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Post by nycgirl on May 15, 2013 14:14:31 GMT
That sunrise is so, so beautiful!
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2013 1:10:53 GMT
It was so huge!
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2013 1:12:33 GMT
well i think another thing is though the excessive use of plastic itself - i think here for some products packaging went down due to protests, though it is still a lot - and that plastic might not lie on the streets, but it still goes somewhere and pollutes something. on a global scale, i think going down with the use of plastic must be part of the solution ... Yes, that is very true. Plastic has it's purposes, but it certainly isn't environmentally friendly.
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Post by rikita on May 17, 2013 14:46:52 GMT
btw i found it interesting you got stared at a lot too...
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2013 18:23:54 GMT
Did it happen to you too, Rikita? How did you deal with it? did you get more used to it by the end? I think you were in Kerala right? I found Kerala (and Goa) to be less so in that way. Goa has quite a big Portuguese population still (and the descendants of) and many were Christians (so no cows on the roads), and they even wore dresses!
I think Kerala and Goa also has it's own kind of Governance and laws set out in some way? Although they are still part of India ?
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Post by rikita on May 18, 2013 8:39:03 GMT
yes, and from what i heard/read, it is pretty normal for all tourists, at least outside of the really touristy areas... so it didn't happen that much when we traveled to beach locations or kochi, for example, but the area where we stayed had little tourists, so there it happened often. i must say, it depended on my mood, on some days i got used to it and found it okay, on others i found it a bit annoying and wished i was able to blend in...
yeah i was only in kerala, so can't really say anything in comparison to other parts of india, as i don't know them... politically, i just know that in kerala the communist party (though i would suppose it is closer to what in germany would be social democratic) is often elected. if they have special laws that the rest of india doesn't have i don't know. but one difference is that in kerala the families are often smaller (i.e. only two or three children), most people can read and write (they even for a while had complete alphabetization i think, but now there are some analphabets again), and while the men still have the more powerful role in the families and so on, women are in a better situation than in other parts of india (again, since i didn't visit other parts of india, this is only according to what i read)...
as for religion, in kerala, it seems to be distributed pretty equal between hindus, muslims and christians. the village where we stayed was half hindu half christian...
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2013 23:36:02 GMT
Yes, I think it's something you just have to get used to. Like bjd said earlier on, maybe it's a cultural thing? We in the West are taught not to stare, but there it's accepted. It could also have been your lovely red hair, rikita Believe me, I tired my best to blend in, it just didn't work, and you'd think it would be easy for me, but no. I saw quite a bit of activity by the communist party or people over in Kerala, parades down the street carrying the red flags. They stuck them along the main roads too. They are a big party there, I was a bit surprised about that. Yes, the families are smaller in Kerala. And they do have their own alphabet, I have some photos of the signs in the local language, I'll post them up when I get to the Kerala part of the report. Apparently education is rated as very important in that area and I think (from what I can remember and was told), kids leave the schools with a higher level of education than any other part of India. It has the highest literacy rate and the highest life expectancy too. Another interesting fact about Kerala is that more people than other State in India work in the Middle East/Gulf countries.
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Post by anshjain97 on May 19, 2013 2:59:53 GMT
Indeed. Kerala's adult literacy rate is above 90%.
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Post by rikita on May 19, 2013 8:56:30 GMT
yeah i think it mainly has to do with culture, what is seen as normal and what not... and added to that curiousity about people you don't know/who look different. in the end, the staring was usually curious and while it also sometimes got on my nerves a bit when every child we met wanted to ask us our names and where we are from (we were on a sport festival with about a thousand kids and teenagers there once, we barely got a silent moment), it is always friendly.
i thought almost each indian language has its own writing system? yeah, people usually see education as important, and i think it correlates - often people with higher education have less children (of course there are exceptions), and usually families with less children can afford better to send them to school and maybe even college or university...
i think the connection with the middle east might have to do with that a third of the malayalees are muslim... though i guess also hindus and christians go there...
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Post by anshjain97 on May 19, 2013 9:46:32 GMT
Yes- almost every Indian language follows a different script.
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2013 16:28:52 GMT
Regarding the different scripts in India. Some are quite similar, although still different. I can recognize some of the Hindi alphabet for instance, as it has some similarities to Punjabi. However the Malayalam script is very different, I recognize nothing of it all all. The circular motions used to write in that language are quite fascinating.
Rikita, I understand what you mean. Even though it can be overwhelming for us to be surrounded and starred at and constantly asked questions, it's not usually done in an aggressive way. It can be annoying though.
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Post by rikita on May 21, 2013 11:55:40 GMT
well also as a language, malayalam is not related to hindi, as it is a dravidian language... so it is more similar to tamil...
what was funny was that the teachers of the school where we taught never understood why we sometimes found it a bit annoying ... until that sport festival, and one of them tried to have a conversation with us that was constantly getting interrupted... after that, he got it...
but in retrospect, also those kids at the sport's festival were kind of cute with how they came up as a group and each of them asked "what's your name" even though they heard our answer to the other ones...
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2013 14:04:04 GMT
That's a very good point, Rikita. About the different origins of the languages. Not only the languages, but generally speaking people of the South and people of the North originate from different areas of the world... (a look into history or origins explains this better).
The kids can be cute with their over-curiosity, but as time went on, I found it more annoying than cute..
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