Third Draft of A Bus to Dharamsala

A third draft of my personal essay, "A Bus to Dharamsala"

A Bus to Dharamsala:

Me

Life happens on the way to somewhere else.  For me this tends to be quite literal—public transportation.  This is one of those times: 

It was my first time in India. The pretext?  A leadership opportunity for a small international study program offered through my university.  It was a chance to do four months of undergraduate research in Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan Government in Exile and home of the Dalai Lama.  On this particular occasion the “deluxe” night bus that was supposed to take me the horrendous twelve hour journey from Delhi to Dharamsala broke down.

 It was two in the morning.

Varanasi Scene

you are nothing

you do not exist

you are not

real.

i stood on the edge of the flooded Ganges river and tried to marvel at something.  Anything.  The sky was iron gray and the streets were black with human feces and stagnant puddles from the relentless monsoon rain, trying in vain to purge the filth from this hallowed city, Varansi.  The murky river water had risen up and overtaken most of the ancient temples, leaving nothing but some scattered, once- sacred steeples jutting out of the indifferent water.  There was no longer a clear divider between the holy river of Shiva and the rest of us—the living.  

Whatever that means.

i woke up  that morning in a dark, windowless hostel room without a clue for the time, night or day.  Megan and Hailey had disappeared for whatever reason. Into thin air.  i gasped for air and jumped up to hit the lights.  The artificial, orange ambiance was a strange anesthesia.  I war no longer dreaming.  Better to see what it is you are so afraid of, i think, but of course that is not always possible.  i thought to pray and then thought better of it before going out to find the other two students i drug with me on what i thought would be a “great, cultural experience.”

First Draft Monks and Mormons

This is a first draft of the final essay I have in my personal essay collection titled "Monks and Mormons."

What Buddhism is and what it is not:

The Dalai Lama

            Who wouldn’t want to meet the Dalai Lama?  I know I did, long before I had heard of Tibet or knew that he was associated with one of the many sects of Buddhism.  Buddhism was so vogue and sexy to me.  I dreamed of coming to India to learn how to meditate and find peace within myself since no amount of self-help books and cute motivational posters were helping much with the whole life contentment thing I was supposed to be working on.  I guess I wasn’t the only one who sought out Buddhism either, because Western backpackers flooded in from all the corners of the world to find God something else in Mcleod Ganj, home of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

            My first week in India I had the opportunity to see His Holiness.  My group of fellow students and I lined up under the bright, festive prayer flags in the blistering heat among the mix of natives and tourists for hours just to watch him drive past—an important event which I mistakenly called “that Dalai Lama thing” for which I was reprimanded by a local shopkeeper.  I stood in the crowd with eager anticipation, but as initial life in India goes, I had a wave of “Delhi belly” come over me and had to sprint up temple road to find the nearest public squatter (my first public squatter if I might add, and I would tell you all about it but I think I would rather spare you the details).  By the time I made it back the Dalai Lama had long come and gone.  The crowed was dispersing back to the regular routine of life, and I pushed against the current to hear what I missed.  Some of my group members related the experience to me:  Bonnie caught a glimpse of his elbow, Kristen didn’t realize what car he was in until after he past, and lame as the drive by was, I felt disappointed the way you do when you first learn that Santa isn’t real.

An Online Discussion on the Querying Process: And some new friends!

In addition to writing personal essays for my honors thesis, I am also enrolled in a Beginning Novel class where I am working on my first ever novel!  Last week, one of the girls in my class sent out an invite to join a live, online chat session on October 11th with a few published authors discussing the querying process at Annie Laurie Cechini's website.  It started with Michelle Davidson Argyle, talking about where to start the querying process, then Lydia Sharp, who discussed the fundamentals of a query letter, and then was wrapped up with Sierra Gardner, who discussed ways to stay organized and keep tabs on queries.  Ashley, the girl in my class, ensured us that they were friendly people and would be thrilled to share their information to those who are new to this scene, so I decided to check it out.

The archived version of the chat session I participated in is not yet posted, but I will link to it once it is.  Here are a few main things I learned:

The Best American Travel Writing 2010 by Bill Buford

The Best American Travel Writing 2010 by Bill Buford

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As part of thepersonal essays I am writing about my experience in Dharamsala, India this summer, I read selected essays for different models onwriting in this genre. It was hit and miss, but I have comments on a few that stood out to me in terms of content and form.

1.       Appointment in Istanbul by Henry Alford

Content:           This is the first essay in the collection.  The fact that this story took place in Istanbul is beside the point.  The moral of the story could be gained from the first few lines.  “Sometimes what you get is not what you thought you wanted.  I had just broken up with my boyfriend of ten years back in New York, and had flown to Istanbul to sightsee my heartbreak away” (1).  Of course, the narrator does not forget about the personal baggage, which is made quite clear in the last, ironic paragraph, “thanks for helping me forget about my break up” (3). 

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present by Phillip Lopate

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present by Phillip Lopate

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As I have been working on some of my own personal essays from my travels in India, this has been like my Bible. I'm just going to attach some of my responses on the form and content of selected essays. It can be daunting to try and sift through the entire anthology (it is huge, I know, I backpacked it all over Europe and India) so I hope this can help someone:

First Draft of A Bus to Dharamsala

Here is one of the first drafts of my essay, "A Bus to Dharamsala." 

