Hebbal vs. Mysore - Getting to know the place

Well, the first week is done and I'm happy to say we're off to a good start. Everybody in the group seems to get along, and I don't think it's too painful for Mark, the only guy with us, to be surrounded by 12 young women (who seem to be so giddy for being here we often act like a group of young girls).

We started classes immediately after arriving, with an orientation session on Sunday, and regular classes through the week. Our day starts at 6am with yoga (which is optional), breakfast at 7am to 8am, then we have an hour before class starts at 9am.
Classes are an hour each, with a 30 minute tea break between them, and lunch is at 1pm. our core classes are Gender and Change, Culture and Civilization, and Science and Technology and Sustainable Development (what a mouthful!) I'm also taking a class in Hindi which runs for an hour from 2pm-3pm and then I'm done for the day. Some of us are taking dance or cooking classes too, and the cooking class starts today at 4pm, but it's only twice a week.

So the first week was full of getting to know our way around and digesting a lot of information from classes. These courses are pretty intense and it'll be good practice to keep up with the work, but because it's the same 3 courses at the same time, for 5 days in a row, we cover a lot of material without feeling too overwhelmed, which is nice.

The school we are at is a Non-Profit organization that usually caters to Indian students studying their Masters in Non-Profit Management, so they're training youth to manage NGO's and Development projects. There are a few Masters' students at the hostel we're staying at, and they're friendly and come out with us on excursions so we have someone with us who knows their way around and speaks the language. One of them is Jyothi pictured here:

Divya is also another student who comes out with us, I couldn't get a picture of her this week, but I will soon! I'm sure she'll be mentioned a bunch, she's a sweetheart! (and told me the equivalent of my name in Hindi is Meghana, which means 'cloud')

This Hostel and school we are at is in a smaller, more comfortable, district of Mysore called Hebbal. Most people in Hebbal are used to having western students around, so there's much less hassling of us, we're treated less like tourists, and people smile and wave and ask to be in photos with us. Hebbal is small and beautiful, though the city centre of Mysore has all the attractions like Mysore Palace and Devaraja market, it can be very intimidating, and there tends to be a lot more people that hassle you if you look like you're new here - yesterday a lady followed us with her baby and her young child saying "Ma" over and over again trying to get our attention, it's apparently a scam to get you distracted so you're an easier target for pickpockets... She's mostly harmless and it's best to just ignore her, but some of the girls were really uncomfortable until she left - which is completely understandable.

Hebbal on the other hand doesn't have any of those problems, it's about a 10 minute walk away and is quaint and relatively tidy, considering it's India. There's a vegetable and fruit market where the women sit under a canopy and sell their produce, they're beautiful, a man was sitting at a booth stringing Jasmine together when I walked by and he gave me a small string. I think I'll go back later and actually buy some from him. Indian women wear strings of Jasmine in their hair, practically everyday.

And there are lots of other people on the street selling their wares, produce, or woven mats, or fabric for saris or salwar kameezes (two traditional types of dress for Indian women)...


It's also got a supermarket called More. and several "Druggists" or pharmacies. I picked up a tube of toothpaste for 31 rupees, roughly 62 cents, made by Colgate, with the reverse label having Colgate spelled in Hindi letters! NEAT!

So this first week has been great, but there's so much more to learn. I'm looking forward to keeping everyone updated on the rest of the trip, and hopefully I'll get the opportunity to post more often than once a week. I'll update soon about this past weekend and all the amazing things we saw!

Bye for now.