Rich and Creamy: Ice Creams, Cakes and Fried Chicken

So, before I dive into what's been going on the past few days, let me explain the title of this posting. I have decided that for the time being, I'm going to name the blog posts after ridiculous signage that I encounter here, since we have seen such a multitude of spectacularly absurd signs, that it seems a pity not to share them. At some point, I may run out (e.g. while I'm here at a beach resort for our training), but in the meantime - enjoy!

It has been almost a week since I last wrote, and I think that we are starting to get into the swing of things. We still don't have our two suitcases, but they have been located - Delhi - and an amazing member of the J-PAL staff is going to pick them up from the airport for us (hopefully).

First, though, since a few folks have rightly pointed out that I haven't actually explained what we're doing or who we're working for, a quick summary. Jeff and I are happily employed by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab South Asia (J-PAL SA). J-PAL is part of the Economics Department at MIT, and although you can find a much more detailed explanation on their website (www.povertyactionlab.org), in short, they evaluate international development projects through randomized experiments. So a government body or an NGO will either have an existing program or be starting a new program, and they'll call J-PAL in to see if it's working. And J-PAL will tinker with things, setting up randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and then lovely field RAs (Research Associates) like me and Jeff will implement the experiment (supervised of course by our Principal Investigator(s), or PIs). Once a bunch of data is collected, it gets sent to the RAs (Research Analyst) in Cambridge, who analyze it.  Jeff worked for J-PAL in Cambridge last year as an RA, so he's really excited to get some field experience now that he (mostly) knows the ins and outs of J-PAL.

Doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd expect me to doing? Well, I certainly didn't think that I would end up at J-PAL when Jeff told me that he'd been asked to go to India for a year. I thought I'd teach English or find work at an education NGO, but then I met with the staff at J-PAL (to ask for suggestions for where I could look for work), and they described this really awesome project they were going to be starting up in Bihar, and things took off from there.

Although there's a lot still uncertain, in broad strokes, I will be trying to enhance the effectiveness and political power of elected female village leaders (Elected Women Representatives - EWRs) in Bihar.  Bihar has a reservation system, which means that a third (and soon, half) of the village council seats are set aside for women (otherwise there would be virtually no female political representation). However, J-PAL has done previous studies which have made it clear that the reservation system is not currently accomplishing as much as it was hoped it would.

So, the project that I'm working on is designed to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the reservations, and maximize their effectiveness. What's that's actually going to look like is still TBD. So I'm entering the project at a really cool phase - I get to design the initial qualitative research that will help us determine what specific skills and competencies we want to target (ideally, what the EWRs themselves have identified as important), and then jump into designing the intervention, which will be in the form of some kind of training. Although I'm doing a lot of Econ-ish stuff, there's also a strong educational component. So I get the best of both worlds - a topic that I'm already passionate about (perhaps not the political effectiveness of EWRs specifically, but certainly women's empowerment, civic engagement and education!) and an opportunity to learn a whole host of new skills that I definitely would not have learned otherwise.

I'm very lucky, since I know what project I'm working on in Patna.  Jeff doesn't actually know what he'll be working on (two possible projects were cancelled), but he's kept plenty busy by his bosses. Hopefully one of these days he'll have the time to sit down and talk about what he's up to, since I definitely can't do it justice.

Phew ok I'm going to give you guys a rest - the next entry will be about what we've been up to the past week or so.

We've made it to Chennai! Our bags, not so much.

Jeff and I are delighted to have arrived in Chennai last night. We've had a good night's sleep, got to catch up with Jeff Weaver (one of our good friends from Swarthmore who is also a JPAL RA in India), and have started the various registration processes. 

However, our four suitcases appear to not have fared as well. It turns out that we had a somewhat more complicated journey than we thought we would when I wrote the first post. This was our final itinerary:

• Leave Boston at 10:55pm on June 20
• Arrive Paris 11:35am on June 21
• Leave Paris 1:25pm
• Arrive London 1:45pm
• Leave London 10pm
• Arrive Delhi 11am on June 22
• Leave Delhi 1:30pm
• Arrive Mumbai 4pm
• Leave Mumbai 5:30pm
• Arrive Chennai 7pm

Shockingly enough, we actually arrived only 8 hours later than we had originally planned, which is a complete miracle. However, we changed our flight to London three times (once because of technical issues, which we mentioned in the previous post, and the second time because the flight we were told we had been booked on was oversold, so we had to get a different one), which caused us to change our flight from Mumbai to Chennai three times also.

So it's no small surprise that our bags, possessing (hopefully) less intelligence than ourselves, didn't make the journey. Jeff just spoke with a representative from Virgin, who informed him that two of our bags will be sent to Chennai later today, but the other two will be held in Mumbai for unspecified reasons. The Virgin agent said that we have to go to Mumbai to get them, but we're going to see if we can convince them otherwise (since there are a dozen flights between Mumbai and Chennai every day).

