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.