Taj Mahal, Money and Inspirational Kids

You are now reading the blog of a proud viewer of two of the seven wonders of the world! The Taj Mahal was amazing! It’s the most beautiful building I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve seen some other really cool structures including the Colloseum in Rome (other Wonder of the World I’ve seen), but a lot of them were when I was very little and I don’t really remember them, including the Colloseum. I will remember my first time seeing the Taj Mahal for a very long time. We went in the very early morning for a sunrise tour. When the sun started coming up it looked like the Taj Mahal was glowing and it was really cool. It’s made completely from white marble so it kind of looked orange and yellow. Adding to the white marble there was a lot of gemstone engraved into it. When light, especially moonlight, hits the gemstone, it really glows. We went inside and there was a guy with a flashlight shining it on the gemstone and we got to see. There was a flower engraved on the wall about the size of a plum with 64 petals and when you shine the light on it you could see every single carving glow. That’s actually what makes the Taj Mahal one of the Wonders of the World, how they carved gems into it that intricately 500 years ago.

It took 22 years to build, from 1631 to 1653, and 20,000 laborers, with work going on 24 hours a day. It’s really hard to believe that slaves made that massive building with no machines, just their bare hands. The Taj Mahal was built by the same king who built Red Fort and Agra Fort, the fifth mogul of India, Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal is actually a huge tomb which the queen is buried in. The queen died in 1630 at 39 years old giving birth to their 14 child. After the queen died is when the king decided to build it for her so she never got to see even a part of it. The king used to call his wife Moontaj which means beautiful one or loved one. He then named the Taj Mahal after her. What I thought was really interesting and cool is that the king tried to build a second Taj Mahal made of dark gemstone, across the river from the first one, so he could be buried there close to his wife. He didn’t get very far because his own son thought he was spending way too much money so he locked the king up in jail. Shah Jahan died in jail and got buried with Moontaj in the Taj Mahal. Another interesting fact about the Taj Mahal is that everything but the king’s tomb, which got put in later, is completely symmetrical. It is the same at every angle you look at it. That day, it was one of the gap year volunteers’ birthday and I say it’s a pretty cool birthday to see one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Everything in India is uber cheap compared to back home. One example is our apartment, it’s at least 6 times less than if you rented an apartment in California. We had to get internet, some fans, dishes, bedding, and all the supplies for our daily needs. The only thing that was already there was the furniture. All that still wound up being way less than what we would pay in a month doing normal stuff back home. We walk to a market about a block away from our house to get food everyday and everything there is super cheap. Back home the milk price is like seven or eight dollars. The first time we went to the market we brought with us around 8 bucks in rupees. We wanted to get milk and butter, but we didn’t know if we had enough. Turns out we got two bags of milk (about half a gallon, one thing of butter, bread, two coconuts, a papaya, and a watermelon and still had half of our money left. With eight dollars in the US we could have only gotten a gallon of milk. Another day, we got takeout at a good Indian restaurant for the four of us and it cost a little more than four dollars total. In Mountain View, the city where we live, we often go to an Indian restaurant called Amber. For a good dinner for the four of us it costs 40 or 50 bucks. It’s crazy how much the difference is! Not everything is so much cheaper though. There are some modern malls that have prices on shoes or clothes similar to that of home. It’s mostly at neighborhood markets where you find the cheap prices.

One thing I find really inspiring and amazing while working with the kids in Ambedkar Nagar and Elephant Village, the 2 communities where we volunteer, are all the smiles. I rarely see the kids without a huge grin on their face, despite living in the conditions they live in. Whenever we get to the meetings all the Young Dreamers run up to us and hug us and greet us, completely happy, as if they don't have a care in the world. They make me look back to all the times I've complained about something that I don't have, and them, living in one room with their parents and their siblings, with a stove on the ground in the corner as their kitchen. I really think we can learn from them, to be grateful for what we have. We've made a lot of progress on the hygiene campaign. We are going to do a rally around the streets of Ambedkar Nagar and end up at our base and teach people about hygiene. We now know the specifics on what we're going to do and we have made mini groups for each topic. I'm in the group focusing on skits, planning them, writing them, and eventually acting them out. There are also groups for flyers that we will hand out, posters that we will put up, banners and signs that we will hold during the rally, and a group planning the booth where we're going to end up after the rally. During the meetings everybody is brimming with excitement to help this community be a better place. Of course, one of the ones that is excited the most is the one who came up with all of this, Arun. He is an eight year old who wanted to do the campaign this coming weekend. That would be cool, but we need more time to plan. We're going to do it three weeks from now and I can't wait!

