Journal 11-22-2010

Journal 11-22-2010

I was tired and out of it when I woke up in the top bunk of a train car this morning. I slept on and off until about 10:00am which was good! Sleeping in on trains helps to make the ride seem shorter. I chatted with a couple of different groups of Indian people for a while, and found a Munch bar in my bag, which I ate for Lunch. Then I finally made it to Kottayam at about 3:00. I was on my way walking out of the station when a man ran up to me and asked if I was going to VCRC. I said yes and got into the waiting vehicle. Kottayam is a very hilly city. Aside from the hills, Kottayam seems to be a little bit more wealthy than other Indian cities. There is less trash on the street, the buildings seem to be in better condition, and things don’t appear to be quite as crowded as in Tamil Nadu. The roads are also really narrow, some have stone walls on one or both sides.

A siren is going off right now… I have no clue what that means here… It sounds like a tornado siren.


Well I am still alive… and nothing seems to have happened.

I was a little bit crabby when I got picked up because I hadn’t had anything substantial to eat in almost 24 hours. I was taken directly to the YMCA where I was informed that rent would be 450 rupees per night. For 25 nights that amounts to about 250 US Dollars. This news kept me crabby. This is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!! Katie and Leah are paying 250 rupees per month to rent an entire guesthouse at VCRC in Pondicherry. Later in the day I asked Dr. Paradeep Kumar about this and he suggested that I switch to a hotel nearby that is 376 rupees per night. This isn’t a huge decrease in price but it does help. So tomorrow I will be moving there.
I spent about an hour at the VCRC Kottayam office today. It is located in a suburban house in a gated community…. Odd isn’t it. The house is filled with desks, -80 freezers and an office. The upper floor is supposed to house a molecular biology lab but I haven’t seen it yet. I had absolutely nothing to do at the office today after I finished talking with Dr. Paradeep Kumar so around 5:30 I managed to get someone to drop me back off at the YMCA.
I bought some bread and cereal for tomorrow. Then went up to my room, only to be intercepted by “the room boy” A nice dude about my age who speaks very little English. I figured out that he wanted me to come down to the office where I sat awkwardly in a room with three men, one of whom must run the YMCA. They also spoke very poor English, and it was unclear why they wanted to see me. But this did provide an opportunity to ask them about checking out tomorrow morning. I made awkward small talk with them for about 20 minutes. It turns out that the YMCA in India has games like chess and billiards instead of athletic equipment and pools like they do in the USA.
I finally made it up to my room where I dropped my stuff and left to go find some food!!!! Finally!!! I was so hungry. I ate at a really bad restaurant downstairs called India coffee house. It was a really odd, really cheap place and the food was correspondingly bad. The waiters were also wearing ridiculous hats. Hahahaha
At least I got something to eat. Then I came back to the room and took a cold shower. Now I need to read some papers for tomorrow so that I can propose some project ideas.