitchell Holthaus, here are the last two pictures of all of us together at the Freiburg Hauptbahnhof at 5am, before Mitch left. Mitch said he never thought he would have girls crying so much over him!

Great Things About America!

Here's some stuff I've missed while I've been gone:

• Self checkout line at the grocery store
• Stores being open past 8:00pm, and the selection!
  
• Being able to pay anywhere with credit card!
  
• Free water everywhere (water fountains, water coolers, tap water, water in restaurants). Free condiments. Free refills. Not having to pay to go to the bathroom. Free samples.
• Baggers at grocery stores. No more panic as you try to bag as fast as your cashier rings you up.
• A nice shower (minus the second floor of North Rockefeller Hall at Mt. Holyoke College, apparently)
  
• Everything is open on Sunday
  

Here's some stuff I still don't get:

• People look at you funny when you try to pay in exact change, and you never use coins
  
• Sales tax that isn't included until after you're rung up.
  
• People smile a lot and seem kind of fake. In Germany I learned not to say stuff unless I meant it, and smiling at random people is weird.
  
• Salespeople greeting you in stores and bothering you asking if you need help. Leave me alone!
• Random people make small talk with you everywhere you go
• Everything is open on Sunday
  

I miss riding trams, and using my purse/backpack as a bag while I was shopping around in stores, and ordering ice cream by the scoop, and the feeling of accomplishment after walking to the grocery store and carrying everything home in one bag, and meeting the boys at the tram stop to run into town, and cheap food prices, and classes once a week with no homework, and spontaneous trips to Switzerland, and lazy Sundays hanging out by the lake outside my dorm, and the guy who announces all the tram stops, and the farmer's market, and dinner parties, and basically EVERYTHING.