Jet-Lag and the USO

12 June 10AM

Feeling much better about things in general now. For one thing, I got my iPod to work. Well, I didn’t, Russell did (he’s from UT Dallas) – he just reset it and it worked again. Trying to get over jet-lag still, but it’s coming along. The food is really good here. And it’s nice that I can eat without having to worry what’s in it – which is a rarity in the states. I’ve also been avoiding eating any dairy or anything that might not be pasteurized – just to make sure that my stomach can handle it.

13 June 7:00 AM

Our first full day in India we spent traveling, again. We hopped a flight from Delhi to Udaipur, which was about an hour and a half, and they gave us food, which was nice. Rather good, too. Kiran (our coordinator and local of Udaipur) gave us some downtime in the afternoon, which I promptly used for internet and a terribly long nap. Jet-lag is killer. We reconvened at around 7/7:30pm and went to a “Light and Sound Show” which was exactly as advertised. It was a monument and old fort where they used gelled lights and a sound system to tell the story of a local hero (I forgot his name, I’m terrible). But, of course, we don’t speak Hindi, so the four of us sat there watching lights blinking trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Dinner we went to a resort called the Shilpi.

Now, the hotel that we are staying at is called the Hilltop Palace, and it quite literally is. Everything is marble – since that’s one of the specialties of Udaipur. The rooms are huge and nicely furnished – better than the night before. And I have this amazing balcony that faces the lake. It’s breathtaking to wake up to – and not a little bit reassuring that this trip was worth it. In the middle of a lake are a few natural islands. One is for tourists (the big one) and another is where they built the Udaipur Solar Observaotry – the lake helps reduce heat affecting the telescope.

We went to the USO yesterday – and that island is painfully cute. No really, it’s adorable. They have put a lot of landscaping on it: grass, palm trees, lots of flowers. And while it’s maybe 1000 ft^2, you wouldn’t mind sorta sitting there for a while. I’ve decided I want an island like that, maybe a bit bigger. They also showed us the telescopes located there – which were cool since I’ve never been to a solar observatory, just a normal stellar one.

Then we went to the adaptive optics lab (which was kinda neat since I really knew what they were talking about because of my instrumentation class first semester – it was just as Scowen had described). We went to another solar telescope that has 5 other counterparts all over the world such that they all track and monitor the sun, and are able to compare (this is the GONG program). We had to kinda hike to get to the this and it was painfully hot – but thank God for air conditioning inside of the little trailer that houses the instrument.

Lunch was so incredibly huge. Kiran invited everyone from the USO that she could find, which meant that there were probably 20 of us. It felt like freshman year again, trying to get that many people to do the same thing. But the food was great and we all shared and again, I didn’t have to worry about what I was eating. I felt bad for Sonnett, though (she is the other female intern, from University of Hawaii) – she is mostly, but not fully, lactose intolerant so can’t eat anything with yogurt or cream in it, which is the majority of Indian dishes.

The day before we left for India, we were told that we’ve been asked to give presentations on our research. Now, out of the four interns, I think I was the only one who even had a clue what my project was going to be on this summer, since my mentor gave me a paper of his to read and a supplementary book. So, the other three talked about the research that they did at their home universities, I decided to actually speak on this paper that I had read for the summer (partially to force me to really understand it, also because I didn’t really want to talk about the short project I was working on this semester at ASU). Our talks were supposed to start at 2:30pm but we didn't actually start until 4:30pm, since lunch took a little longer than we had anticipated. Mine went okay, although I have to say I was nervous. It was a theoretical paper on pulsars – with a lot of math and geometry. Trying to explain this to a lot of solar people meant that I got a lot blank looks since this wasn’t their specialty. Which was fine – it meant no questions.

Since I was up until 2am the night before finishing my presentation, I was having a very long day. And not only did the four of us give presentations, but 5 students from the USO did as well. Afterwards, we went to this see weird little puppet show/folk dance at the Bhartiya Lok Kala Mandal, which is kinda popular around here. To be honest, the puppets were a little creepy – especially when they (not kidding) had a story about a man and woman, where the woman would change into a man to follow her husband around…but there were times when it looked like the puppets were…uhh….getting into it. I’m not kidding. It wasn’t just my fifteen-year-old humor. The folk dancing was by far the best part (it was interesting enough to keep me awake since I was dying with the heat and general not sleeping). First was a Kalbeliya, where a woman had bells all over her arms, legs, and feet and would play them moving in different ways. The other dance was called a Bhavai – a man balanced different sized pots on his head, which extended about one and a half times his own height into the air. After a few pots were added, he would do different balancing tricks, like walk on cups or a bowl, dance, or walk on glass. He was, actually, rather cute because every time he would stand up after more pots were added – and they didn’t fall – he had a big smile on his face, as if he was impressed with himself.

That was essentially our day.

Today we go to Mt. Abu Observatory, which is a 5 hour drive and up to about 5500 ft elevation. Should be a little cooler up there. It’s rather humid here, and gets to be about 100 degrees F during the day, which can be rather uncomfortable. We, thankfully, have air conditioning in our hotel – but that’s by far a luxury. The locals just tend to sit in the shade. A lot of them were bathing in the lake when we were motorboating to the observatory – they were also washing their clothes.

One thing about here that is crazy: there are people everywhere. In rundown buildings that we would just ignore, you look, and there are people living there. In any extended amount of shade, there are people. Walking, riding bikes, riding donkeys – just sitting. There are so many people. I’ve heard that Bangalore is worse.