Indian Food and a HUGE King

One thing that I really like about India, is the food. My family and I really like Indian food and at home we eat it quite a lot. Now, I must say, the Indian food here is actually pretty different from the Indian food at restaurants back home. Here they have a lot of dahl (lentils in a sauce,) and also potatoes. My favorite dish is something called paneer, which is little cheese cubes covered in curry. There are different kinds of paneer and I like them all. Indian food is also very spicy. It’s been a little bit hard because I don’t eat that much spicy but I can get through it, with a lot of water. As you might know there is no meat from cows here because they’re sacred, there’s really not that much meat at all here except for the occasional chicken or goat. Last Friday, for one of the volunteers’ birthday, we went to eat at a place that has food similar to that of the US. It has a menu that you would see if you went to a place back at home. There’s pizza, pasta, salad, quesadillas, nachos and other things. It also has a great dessert menu. I got the Cheesecake in a Jar. It was all really good and everyone really enjoyed having familiar food. The cook at the guesthouse where the volunteers are staying actually has made pizza and pasta and stuff like that. We’ve been having some eggs mac and cheese, and pasta so it’s not like we’ve been having Indian food nonstop. We went to a shopping center on Wednesday and it was a modern shopping center, like on that you’d see in the US. There was a big food court with pizza, noodles, barbeque, Italian food, Chinese food, and even a KFC and guess what! We ended up picking Indian food. It was like an Indian restaurant back home and it was really good. It was also really spicy and made my mouth go numb. So, I really like Indian food, but it’s good to know there’re some other options.

Did you know? Jaipur still has a king, and he’s 18 years old! No, he doesn’t have any actual power, like the queen of England, but he still has a palace and a lot of economic power. The palace that he lives in is called City Palace and we went to see it on Sunday. Parts of it are museums open to see. In 1702 a king built City Palace and moved there from Amber Fort. He had 47 wives and he needed space for them and his offspring. That seems strange to me because nowadays you have one and if you want to have a different one you have to be divorced with the first one. He had all his wives at the same time. The first wife to give birth to a son, not a daughter, is the most important. I think that’s unfair to women because if it were a daughter, the king would think she didn’t matter and wouldn’t treat her very well. Imagine having over 100 kids! No wonder he had to move to something bigger. The other kings also had a lot of wives, but he had more than twice as much.

Also, that king was into astronomy and moved because it would be easier to build observatories on flat land than on a hill (Amber Fort was on a hill). We got to see the throne room and on the walls were every king who has lived in City Palace. A couple of the kings really did a lot to help Jaipur, and some others didn’t do much. My favorite king was the one that was seven feet tall and 600 pounds. We got to see the robes of each king and his was like four times the size of the others. We also saw his pants and they were as wide as the length of my bed! There was an art museum and some of the pictures there were breathtaking. We saw how a guy painted and it was really good. It took ten minutes and he drew a really realistic elephant. To make the paint he put some water on a whiteboard-type thing and rubbed different stones on it and made colors, it was really cool. He gave us a bunch of paintings and a magnifying glass and we could see all the strokes of the brush. The brush that he uses to draw the outline has a single squirrel hair on the end. My brother got a little postcard of an elephant. After that we left City Palace and went to see another one. It was a magnificent palace on water. It’s actually not open to go inside and I was bummed. It had never been renovated so it was pretty dangerous to go in. We found out later that it had been bought and was being made into a hotel. It was still really cool to see it at a distance. One of the kings built it just for his mistresses. There were guards on the top armed with crossbow-type things and if somebody tried to escape the guards wounded them so they couldn’t swim. Both palaces were really cool and it was too bad we couldn’t go in the Water Palace.

