Signing Out

I’m normally not a super emotional person – I mean I only even managed a few tears at the Notebook, - but I have to admit I’m totally feeling it as I sit in my room packing up all my stuff and saying goodbye to all my coworkers and friends. I was just looking over my first blog entry, and it’s hard for me to imagine I’ve been in India for almost a year now, how on earth did that happen? Part of me is definitely eager to get back to the US, but I’m really going to miss India. I love this place for its crazyness and the fact that I can’t seem to make it through a single day without being surprised by something in some way. I’ll admit that at times it has been a love-hate relationship, but I’m so glad I came here and India will always have a special place in my heart.

In retrospect our bosses took a bit of a gamble by having Monisha, Aakash, Jack and me live in the same apartment and work on the same project day after day. Clearly they have never seen an episode of Real World. And yet, the four of us have seriously become a little family – we spend way too much time together and have a pathetically small circle of other friends in Delhi, and yet we all love it that way. I’m really going to miss them next year!

On the plus side, I have a pretty epic summer ahead of me. First, I’m off to Sweden to see my host family from my semester abroad five years ago. My host sisters are now 14 and 17, which makes me feel so old! After that I return to the US of A – nearly a year to the day after I left. I’ve got a few weeks on the east coast visiting friends and family and a sweet beach trip with my favorite Fed gals. Then I’m heading down to Bolivia and Peru for some good old fashioned backpacking with some fellow Bowdoin grads. Then it’s back to the Golden State in August. Rather than sit still for even a moment, I’m planning on road-tripping it down to SoCal to visit friends – and Tig, Mickey skyped me the other day and is wondering where the hell we’ve been these past few years so we definitely owe him a trip to Disneyland. Plus I’m hoping to watch all 64 World Cup games, so yeah, to say I’m looking forward to the summer would be a huge understatement. Even with all those plans, I got a call the other day that makes me wonder if I’m leaving India prematurely. Mr. Star Model/Actor (not Zoolander, but the one with the McDreamy hair and at least a few brain cells) from the Nokia ad called and asked me out in his adorably accented English. It gets better. For said date he suggested we could meet up for coffee or McDonalds. He clearly knows the way to my heart. So now I’m thinking maybe I should tell him I don’t date but I can do an arranged marriage, and then we can become a Bollywood power couple! So much for economics, this is my true calling!!!

Alas, I think I’ll take the nerdy route instead and go for a PhD. I’ve heard so many Hollywood stars say they wish they could give up the fame and money to write a dissertation, and I just can’t let myself make the same mistake they all did. I decided to go with Agricultural Economics, because it will allow me to do more world-saving economics and less theoretical-mathematical-torturetical economics. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how I’m feeling at the moment, of all the cities in all the states, one of the top programs in the field is none other than UC Davis. So, after 7 years away from the land of bikes and cows, I’m heading back to the homestead to pursue higher education. Woopeee!

If you’re reading this you are my hero, because I figured by month 11.5 my readership would be down to just mom and dad, who let’s face it pretty much have to read. I hope I’ve managed to keep you entertained, and seriously thank you so much for taking the time to read about my escapades. India has been a wild ride, but I can absolutely say that I am going to miss it. The good news is that by pursing a PhD in development economics, I can pretty much guarantee that I will be spending a lot of time in developing countries in the future, so who knows – SoozinKenya? SoozinNepal? Soozin Azerbaijan? We’ll see!

I also realize that some of you may count on this blog to waste time in your first 10 minutes at the office. To prevent you from having to work an extra few minutes every week, I’ve created a blog entry that you can use to keep tabs on me for the next 5 to 7 years. It is sort of like Mad Libs – each time you read it you can cycle through the different options in the brackets to get some variety. Otherwise you might think my life is boring!

Right now I am [studying / reading / doing math / TAing]. I am in [the library / Peet’s Coffee / a classroom]. I wish I were [on a beach in Sri Lanka / on top of a bus in Nepal / chillin’ with some Indian villagers / dancing on a Bollywood set]. I am eating [a Southwest Rice and Bean Burrito from Dos Coyotes restaurant].

