1. Forming

2. Storming

3. Norming

4. Performing

This is the group development model our instructor Nate shared with us on our second day of orientation, before we had ventured beyond the comfort of the Bhaktapur Guest House. As it turned out, our group (Team Kachuwa, or "turtle" in Nepali) found that we experienced each stage of this model in our quest to complete an extensive scavenger hunt that led us deep into the heart of Bhaktapur.

Stage one: We started off enthusiastic, quickly completing the first two tasks with the help of the eager kids in Durbar Square (the tourist-filled center of the city). Morale was high, but bellies were grumbling, so we headed off (way off...) in search of a lunch that was both authentic and clean, which proved to be a most challenging endeavor. After quite a walk, we finally settled on a nice-looking, albeit empty, restaurant where we sat cross-legged in our own personal thached-roof hut and planned our next moves. With the aid of our eager to please waiter whose English was less than polished, we were able to accomplish several more of our tasks.

Stage two: Having filled our stomachs, we set off in hopes of efficiently working our way through the list. Unfortunately, we had wandered far outside the walls of the old city into a much more residential district which made it difficult to complete the majority of our scavenger hunt tasks. We did, however, manage to scare up some red chili peppers and unidentifiable meat parts, which the shopkeeper assured us, were written in Nepali script on our list. This was the official storming stage, due to our lack of progress, tired feet, and declining morale. 

Stage three: Once we re-entered the city and realized the tasks were meant to be completed in the central area of the city, our successes became more and more frequent. Not only did we find out the uses of "gobar" (cow dung) from a group of giggling Nepali school girls, but we also learned about Nepali death rituals and obtained the signatures of 5 different fruit vendors. As the successes came one after another, our group "normed." Our tasks finally completed, we decided to start the 20 minute walk back to the guest house.

Stage four: But our trials were not over yet as we took the wrong route out of Bhaktapur and ended up in the outskirts of Kathmandu. It took over an hour, but we perservered as a group and trusted each other's capabilities as dusk descended upon us. We made it back safe and sound, and lived to tell our tale, thanks to the cohesive nature of our group.

Highlights of the Day:

-Turning stony stares into laughing faces with our offbeat requests

-Montana's refusal to leave the city without knowing what the Nepali death rituals are, despite many strange reactions

-Susanna's opportunity to practice her Nepali with the kind owner of a paper shop

-Dodging water balloons thrown by kids in the narrow alleys of the city

-Relaxing with our group at the end of a long day and sharing stories back at Bhaktapur Guest House.

After hours of endless travel, mindful introductions, delirious laughs, and one too many threatening mosquito bites, I sit. I sit and look upon a serene and calm skyline of our view of Banaras. I sit and consider what in fact has happened over the past few days (of which I am convinced have been weeks). After what I assumed was the natural and inherent shock of seeing a new place on only a few winks of sleep, I have begun to normalize. In additon to the pure excitement of finally being able to settle into a new life here in India, perhaps I will speak to a subject many of my friends have not yet spoken: the reality that I am surrounded by some of the most inspiring and engaging people I have stumbled upon in my eighteen years. Although it seems nearly impossible to find such stimulating people, I suppose it makes sense. All of us are here for some common reason, some inexplicable desire to see more of the world, see more of ourselves, and in a search for the essence and strength of India, improve ourselves and the world around us. We are all here for many of the same reasons and through this common purpose we have already begun to find strength and awe in our mutial ambitions. Tonight we will meet our host families, move into the home in which we will live for the next two months, and bond even more with new and undoubtly beautiful people. Despite the unknown, we already have each other.

When they said, "Now we wash the clothes," I didn't realize that they meant that we would be literally beating the dirt out of soapy cloth while standing knee deep in cold water. I looked down at my sopping apron and pants, which were soaked despite being rolled up over my knees, and wondered why exactly I had decided to get up earlier than usual on my day off, walk for twenty minutes through the fog along the ghats, and do someone else's laundry.

