Yesterday, for dinner, the group decided that it would be fun to try the local pizza, so we hopped in a rickshaw and told the driver to go to the place that we had been told had pizza having absolutely no idea what to expect. Well, it turns out that the place we went was a hotel/resort, and a nice one at that (not a single piece of trash, guards in full get up at the gated entrance, manicured lawns, water features, etc.). Pizza was regularly priced (10-20 bucks for a medium...the upper end may seem expensive, but that pizza had lobster on it) and it was made in an outdoor brick oven right in front of us and it was just about as good as any place I’ve eaten in the US. We ate on the patio area next to the pool. It felt like we were in a tropical paradise, not India. Well, a paradise that only has 10 songs from the year 2000 playing on repeat. Honestly, it felt weird...almost like I didn’t belong in a place that nice. Maybe that sounds strange, but it felt like we only got in because we were white. I was sure that I would feel strange going back to dirty India when we left, but I felt better about it, like I was back to the real world where I was supposed to be. Before we left the girls wanted to see how expensive a night was so that they could plan on spending a day or two just in the resort, and the rooms cost 200 bucks a night on the lower end, which isn’t incredibly expensive, but it’s certainly nicer than any place I’ve purposefully stayed in. It’s a nice place and I think that we may be going back for birthdays or something like that.
The night before that we went and saw a Telugu film. Don’t know why, but I think that everyone expected there to be subtitles...there weren’t. You should try to get Once Upon a Warrior (I can’t remember the Telugu name) and try watching it without any subtitles, it’s an experience. Apparently, the movie is the first joint venture with Disney in India. All of the special effects and acting and what not was done by local Indian talent (especially the special effects...they were pretty terrible by American standards), and Disney mostly contributed to the story development and film promotion. I don’t know if I would ever watch the movie again, but it was a fun experience. There were so many inconsistencies and cuts that it was hard to take some of it seriously, but the thing that bugged me the most is that they filmed one of the music videos in a mineral formation very similar to Mammoth in Yellowstone (probably more impressive actually). They were splashing around in the water and whatnot. I turned to the person sitting next to me and told them that I was very unhappy with them destroying a natural formation. I’m sure that no one else in the movie theater (including the Americans) cared one bit.
The most interesting part of going to the movie wasn’t actually in the movie though. While I was with one of the translators buying the tickets for the movie a couple of hours before hand I was stopped by someone who asked to take my picture. I complied and posed for his picture and told him my name when I asked (he wasn’t in the photo, by the way. It was just a picture of me). That’s not entirely strange for India, but it gets better. When we came back for the start of the movie some guy I had never met waved at me and said, “Hi Justin”. Apparently, the guy who had originally taken my picture had told his friends about me. A little weird, but it gets better. As it turned out, we sat directly behind those guys in the movie theater and at intermission they turned back to talk to me and showed me that the background on his phone was the picture that he had taken of me, and his friend went about explaining to me how smart I looked in the picture and even compared me to someone (the name of whom I didn’t catch). I had a little fan club. These weren’t kids mind you, but men in their 20s (one had a daughter 5-6 years-old). Americans, despite recent political mess-ups and their declining world image are still very much loved here in Vizag.
For reference sake, there are less than 30 Americans in Vizag District, and all of them except one are Indians who have citizenship for one reason or another (like their parents worked in the US when they were born). When I say that there are no white people in Vizag I’m not kidding; that makes everyone in the group very nice people (who else are we going to be friends with if not each other). Even considering that, I’ve been surprised to find that I would actually be friends with a couple of the people in the program in real life. Maybe my expectations weren’t fair, but I really didn’t think that I would be able to get along with anyone...them being from BYU and all.
The food here is amazing...I will definitely gain weight while I’m here.
I bought some more traditional clothes and I’m excited to finally get into the spirit of being in India. I plan on buying a few more things, but we’ll see how that pans out
Justin
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