I heart Nepal

I just made an incredibly important discovery, which, had I made earlier in my stay here might have drastically altered my first 11 months here. So pay attention because I promise you that should you ever find yourself in New Delhi in the future you will want to remember this: The waiting room at the U.S. citizen’s services center in the American embassy has issues of People magazine, from America. I mean WOW. Just when we all though couldn’t love Sandra Bullock any more she adopted a son? How am I, lover of all things tween pop, just now learning about this Justin Bieber kid? Also, I think aliens abducted Kate Gossling, gave her a new body and face and returned her to earth? I mean, wow, I can see I am going to have a lot of catching up to do when I get back. Maybe I’ll go straight from the airport to the waiting room at a doctor’s office and just catch up on all these important national issues for a few days.

Anyway, sorry for that tangent but as you can tell it’s been a really productive morning for me. I also apologize for going MIA for a few weeks, I wish I could say I’ve been consumed by work, but it would just be wrong. First, we needed someone to go check on field work in Kerela, a state in south India that is home to the country’s most beautiful palm tree lined beaches and backwaters. It was a tough assignment, but somebody had to step up to the plate.

Then, upon my return to Delhi, Jack and I realized we had another week of vacation time we needed to use before we leave our jobs in mid June. Sometimes life skips the lemons and goes straight to the lemonade. We figured since we’d already rocked the beach vacation in December, we would go for mountains with this trip and we headed for Nepal. Can I just say that I am now in love with Nepal? I definitely want to go back and spend more time there, a week just wasn’t enough. Jack and I spent most of our time deurbanizing ourselves. We managed to pack in whitewater rafting, hiking at the base of the Himalayas, and learning whitewater kayaking. We both succeeded in scaring the shit out of ourselves by taking on class III rapids in the kayaks, and I think our Nepali guides were quite proud of us.

One of the cool things about Nepal is that it has a ton of backpackers, so we met a lot of great people along the way. I haven’t met many Americans over here, so it is so cool to me when you can meet someone and already have so much in common with them (College! Baseball! Subtle humor!) I hope this doesn’t come across as obnoxiously American, because I obviously love meeting people from all over the world, but there is something great about the ease of making small talk with other Americans and having them get all my Ace Ventura references. Our other favorite part of meeting tourists is that we can always trump them with our “yeah we’ve been living in Delhi for the past year” card. We met a lot of people who had been traveling impressive amounts of time and been to some cool places, but then we drop the fact that we’ve been living in Delhi and traveling to rural villages and it just wins everytime.

I don’t know how much it makes the news in the US, but the political situation in Nepal is slightly precarious, as there is a tense power struggle between the Maoists and the ruling party. As a result, there are sometimes strikes in the country that shut everything down. The past few weeks there have been no problems, but naturally, there was one blockade, in one small town, on one day in the last three weeks, and Jack and I ended up stuck right in the middle of it. We were traveling about 70 miles by bus (side note, in the US I tend to associate 70 miles of travel with about an hour. In India and Nepal, 70 miles takes about 3 to 4 hours). At about mile 30 the bus hit a huge line of traffic and came to a stop. There were about 5 tourists on the bus, and it really struck me how living in India has changed my patience level. Three of the tourists looked immediately concerned, and wanted to know why were stopped, how long we would be there, and generally what was going on. Jack and I just sat at the back of the bus for over an hour before we even started to question that maybe something was up. The amount of times here I’ve encountered something unexpected and had no idea what the hell is going on around me has given me an amazing ability to just go with the flow and figure it will all work out somehow in the end. It’s a little disturbing for me to think how content I can be in total cluelessness. Anyway, we eventually ventured out of the bus and managed to learn that there was a political protest that was holding up all bus and car traffic and we would likely be there until 5pm, which sucked since it was noon. (Another sidenote, this was highlighted by a young American hippie, who upon learning what was going on actually said out loud “Oh, I need to get my journal, I might forget this by tonight”. Oh hippies, love it.) Anyhoo, Jack and I, seasoned travelers that we are, went for a guy wearing glasses and a button down shirt, which is a telltale sign of an English speaker. Sure enough, he let us use his cell phone and we called the rafting company we were attempting to get to. The rafting company sent two of its guides on motorcycles to come pick us up. By the time they arrived we had been waiting there for about two hours and were faced with 4 more hours to go. It was like my knight in shining armor, in the form of a Nepali man on a motorcycle, had come to my rescue! Feeling pretty smug about our resourcefulness, we bid the other tourists adieu as we each hopped on the back of a bike and rode off into the sunset.

Amazingly, I have only T-13 days left in Delhi! I can hardly believe it. I'll try to make them as blog-filled as possible.