Goa: Fresh air, blue skies and sun IN India! - Goa, India
Goa, India
We couldn't have been more excited to get away for thanksgiving. (Yes I live in India, but since I work at an American School we get all of the same holidays we do in America.) Clint, Cassie and I planned this trip pretty soon after arriving and I couldn't believe it was finally time to go.
We were boarding our plane and saw lots of other teachers on the flight. Even a boy in my class from Sweden, his whole family was on the flight as well. We were picked up at the airport by someone from our hotel and driven an hour and a half south down the coast through small towns until we reached Palolem Beach, Goa. Thoughts about Goa as a state on the drive down? Lush, people wore shorter skirts because the temperatures are much higher, people’s skin is darker, lots of people were carrying umbrellas to blocks the sun and there were churches everywhere. Why? "Goa is a former Portuguese province; the Portuguese overseas territory of Portuguese India existed for about 450 years until it was annexed by India in 1961."
Below are some of my notes from the trip that I took on my phone:
Cirains camp, our hotel, is soo nice. Beach hut with hammock!!! Had drinks at our
place, walked down the beach to the end, made turkey's in the sand, laid on beach then had more drinks with our feet in the sand. Changed and walked up to the strip to have dinner at a Mexican place - avocados and fresh fish!!!
Now in hammock outside my hut listening to the waves crash, burning incense. Taking everything in. Absolutely perfect
Back in the hammock again, first full day in Goa. We still can't stop saying how perfect this is. Living in a polluted mega city has made me appreciate blue skies and fresh air more than I ever thought possible.
Loving the noise ordinance in Palolem!! Quiet after 10pm. This law has fed the market for
silent disco parties. Got a flyer from a party promoter for a "full sound" party in another town over. Silent discos are parties where you wear headphones and can switch over from one dj to another. Everyone is dancing.
Got up an had breakfast- cappuccino, masala omelette, amazing fresh bread and fresh fruit. Took a boat out to see dolphins and then to butterfly shaped island and honeymoon beach. We looked around for a bit and bought beers from a man who saw a niche in the market. Foreigners taking boat rides to a deserted island? Of course they'll want to have a drink-genius! Europeans were on one side of the beach smoking in speedos, Indians
were taking selfies and other photo shoots fully clothed in the water and the Americans were on
the other side of the beach in shorts and t-shirts drinking beer. All was right in the universe.
Layed on the beach for a while then had lunch at our place. Amazing Goan prawns in a delicious coconut curry. We played a game called "loaded questions" and drank piña Coladas for a while. It was lovely. Then I walked around the town and did some shopping, then got a
massage and reflexology foot massage. So cool to hear the birds chirping above me during the massage. Everything at our resort is built new again after each monsoon season. I'm sure they keep a lot of it somewhere dry but a lot of the materials use to build the huts and roofing are from palm trees.
We had dinner tonight at another beach shack. Ordered Kingfish rice and salad. Walked to end of the crescent shaped beach after dinner. Stopped on way back for drinks in the sand. Brought us a mat to sit on down by the waves. 3/6 drinks spilled in sand. Guy froze "oh that's bad luck!" We kept telling him it's okay but he didn't know what to do. We didn't think he'd bring us another round since 3 spilled, but he did. We gave him 701 (anything ending is 1 is good luck) rupees to counter act that bad luck. Lots of stray dogs sat with us.
Day four
Breakfast and newspaper. Read about a European garbage tour taken by 38 govt officials. People are really upset that money was spent on this. Paper shows these men with shopping bags from Duty Free. Apparently they had to check out how garbage is dealt with even at the Coliseum and Leaning Tower of Pisa. Ridiculous!
Sea kayaking around to monkey island and then under the bridge. Current so strong tho!