I guess it was mostly because of Kolkata. Last weekend in the city, I was able to visit Mother Teresa's mission. The mission was an incredible place, all clean white walls and smiling sisters, and the small museum held a wealth of information about the incredible nun. It also held her shoes, which were next to the prayer she said when she slid them on in the morning: "Of my free will, dear Jesus, I will follow You wherever you go in search of souls." And then her tiny room, which held a bed, a desk, and a small table for meetings - I tried to imagine living in a space the size of kitchen pantry and failed, and then I turned and noticed the sign over the bookshelf.

"My vocation is love."

Is love my vocation?  I want to say yes, I want to say that my career, the work that I dedicate my life to, is loving others, but is it true? I don't know. I've been in Banaras for four months, and I still haven't knocked on the door of the Mother Teresa house in my city. I've been working hard at the Kiran Center, but as far as service goes, it's not totally selfless - I gain so much more from a day there than I give. I get to talk about a language and a book that I love with people who have become my best friends, I do crafts, I sit in a comfortable classroom and breathe fresh air and hear beautiful music. It isn't very difficult. But Banaras is a place of incredible hardship and unbelievable poverty, and I haven't done a whole lot to confront that. Sure, I give fruit to the kids who tug on the edge of my kurta, and on one frigid night this winter, a few of us distributed wool blankets to people we found sleeping outside. When there's change in my pockets, I drop it into the bowls of the widows begging on the ghats. But I shake my head at them and shrug, empty-handed, just as often, and I don't feel like I've done a whole lot to truly serve the poor of this city.

I guess that's the reason I went to the Mother Teresa house on Tuesday night and asked the man at the door if they needed help.

"Work starts at eight," he said. "Come any day." And on Thursday, I went.

I told myself that it would be nice to walk along the ghats in the morning in a semi-desperate attempt to make getting out of bed a little easier, and it was a nice walk, but unfortuantely it was so foggy that I couldn't see the steps in front of me, much less the river, and a few times I wandered a little closer than I would have liked to groups of people taking their morning baths. When I arrived, the same man was at the door. He smiled at me, told me to grab an apron, and pointed me in the direction of the women's washroom.

"First, we do the laundry," said the French woman who appeared to be in charge. "Then we hang it up, and then we make the chapatis. And then we have chai."

She led me and another volunteer from Japan to the room where they wash the clothes of the women who live in the house. It must be about a hundred women, because it's a pretty big building and there were an awful lot of clothes. In fact, there were so many clothes that they dumped half of them into a metal tub of soapy water, after which Eriko, the other volunteer, and I rolled up our pants, jumped in, and stomped around. Better than a washing machine? Definitely.

Next, I assumed we would scrub the clothes like I do when I do laundry, and so I began rubbing them pretty gently on a stone bench that appeared to be intended for this purpose.

"No, auntie. Not like this. Like this, like this," said one of the Indian women who were working with us, and then she showed me what I was supposed to do: pick up the soapy clothes, raise them over my head, and slam them against the bench in an explosion of suds and water that I hoped furiously was pretty sanitary. I struggled to beat the clothes clean - my arms were sore after about fifteen minutes - but it was fun to watch one woman work on her pile with a piece of wood that resembled a baseball bat.  After rinsing all the clothes, we carried them to the roof in metal buckets and hung them out to dry.

"Now chapatis."

We cut a few vegetables, and I met Roma, who is one of my new favorite people in Banaras. She must be almost eighty, and she is absolutely hilarious. She prances around, swinging her bony elbows and giving instructions in duplicate - "Dekho, dekho, dekho! Look, look, look! Cut, cut, cut, then throw, throw, throw!" We chopped eggplant together, and she taught us all how to tell if the pieces were safe to eat. She would peer through her thick, red-rimmed glasses at the chunks in her hand and say, "Khali kirda, khali kirda, khali kirda! Karab, karab, karab. Black worms, black worms, black worms! Bad, bad, bad."

As soon as the vegetables were ready, we moved into the stone kitchen and started rolling dough for chapatis.

