Day 25: Lipstick and Landscapes

If I were to write a list the top ten things I miss lipstick would make that list, without a doubt. My lovely friend Carly made the observation that lipstick is one of those things that scares you at first but really does become an addiction. And yes, I am addicted. Sadly, India is trying to help me break this addiction because it just isn't possible for me to wear lipstick here. For one, it would melt. And beyond that, I have never seen anyone wearing lipstick in India. I think they consider it to be too ostentatious or something. But I miss it. I'm just getting to the point where I don't think about it every morning. But this morning I just couldn't help it... I snuck a little tiny bit on (pink). What I love about lipstick is that it's surprising and bright and bold. As a girl and even as a teenager, I would NEVER have worn lipstick. I used to try to get my mom to wear lipgloss instead of lipstick because I thought it wasn't as flattering. But now I understand its charm... and its hard to forget it ;) Anyways, even in India sometimes I just need to do something that reminds me of back home. Today that was putting on lipstick. Shout out to my roommate Kylie who rocked it first and gave me the courage to try it. I partially blame this addiction on you.

Okayyyy, looking back on today I am overwhelmed by how strange this day turned out to be. So many unexpected things came our way that nothing else can describe it. I can’t put into words everything we saw today because I don’t think I could explain it. But I’ll share with you some pictures of a few places we went.

So this morning we all piled into a few cars (with our translators and director) and drove out into the countryside. We weren’t exactly sure where we were going—but we are kind of used to that by now. Even if we ask very specific questions we tend to get very vague answers. So we are getting really good at going with the flow.

We ended up going to the house of an Ayurvedic doctor (a traditional medicine doctor). It was a huge house in the middle of a farming village. The family was very kind. The two oldest sons (both in their early forties) are extremely intelligent doctors. One of them is a doctor in Memphis who is doing research on a drug to help victims of nuclear radiation. Listening to him was incredible. If he had kept talking I would have listened all day.

Then we went to this Buddhist site called Bojjanna Konda. We saw ancient ruins and a temple carved out of rock at the top of a hill! And the view from the top… WOW. The mountains here are so different but so beautiful.

For lunch we had Punjabi/Biharan food… which is my favourite! The spinach & paneer curry was great. It got me excited for our trip to north India because no matter how much I love Telugu food I really, really love Punjabi cuisine just a tiny bit more. And I got to practice some Hindi again because the servers (and my teacher) were all speaking the language while we ate.

And then for the last part of the day! The whole purpose of this day trip was to eventually end up at the Devi Puram temple. 

This is the temple (you can kind of see it there among all the trees)

It’s hard to explain what this Hindu temple is all about… I wouldn’t be able to do it justice and I definitely don’t understand it enough to describe everything we saw. Anyways, we got to go to the very top of the temple to see the deity in the shrine. The devotee who was there performed his puja (prayer) and we were just about to leave when someone asked him a question and guess what?? He answered in perfect English! At a first glance he looked Indian but we hadn't noticed that he looked kind of American. In fact, he didn't even speak any Telugu. We were all VERY surprised and were laughing so hard at how unexpected it was to hear a Portland accent all the way at the top of a temple, in the middle of nowhere in India. Priceless. haha

At the end of our visit we met the guru who built the temples and has a group of devotees. He gave us some words of wisdom (and said a lot of things that went right over my head too) and then we finished up our trip. 

I slept the whole car ride back home despite the jostling and honking… I guess I really can fall asleep anywhere (especially after an exhausting day).

Once I was interviewing a man in Provo who had immigrated from India to America. I asked him what the differences between are between America and India and he said to me, "Everything is different. If you compare it to a light switch, America is Down and India is Up. America is left-hand, India is right hand". At the time I didn't understand why he wasn't being more specific. It's because I didn't know how true it was; I didn't know how different another culture could be. Every day I see that more and more. I find that some things are easy to accept-- and some things are harder too. 

Good night!

Stéf