We’ve been having meetings with the young dreamers discussing what we could do to help Ambedkar Nagar be a better place. A little boy of eight years old suggested at one of the meetings if we could set up a hygiene awareness campaign since people don’t really know about that kind of stuff. There were other suggestions as well and we’re going to try to do them, but a hygiene campaign got voted most so we’re doing that first. We’re going to teach people about washing their hands before they eat and after they go to the bathroom. We’re also going to teach people how to brush teeth properly. We’re going to give out handouts of things that they would need, including a mini first aid kit. A lot of the kids there have open sores and a lot of them usually get infected from the dirtiness, so giving out band-aids would help a lot of kids. Most things are planned out already, there’s going to be a booth where some of us will be teaching people how to brush their teeth and wash their hands properly. We’re also going to put up flyers and posters, maybe even in the school. The idea of performing skits came up, and the young dreamers said they could do some in the classes of the government school. I think it’s really cool how an eight year old thought of this and was in the midst of helping his community. The next meeting we will actually take action.

THIS WEEKEND WE’RE GOING TO THE TAJ MAHAL!!!! I’m so excited. It’s one of the seven wonders of the world and I’m going to see it in 2 days. I’ve been looking forward to seeing it for a while.

First Days in Jaipur

I think Jaipur is quite different from Dehli even though they're both big cities. Jaipur's streets are even crazier than Dehli's. There are a lot more animals, like elephants, camels and there are quite a few more monkeys. Seeing elephants and camels on the street is quite weird, but I think that we'll get used to it. There is also a lot of poverty in Jaipur. There are places called slums which means a part of a city that's unofficial or not finished, a poor part of town. The place where the gap year volunteers, and sometimes us, will be working is a slum called Ambedkar Nagar. A lot of slums are just tents made out of cardboard and paper. Again it's human injustice and it's really hard to see. I have a three story house and all they have is a little shelter made out of cardboard. :( When you drive into Jaipur you see tents lining the streets and it's just hard to believe that these are people's permanent homes. Ambedkar Nagar is actually one of the more developed slums because there are actual buildings.

By now we have moved into our apartment and have started to home school. Now we have a good schedule that we hope to maintain. It is weird that I don't have all the things I'm used to having. A couple days ago I asked my mom, "Where'd you put all my stuff?"

She said, "it's all right there in your room."

"No, there has to be more," I said. But that was it, I hadn't brought anything more. It just seemed like more in my backpack and suitcase. Our apartment isn't nearly as big as our house back at home and the beds are like rocks, but I guess it's home for three months.

On Saturday we went to see Ambedkar Nagar and the Elephant Village (the other place where the volunteers are going to be working). The Elephant Village is what it's name suggests. It's a place where elephants stay. These elephants are the ones that give rides to tourists up and down the hill of Amber Fort. One family is assigned as caretakers of an elephant and the family lives with the elephant. As you might imagine the families are very poor. About two years ago nobody in the Elephant Village knew what school or education was. Nobody had even heard of it and when Young Dreamer Network (my dad's non-profit) and its partners in India asked to start a school there, it was a completely foreign concept to them. My dad's partners at Saarthak recruited students for a school. At the beginning the kids didn't even know how to sit properly. They just ran around class all day, if they even came. We went to see them on Saturday and they sat and said they're prayer and focused on the lessons. It's incredible how much they've improved and learned over two years. In Ambedkar Nagar the kids didn't start from zero. There is a school there, but it's a really under-resourced government school. YDN and Saarthak set up a center that helps kids with their homework and also teaches them math and English. They also set up a women's empowerment program. They help women learn and be stronger, to be able to stand up for themselves. That center is also where the Young Dreamers go. Young Dreamers are the kids that receive scholarships to go to a high-quality private school. A lot of them wouldn't be in school if they hadn't received scholarships. Three of them are already in college. They're doing really good and if it wasn't for YDN, the girls would probably be working as housemaids and the boys working with their dads.

