Goodbye, USA

I have decided to start a blog because I cannot imagine sending mass emails for the next year, and it is always awkward for me to come up with a list of email addresses when I am never sure who actually wants to read about me. So here it is! I hope I update this regularly, but no promises. Many of my blogger friends abroad have abandoned their readers – it’s hard to find the time, patience, and creativity. I have named it “Something Sustainable” because I couldn’t come up with anything better, and sustainability is supposed to be the theme of my internship in Udaipur.

The above photograph is of the lake in the city center of Udaipur. You can see the white Lake Palace in the center. Udaipur is supposed to be a beautiful, romantic, colorful city in the desert state of Rajasthan, which is located in the northwest of India near the Pakistani border. Udaipur’s population is around 400,000.

I leave tomorrow morning (Thursday, February 7), arrive in Delhi on Friday evening, and fly to Udaipur the next day on February 9. By Saturday afternoon I will be having afternoon tea in a hotel in Udaipur.

Send me your address and I can promise one postcard before Christmas!


Unknowns

I’m not sure why I get nervous just before I leave on a big trip abroad, but it happens every time. Right when I start packing and in the last few days before my scheduled flight, I get a knot in my stomach and a tightness in my chest, no matter how excited I may be for the upcoming trip. My friend Erin says it’s a sign I’m a normal human being. This is true.

Luckily I have traveled before, and I know I can deal with the two days of flying to get there, health issues, and figuring out the bus/train system between cities. I think mostly what makes my stomach flutter is the long list of unknowns I will face in my year in India.

These are some examples of the looming questions I have been contemplating over the last few weeks:

What will it be like to go to the bathroom in India? (Will there be a squat toilet at my home? At work? On the road?)
What will I wear everyday for the next six months?
Who will my friends be? (Locals? Coworkers? Other FSD interns?)
When will I come back?
What will it be like to shower in India?
After my internship, will I travel and come home, or will I find a job and stay in India for another year?
What language(s) will I be speaking?
What does Udaipur sound like?
What does Udaipur smell like?
Will I get along with my host family?

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to treasure my time with the following habits and luxuries that I know I will miss:

My cell phone. My friends and family are but a speed-dial away.
Drinking water from the tap. And clean water fountains everywhere! Fabulous.
Toilets.
Carpeting.
My favorite jeans and Duke hoodie, which will not be making the trip with me.
Being surrounded by photographs of friends and family and everyone I love.
Project Runway on Bravo TV.
Wine and cheese before dinner. California has spoiled me.
Singing out loud in the car.


A Note on Bravery

After telling so many people about my plans to move to India for 2008, I’ve become accustomed to the expected gasp of shock and worried words of caution (“Alone, as a woman?! Oh but that’s so dangerous, you’ll travel with someone else, won’t you?” or “There are so many diseases there! Have you been vaccinated?”). Some people even add, “Oh you’re so brave,” to which I am never sure how to respond. I usually just giggle and say “or I’m just confused.”

But in fact, I do have a lot of worries about going so far for so long. I worry that I will become homesick, that I will miss out on family gatherings and not be a part of my brothers’ lives as they are growing up, or that I will drift away from the friendships I value so much. I also worry that despite all precautions and safety lectures, I will simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time and find myself in an undesirable situation.

However, the more I travel and live in different places, the more I am convinced that it is my parents’ bravery, and not my own, which has led me to have so many enriching experiences. I think it takes as much (if not more) courage for them to stay at home and allow their daughter to go to such remote and bazaar places as it does for me to get on the plane. Often in the past, I have been out of contact for weeks at a time, far from the reach of telephone, internet, snail mail, or even roads. But not only do my parents allow me to go, they actively encourage it and support my endeavors, which no doubt contributes to my own confidence as I leave home. So many people ask me what my parents think of “all this,” and though I know they are worried and scared for me, but they would never let me know it, lest it discourage me from pursuing something I want so badly.

Coming from Kentucky, I see so many protective parents keeping their children suffocatingly close to home -- by encouraging them to attend in-state universities or discouraging them from taking jobs in big cities because the cost of living is more expensive. Sometimes other adults ask my Mom and Dad, “Aren’t you worried about your children being so far away?” as if to imply they should keep their children safe at home in Kentucky, or that they just don’t care enough about us. But thankfully, my parents are brave enough to care about my happiness more than anyone. That is why they sent me to a public middle school in the Louisville ghetto – because it was where I would get the best education, even if the playground was dangerous. That is why they let one of my brothers go to college in Portland, Oregon, and my other brother study abroad in Cairo, Egypt. And that is why they grit their teeth and smile when I announce I am buying a one-way ticket to India, and let me go on whatever self-indulgent adventures I come up with. I owe it to their bravery, not mine, that I am able to do it.