Let me tell you something about chapatis. They are supposed to be round. But making them round is not as easy as it sounds. The women who make fifty a day for their families can roll them in such a way that they spin on the counter as they are flattened into perfect circles . . . Mine are usually mostly triangular.

But. After making about a hundred single-handedly, my chapatis are not only circular, they also spin under the rolling pin in a way that is very graceful and, if I may say so, very impressive, I think. And you know what that means - I don't need a love marriage anymore. See, if you can't make round chapatis, it's hard to arrange a marriage because no man likes to eat his sabji with a irregularly-shaped roti. My parents no longer need to worry; you can begin checking my stars.

After the chapatis were ready, the Sisters gave the other volunteers and me chai and some of our fresh chapatis and we chatted about what brought us to India, to this place, and so on. It was interesting to hear their stories - Marie just finished medical school in France, Berto and Laticia quit their jobs in Spain and came here to figure out what to do with their lives, Eriko came here with some friends who went to Delhi a few weeks ago - and fun to swap advice about restaurants and places to visit in the city.  (I've been here longer than any of them, and it was particularly fun to be something of an expert . . .)

And so ended my morning at the Mother Teresa house. It wasn't the dramatic, serving-the-poor event that I might have been imagining - don't I always have delusions of grandeur when it comes to service? - but it was another one of those times when I realized how important it is sometimes to simply be somewhere for people, whether it's chatting in broken Hindi with the girls who call me "the American auntie" and teach me to wash clothes or letting Roma educate me on eggplants or providing endless entertainment in the kitchen with my chapati escapades. The clothes needed to be washed, people needed something to eat their sabji with, and I was there, so I helped make it happen. That's what the word "service" means to me: be there, see what needs to be done, and help do it.

 What Is Culture?

My understanding of culture has developed throughout my youth, being shaped by the places I have visited and the people I have met.  While many times I felt, especially when traveling internationally, that I was on the sidelines looking in, a tourist simply taking notes of what I saw instead of participating, I noticed that I always took something away from the world I had visited.  Whether it was the wave from a young Amish girl while biking through Amish Country in Pennsylvania or watching a young orphan enjoy my sunglasses in the Dominican Republic, I have become fascinated with the cultural scripts that shape communities, while still recognizing the similarities that create our connectedness as humans.

Culture, in my perspective, can only be loosely defined, its identity being made up of a number of different characteristics.  It can be what we see, smell, hear, touch or taste in a given place.  It can be the customs and traditions of a group of people that are engrained in the past or newly born in the present.   It can also be the thoughts and ideologies, hopes and fears, or questions and answers that a group has in common.

The looseness of this definition is what makes it both fascinating and timeless.  A culture’s ability to grow and change at it’s own pace adds to its uniqueness and is what makes each inherently different.  American culture, for instance, has been constantly remodeling itself since the day it was born, donning a new look every few years.  For others, such as the Mbuti pygmies in Africa, culture has remained very similar to how it did thousands of years ago.  Whether it changes rapidly or remains static, however, the true essence of a culture remains constant.

Perhaps the most fascinating is the effects of when two cultures merge.  Whether it is a forced encounter or a friendly greeting, this sharing of ideas, traditions and values, or acculturation, remains important for various reasons.  First, it causes us to widen our perspective of world and allows us to see our own background in a different light.  Second, it opens up a wealth of knowledge about people, places and things that cannot be gained from any textbook or movie.  Thirdly, and most importantly, it may teach us the importance of the act of acceptance and patience needed to interact with and understand those who are different from us.  The amount of time that these two cultures are exposed to one another and the means of interaction can tend to determine what and how much is shared, however, as I mentioned before, both parties are likely to take something valuable away.

As mentioned in the article “What Is Culture Anyway,” learning about another culture, as well as merging two different cultures together can be an exciting experience.  I look forward to continuing to gain new perspectives from my encounters with new cultures and recognizing the similarities and differences that make all of us truly unique.