Paddled back and got swept in by a huge wave back to the beach. Felt like I was surfing and totally thought I was gonna stay in my kayak. I rode the wave all the way in and then at the very end I tipped over. ugh! hahah
Walked into town took some pictures and bought postcards and spices for lily. We played boggle and had drinks at Cirains Camp's tapas place. For dinner we walked way down the beach to a brick oven pizza place. A british woman was there managing the place, her boyfriend owns it. She asked us if we were Canadian and if we worked at one of the call centers in India. We walked back over land behind beach saw houses pigs chickens and cows. Even a general store called "Infant Jesus General Store!" I sat on the beach and got mehindi (henna) done. The smell made me sick for a bit but it was worth it. Love how it looks! Played rumikub and a three hour long came of UNO. Amazing sea bass tandoori style. More sangria
Chocolate cake from Indian people at a table over - one of their friends birthdays.
Last breakfast, masala (spices) omelette, fresh fruit and yogurt, cappacino and the beach. Man I'm going to miss this! Walked around town again, stopping to have chai at this really cool cafe with a garden in the back. Wrote postcards to friends from home. Went back to the resort and played one last board game (Scrabble) with Clint while cassie got a pedicure. Then we all had our last Goan fish meal for lunch and had the driver drive us north to the airport.
We're already looking forward to our next trip to Goa. It was incredible!!
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Election results will be revealed today in India. I'm still trying to figure out how everything differs compared to the little I know about the american government. I have learned a lot in the process though! This year they had the highest voter turnout EVER in India's short history as a nation (only 60 years!). Change is coming for this country and the middle class is finding its voice - through social media and exposure to other places around the world via the internet. People are no longer satisfied with the way things have been. Go, India!
To make sure you only vote once your finger is painted with black/blue/purple ink that stays on your finger for 3-4 days after you vote. Apparently before they started this people would turn around and vote 5,6,7+ times. Also in the three days prior to the election the entire city was dry, meaning you could not purchase liquor anywhere. Idea being that officials couldn't bribe poor people with whiskey and those people that drink a lot wouldn't be able to use the excuse of being too drunk to vote come election day. Obviously that didn't stop people because I read in the paper how boats were caught smuggling booze up the Yamuna River and loading it into trucks that would pull up to the riverbanks. Feels like the prohibition era!
One politician gave out his mobile number to everyone and said he's available 24/7. How much you want to bet that since elections are over that mobile number no longer works? Yeah. I'll win that bet. Another politician had an ad in the paper with a ladies police station behind him. I had my assistant translate the ad into english and she said he was claiming to build a ladies police station in EVERY neighborhood in Delhi. Yeah right!! How do people not see through these shady politicians? Hopefully they're starting to.
Also, our friend went to vote and she said that despite heavy police presence people were still approaching her line offering her money to vote for certain candidates. Crazy how corrupt everything is here.
Speaking of laws and politics, apparently the language around rape laws is really old, like from the 19th century, which makes it hard to charge people who assault women. Umm....how bout we change the wording ummm...ASAP?? So rape is hard to prosecute, but when I tried to send a few rupee coins (totally less than 5 cents american) to a friends kids, the package got returned. Illegal to take rupees out of the country, but to rape a woman? Still okay.
I did some reserach and found out that, the architects of the Indian republic chose to keep the old laws and education system modeled on Great Britain in the new, independent India. In these ways India today is virtually unchanged from the colonial period. While inheriting the English legal system might have been good in some ways, one thing that remains has been very damaging: the way that 19th century British law thought about rape. This is why it's so difficult to secure a rape conviction. In 2011, only 26% of rape trials ended in conviction. Even in the capital, Delhi, where the rape case happened that everyone heard about, there's only been 1 conviction out of 635 cases reported in 2011. If it was 1/635 today imagine what it was like in the colonial period. The victim is as much on trial as her alleged attacker. Indian law tend to presume that the victim had engaged in consensual sex only unless there was enough evidence to corroborate her claim it was non-consensual.
As recently as 2012, an alleged rapist was acquitted because the judge inferred that the victim didn't "resister her attacker with sufficient vigor" thus make the sex consensual.
"It’s a cruel irony that while Britain, along with most western countries, have modernized their antiquated laws on rape, Indians are still shackled by it well into the 21st century.
