PCV: Paid Caribbean Vacation

I kept looking at India through the eyes of a tourist or a traveler. For the first time it was hard to distinguish a difference for me. India made you something different from the time you stepped onto the soil. Everything I saw I thought it was strange. Everything in this country was just so weird and foreign to me. This is the first country where I was like whoa… these people are different.
Their customs and traditions are completely different than anything we are used to. I learned this by staying in hotels without bathrooms, bathrooms without water or toilet paper, and waking up at 5:15am every morning I was there. It was nonstop India. I couldn’t get enough of it. It was so disturbing to the eye. It was watching the most disgusting thing I could have ever imagined and I couldn’t look away. From the kids playing cricket in the streets to the women carrying maimed babies begging for money, I couldn’t stop to sleep. I knew that if I slept, I was missing something and I didn’t know if I would ever get the chance to experience anything so foreign to me again.
India was different. India was strange, but the strangest thing about India wasn’t the lack of beef or booze, it wasn’t the Ganges River or Varanassi, it wasn’t silk shops, rickshaws drivers, or the horrible smells either. The strangest thing about India was me. It was Semester at Sea. We didn’t fit in at all. As we pulled up in our extravagant ship waiting to hit the streets and shop for useless things we didn’t need, we didn’t realize that India is something that we will be able to change during our stay. We can look and judge everything we experienced in India but we can’t change India. We can’t ignore India. It smacks you in the face with breathtaking poverty and makes your day with the smile of a child that hasn’t showered in weeks. Everyone there was in harmony. It was chaos but it was harmony. We were the beat that didn’t fit the rhythm. Therefore, instead of us being progressive and trying to change India, I hope everyone realize how much India changed them because you can’t walk the streets and not be affected. In other places or even at home where you might have to look for the poverty or bad conditions, all you had to do in India was open your eyes. Some people couldn’t handle it. I loved it. It’s not a place I’m dying to go back to, but it’s probably the place I’m the most grateful to have experienced.