But hey, we're incredibly relieved to be in Chennai. And soon enough we'll have our belongings and will be able to give back to Jeff Weaver the clothing he has very generously loaned us.

So we got in last night about 9pm, after dinner had ended, so we met up with Jeff Weaver and after receiving and misunderstanding directions to a restaurant nearby, we ended up buying snacks at a convenience store - Mad Angels chips and Special cookies (the big winner - chocolate with chocolate filling) and some other kind of simple biscuit that was also tasty. When we're back in the hostel, I'll write again to give you the names, b/c they're hysterical. I'll also write more about the hostel itself.

We had our first Indian breakfast this morning at our hostel, which was super yummy, and then caught an auto rickshaw (a rickshaw with a motorcycle built in, instead of a bicycle) to the IMFR/JPAL offices. We were very nervous about having to negotiate with the rickshaw driver for the first time, but very luckily, two nice women who will be participants in our training but are from a different organization walked by just as we started, so they did the talking and we just hopped in. Our driver didn't actually know how to get to the offices, however, so he ended up taking a lot of backstreets and asking a lot of other rickshaw drivers, but we left 2 hours early, so I didn't mind the extra sightseeing.

When we arrived at the office, we met the lead staff, who were all really nice and helpful. Since we had American rather than Indian passport photos, we were taken to a photo store (called FastPort) to get our photos taken (the guy there asked if we wanted to use a mirror first, and I laughed - I'm grateful to have bathed, and my requirements stop there). While we were waiting for the photos to print, the staff member who was with us asked if we wanted anything, so we went across the street for some fruit juice.

We had tender coconut, which I believe is just young, softer coconut, that hasn't developed the strong flavor that we associate with coconut. It was a really cool experience - the stall was just a simple table piled high with green tender coconuts, and the guy behind the table sliced off the top with a machete and stuck a straw in it, which we drank right out of. It had a much more diluted and less sweet flavor, but it was definitely refreshing. Then once we'd finished off the coconut water inside, we handed the coconuts back and the guy used his machete to slice them in half and carve out the meat, which we scooped out with a chunk of the harder shell. And then we crossed the street and stepped back inside the high tech photo store - just the beginning of a year-long cognitive dissonance we'll be experiencing.

So now we're in the office (which is really nice and air conditioned), waiting to register as employees, which we need to do in order to receive income and pay taxes.

We'll keep you posted on our bags and all of the other antics we get up to...

Bihar is still so far...

Jeff and I are starting this blog to share our life in India with our friends and family. Hopefully, it will be mostly amusing anecdotes and cute pictures. There will probably be some tougher days that we will want to share with you in a carefully filtered and edited way so that you don't worry. But really we just want to represent as accurately as we can what we're up to.

A quick rundown of the next few weeks:

Jeff and I are heading to Chennai, a coastal city in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India, for the Research Associate training. We're getting there a few days early to settle in. Then, I'll fly to Patna and Jeff will probably go to Delhi (plans are TBD and depend on his projects).

In another entry, we'll give you more details on our projects (and more info as the projects themselves develop). We'll also give you some cool historical info on Patna and Bihar (the state that Patna's in), since they have some rich history.

But for now, let's begin with a recap of the past three weeks:

• Jeff proposed (and I naturally dove into wedding planning)
• We hosted a friend for a week, Jeff's family the next week (with sightseeing), and my mom the following week (with packing)
• I went to Swarthmore overnight for wedding stuff
• We shipped our car and most of our stuff to CA, and crammed four suitcases and an assortment of bags full of stuff for India
• Jeff worked full time, except when his family was in town.
• Jeff and I were each sick for a week.

So it's been a crazy time. I'd made all kinds of ambitious plans (studying Hindi 2 hours a day, going to the gym every morning, etc.). Instead, we miraculously managed to get to where we are right now: in Boston Logan International Airport, waiting for our first flight.

This is additionally miraculous because of the news we received this afternoon: that our flight to Heathrow had been cancelled. After many hours of talking to folks and waiting (and some truly spectacular service agents at Virgin Atlantic and Air France), this is our new itinerary:

• Leave Boston at 10:55pm on June 20
• Arrive Paris 11:35am on June 21
• Leave Paris 1:25pm
• Arrive London 1:45pm
• Leave London 9:25pm
• Arrive Mumbai 11am on June 22
• Leave Mumbai 3:20pm
• Arrive Chennai 5:05pm
• Collapse.

Probably a dozen times today though, Jeff and I have turned to each other and remarked on how glad we are that we're doing this year together. Even though this hasn't been the simplest of days, we've managed to have a great deal of fun - from things like our Sbarro receipt that had printed on the bottom, "Thank you very much! Please exercise regularly!" Of course, navigating flight changes will be laughable compared to the challenges awaiting us in India, but it's nice to know that we'll have a good time together no matter what happens.

More to come soon, when we're happily ensconced in the dorms at IFMR in Chennai...