Sunday was Awesome! We got to ride elephants! Hold on, let me explain. So we were going to take a tour of Amber Fort which is a fort where the king of Jaipur lived. It is even bigger than the Red Fort which I talked about in my last blog. It has the third longest wall in the world. At 15 miles it is still nowhere near as long as the Great Wall of China. We got dropped off by the bus at the bottom of the hill where Amber Fort stands. We were going to ride elephants all the way to the top! It was really weird and cool being on top of the elephants. It would have been a really nice ride with a great view if the sellers hadn't bugged us the entire way. There were tons of vendors and they were super aggressive. They stuck with you the entire time, walking with the elephants and if you said something or even looked at them they would keep trying to sell you their products. It was pretty annoying, but it didn't ruin the ride that much, you just had to ignore them. Amber fort was really cool. It was built like 450 years ago and it took 25 years to build. The king who built it had 12 wives at the same time and 42 children. There was a whole day spa and I found it really cool how almost 450 years ago they could come up with something like that. They also figured out how to do air conditioning and it was amazing how outside it was really hot, but once you stepped into one of the walls it immediately cooled down and no modern air conditioning has been put in. It was a really cool palace, fit for a king.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. Although, last night we went to a birthday party for the daughter of my dad's friend. There were a couple of things that were distinct from birthday parties in the US. First of all, the party started at 7:15. Also, the cake was eaten before dinner. I don't know what girls parties are like back home, but this one involved a dance contest where Carlos and I were the judges. We are going on some more tours this weekend, which I will tell you about next week.

Our Arrival in India

I wrote this over a few days when we first arrived, staring last Wednesday.

We're in India! Finally, we were traveling for 32 hours and it was really exhausting, the plane ride from New Jersey to New Dheli was 14 hours. India is 12 and a half hours in front of California and and the jetlag is pretty tough. We are staying in New Dehli for three days and then we're taking a five hour bus ride to Jaipur, where we're going to live for three months. Talking about driving, the streets of India are crazy. First of all the steering wheel is one the right, like the UK. Also, there are almost no stop lights. Cars go all over the place any direction they want. One time I even saw someone going backwards on the freeway! There are tons of motorcycles, rickshaws(bicycles with carts on the back,) and tuctucs(motorized rickshaws.) Not only are there people everywhere, there are also animals. Cows are sacred in India so they're just roaming around on the street. There are also lots of dogs and, a few times, we even saw monkeys on the street.

Yesterday we went sightseeing, we saw a Sikh temple, India Gate, and the Red Fort. The Sikh temple was really interesting. You had to wash your hands and your feet before you entered and you had to wear a head scarf to cover your hair. A lot of the temple was pure gold and it was really cool. The people there prayed to the holy book, that was their symbol of god. At the temple there was a place where anybody could eat for free. Our guide said that around 10,000 people ate there every day. We had a look in the kitchen and there was tons of food being prepared by volunteers. My favorite place was the Red Fort, it was so cool! It was a gigantic red fort that had these huge walls, around the walls was even a moat that used to have alligators and snakes. The fifth mogul of India made it to protect him and his family, that mogul also made the Taj Mahal, and the Agra Fort. It took ten years to build the red fort, from 1638 to 1648. I found it really, really amazing how people can build something like it with no machines, no tools, just their bare hands.

Today I did the craziest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I am dead serious it was just, wow. We walked along Chandni Chowk. I know you have no idea what that means, but you can't even begin to imagine it. Chandni Chowk is one of the biggest and oldest markets(and in my opinion, craziest) in New Dehli. The sellers sell a lot of things, anything from goat and chicken heads to pants and sandals. It really is pretty freaky to see bloody goat heads on the street. Surprisingly though, that's not the craziest part. It is a really busy market so you can't walk two feet without a motorcycle almost crushing your foot or a rickshaw almost bumping into you. It's like playing dodge ball, but with a lot more balls and instead of soft stuff, motorized vehicles. There is also a lot of poverty. There are people laying on the ground asking for money at every block. A lot of kids are also going around and it's really hard to see, but you can't just turn a blind eye and pretend it's not there. Of course you also can't always be in skock, there needs to be a balance. I think that was the hardest part, seeing all the human injustice. When we got to the restaurant that we were going to, everybody was pretty shaken up. I think it was a good experience though because that's when it really hit me how much injustice there is and it really makes you want to do something about it, which is what this trip is about.

Tomorrow we're going to Jaipur! I hope that there we can finally get a routine going.