It’s incredible, for instance, that Indian law still excuses "marital rape," which presupposes that a woman can never legitimately deny sex to her husband."
India has instituted fast-track courts, as many people have asked for, but this, the WSJ reporter says will do nothing to reform the laws that are still heavily biased against rape victims. Nor will fast-track courts change the mindsets of judges hearing the cases.
Ok that's enough about that....India clearly still has a long way to go!
For more, check out this article, "The Colonial Hangover of India's Rape Law" http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013 /01/04/the-colonial-hangover-of-indias- rape-law/
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A bunch of us ordered indoor air purifiers from this great guy who comes to your house and tests your air quality. Well they were supposed to arrive last week and he emailed us saying basically "the shipment arrived at the port in Chennai but en route to Dehli the truck flipped over and was impounded by the police (despite the driver paying off the police they still have al the purifiers in their custody and are going through all of them for damage). Another shipment has been shipped from Singapore and will be here in like 3 weeks."
He was really apologetic and I know he feels terrible this happened, but I'm like it's okay, it's India, why are you even surprised something like that happened? I'm not.
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Today was spent at one of the mega malls in Delhi (3 malls connected to each other, each nicer than the next) to see Catching Fire. We decided to splurge and go see the movie at Director's Cut theatre where you get a lazy boy, pillow, blanket and a waiter who comes to your seat - you can order from a full menu! Needless to say, I won't be able to see a movie at another theatre after that experience. It was incredible!!
For a Diwali gift, my friend Kathleen and I gave our assistants mani/pedis (their first!) at this nice spa. We all went together on Saturday and then took them to lunch at this cool area called Hauz Khas within walking distance from my house. We went to this played called Fork You (Yes, funny name!) that totally feels like you're in america at a burger place. You get a piece of paper and you can add any topping to a beef patty, veggie burger or soy burger. I got spinach, tomato and a fried egg on my veggie burger. It was delicious!!
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Click on this link to learn 28 really interesting facts about India, recently published by Rough Guides. Fascinating country! http://www.roughguides.com/article/inte resting-facts-about-india/
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A few days ago I couldn't' have been more excited to get home from work and decorate for christmas. Here I am thinking I'll have a great evening with my adorable little kitten, put on some christmas music and spruce up the place for the holidays. Well, as soon as I opened the artificial christmas tree that I shipped with me, I knew things weren't going to be as easy as I stupidly had thought. I screwed in the top half of the tree and began fluffing up the branches and Neha literally jumps into the tree. She bit all the branches so I knew putting ornaments on would be even more challenging since those are basically just hanging toys. I should've known better than to even TRY to put on those glass ball ornaments, especially one from your first year of life 31 years ago, but I did, and it obviously broke. OOPS.
Neha has even adopted one of my old wooden elf ornaments as her own toy and probably plays it with it the most out of any of her other toys right now. Isn't that always the case with kids? They don't care what's in the box they just want the box/wrapping paper.
Since the guards have already started a rumor about me that I'm marrying an Indian man (hello boredom!) I thought I'd give them something else to talk about - gasp, I'm christian too! So I decorated two palm-ish plants I have on my balcony. I put lights and ornaments on them. It was fun getting into the holiday spirit with lots of decorations, especially since winter is coming late this year and it's still like 75 during the day and a "freezing" 55 at night.
Also Neha has started biting a lot of the school provided wooden furniture in the house so Lily went to the pet store and bought her small dog bones. She told me how the shop keeper was like "Oh you should get these bigger bones, they're better." and how she kept saying, "No, these are fine. It's a very small dog!" She thought it was so funny she was tricking him. Neha likes chewing on the bones, too! Lily is basically the cat whisperer.
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Now I have to start thinking about my Christmas vacation to Myanmar (Burma). I'll be traveling around for 15 days and then heading to Singapore "Asia Lite" for 4 days of normal city life. Then before that it'll be time for Tom to come in March!! Lots of exciting things to look forward to.