It is kind of hard to believe (even after sitting on a plane for 15 plus hours) that I am actually half way around the world from my loved ones and my life…well I guess that my life is now here…in India! For the next 3 weeks at least. Getting here was quite the adventure.
(have I quoted this before? I may have but I think it is quite brilliant:
Adventure is a word that optimistic people use to explain a hellish experience!
Haha! Love love!)
They were very small degrees of hell mind you!
First! I must tell you about my lovely Saturday!
I slept in! =) and then I got up and did this and that not being too overly productive, but began to gather my things and check my email and such.
Then Aunt Marsha called me. Now this is actually my dads aunt…so would that make her my great aunt?...well…it makes her family! My Grandma June has 2 sisters that live in NY, Marsha and Lea.
Lea was too busy this week to be able to see me, (I gave them both such short notice that I was already in town and only there for a few more days) I was lucky that Marsha had some time today to be able to drive over from New Jersey and take me out to lunch! It was fun we went on what she called “a little adventure” – this one included no hell =) Unless dealing with Harlem NY traffic qualifies…which it very well could. We found a parking spot without too much grief. My dad would say it’s thanks to the parking fairy, which tends to follow my family around and help us to get good spaces! We went over to a little place called Absolute Bagel. Now I am sorry to say that most of you have never had a good bagel before in your life. Luckily I had before in California- cause we have a family tradition of going over to Noah’s bagle’s every time we are in town for a visit to Berkeley. But you have never had a bagel until you have had a NY bagel from a bagel shop! YUM! We got bagel sandwiches with cream cheese and lox (smoked salmon) and then we went over to Starbucks to get drinks and have an air conditioned place to sit and chat and enjoy our great food and wonderful company!
I REALLY like Aunt Marsha. She IS my grandmothers sister! I could see a lot of similarities. She is a LOT of fun to talk to! I very much enjoyed our conversation! I told her about my life, (this is the first time that we have met) As I told her about things that I have done Marsha exclaimed: “Well! You have had 4 lifetimes! You sounded so together on the phone…but that’s not magic, that’s experience.” We talked about our families, and we talked about religion. It was really nice!
Then Marsha took me over to see the cathedral of St John the Divine. It is a beautiful cathedral that is very famous. This is the 2 of us in front of the Cathedral.
It was beautiful inside…stained glass windows, and some great iron work. My favorite part of the cathedral is something of an anomaly for this setting. We were walking around and in one of the side rooms there was an art display. I took some pictures and videos of it…simply describing it would not do justice to the work.
(pictures and video of cool Art display – you really MUST look at it when I get it posted cause it IS REALLY cool….sorry it I can’t get it up now)SO COOL! Marsha and I both very much enjoyed this! It was so intriguiging! I thought it was quite a brilliant work! I could probably steal this idea and do something with it in a performance piece I am sure…I will have to think on it…anyway in that moment I decided that Marsha would be a fabulous travel/museum/theatre friend! I think that we have some same tastes and likes in the arts!
Marsha dropped me back off at my apartment. I packed, ran to the store and got some dinner and a couple things to bring on the plane with me. And took off to the subway. As I hauled my big suitcase up hill in Harlem I realized that I should have left earlier…but I wasn’t too worried about it I still had 3 hours til our flight was leaving.
I got to the airport at almost 8 (instead of 7…oopsie). Met Nathan there…the rest of the group had just 10 minutes pervious checked in and went on to the terminal. Another girl showed up right after I had. Her name is Eve. Cute girl! We will be good friends! We went to go and check in and for whatever strange reason they had already (a half hour early) shut down the ticket counter- so they sent us over to the first class area. Where they told us, “we have no more room on that flight”
Now will someone please explain this to me…why in the world would anyone sell something…and at a pretty good cost too and then tell the person who has paid for said services (or ticket) that they are all out! HA! I found this to be rather comical. I had to smile and laugh. Nathan and Eve were concerned enough for all of us.
While we waited for them to figure out our flight we looked through an information packet that we got that has a bunch of information about India in it. Even started quizzing the Indians who worked there…ha! It was quite a funny moment!
(pic of eve quizzing Indians)They told us that they would put us on another flight that would get to Bangalore right before our group and we could meet up with them.
So we went and got on our flight…and who do you think was there?! Nathan! He asked, “what are you doing here?” I said, “ I was about to ask YOU the same thing!” I wasn’t expecting to see you on our flight! So apparently it turns out that they got us on the same flight…but for whatever reason they didn’t tell us that they had done that. I said a quick hi to Ruben
(the director of the program and Theatre Mitu). So good to see him again! I really do adore him! And I am excited to be able to learn more from him!
Our flight was LONG…something like 14 hours long!
We landed in Mumbi…had about a 2 hour layover. Thank you parents who taught me! I feel so smart sometimes! I TOTALLY brought snacks and my own food! So I wasn’t paying ridiculous prices for mediocre airport food.
I was talking to Ruben during our lay over and we were talking about this life after graduation etc. He said this to me during our conversation:
“ 3 years from now you will be doing something amazing…and when people ask you how you got there you will say…I have no idea.”
- So this conversation is part of my “Just GO” revelation that I had yesterday, and I posted about in the last post. It was much more detailed and I wish I had the time or brainpower to remember and relate more of it to you but for now we shall leave it there.
We hopped on our next flight to our final destination in Bangalore…it was about another 1.5 hr flight (give or take)
We landed and waited for the rest of the group to get there for a little while. There are 15 students, Ruben and 2 of his company members. We all piled into 2 vans and they drove us into Banglore and to Vistahr. This is where we are staying…and calling home for the next 3 weeks. We got to Visthar at about 7am so we had a few hours to sleep and shower and then met up at 10 to go about our day…
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