A Bus to Dharamsala:

Me

Life happens on the way to somewhere else.  For me this tends to be quite literal—public transportation.  This is one of those times: 

It was my first time in India. The pretext?  A leadership opportunity for a small international study program offered through my university—a chance to do four months of undergraduate research in Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile and home of the Dalai Lama.  On this particular occasion the “deluxe” night bus that was supposed to take me the horrendous twelve hour journey from Delhi to Dharamsala broke down.

 It was two in the morning.

Things were already not going so well—including (but not limited to) having a drunk man conk out on my shoulder the entire nine hour flight from Amsterdam to India despite attendants desperate efforts to relocate him, getting a hotel door slammed in my face (reservations are apparently irrelevant) at another dead hour of night, having group members inform me last minute of their flight cancelations, and having said group members show up at the airport anyways when their flights were not in fact cancelled with zero means of contacting me.  Now this?

Two in the morning.  A twenty something year old girl with minimal leadership experience, no phone, no skill with any of the hundreds of local languages, and no university permission to be taking a night bus to start with.  Perfect.

1st Place in Stowaway Magazine Photo Contest!

I just posted on my photography blog, but today I found out that I won first place in the photo contest through Stowaway Magazine I applied for last Fall.  Surprise!  Here it is!  No one told me!  I just discovered it as I went searching through looking at  submission guidelines this year for short stories (I'm doing something based off of my host grandma), Ha!

I took this one when I lived in Hawaii working at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I thought that was exciting. 

Shara: Connecting and Sharing

One of the greatest aspects of my academic blog while doing my field work in India was learning how to better connect with people online.  I have come across some great people, including Shara, who is mentioned a few times on this blog.  Shara was an awesome find!  She has a great idea for a new project she is starting, a lot of the ideas coming from my own avatar framework from my Ghana project, and she could use some support! 

I just got this facebook message from her last week and thought I would include it on this blog:

Hi Rachel. How are you doing back in school? Adjusted from the awesome life of a traveler? :-) Just wanted you to know that I am launching a kickstarter project for a book I want to publish of writing and photography. It was thinking about your avatar concept about how we see the world differently with different parts of our personality and careers that gave me kind of an epiphany about how I document the world. When I write, I write about all the sadness and suffering and that's what I "see" in words. When I photograph, I shoot postcard-type images, the beautiful things whether it's architecture or nature and I see beauty in image. My book idea is to balance this duality. So anyway, know that your project really had an impact on me and mine. I'll be launching it next week, but I have a FAQ online if you're interested in checking it out. Once it's live (hopefully next week), if you feel inspired to share it with your friends, I wouldn't complain. :-)

• Project FAQ

  www.skjtravel.net
  

  SKJ Travel
  Share 

Matt's Documentary!

My friend Matt, a fellow student who went with me to Dharmasala, India this last summer, is in the process of making an awesome documentary.  Here is a two minute preview of one aspect of the film.  Watch and enjoy, and make comments directly on the youtube page so that he can try to win a video contest!

Talking with Dr. Burton: Project Updates!

After talking with Dr. Burton, my faculty mentor for my field study project and overseer or my Digital Civilization course contract, I've learned a few things about where I am and where I need to go from here:

First, I need to draft, draft, draft my personal essays!  So far I have been able to do two, but I have a tentative date to be semi finished with them by December 1st so I can get on to the digital aspect of them and create my eBook.  I've been a terrible perfectionist lately, and Dr. Burton had to talk me off the ledge and let me know that I should be sending him stuff early on in the process.  Personal essays are just so vulnerable, and I think that it is scary!  I'm overcoming that though.  It should be a good exercise in general to stop editing like mad, especially if I am going in the wrong direction.

I also learned that as I am drafting these essays, I need to be thinking about audience and basically market my essays- sell my product before it is finished. 

To do this I need to first, believe it is possible, and second, figure out how to do it.

Why I Switched to an eReader (And why Nook Color instead of a Kindle)

In light of some of my realizations about “going digital,” I thought I would dedicate a post to talking about how I converted to a Nook Color eReader.    

Like most of us (I think), I was a little apprehensive about the switch.  It was not an easy decision.  I love the feel of books.  I love the way they smell and being able to scribble in the margins and turn the pages to my heart’s content.  I disliked reading anything on a computer monitor, and was irritated that some books are actually more expensive in an eBook format than the regular used print editions on Amazon.  

So what changed?

Honestly, I think I was forced to reconsider since I was going to India and had fourteen books I was supposed to take with me.  When you plan on backpacking all over India and Europe, carrying that much weight is suicide.  I thought a lot about the Amazon Kindle but ended up getting a Nook Color based on this review that my dad sent me from the Chicago Times.

The review is great, but I thought I would give my own thoughts on owning a Nook Color and how it has changed my reading experience.

Social Media vs Conventional Academia?

Since coming home from India I have given a lot more thought to this whole social media question in an educational setting.  Until recently I did not realize that sometimes my thoughts on the benefits of the emerging digital culture are not just different from conventional forms of learning, but they are in outright opposition to the traditional education model. 

The first week of school I picked up a copy of the Daily Universe and noted the first page article, “BYU professors turning to social media.”  Because this is in my realm of interests and I have had a great experience with it in India and Ghana, I picked it up.

I was disappointed by the article.  I think it was nice that it addressed the growing social media in classroom question, but in many ways it seemed very surface level—making me think that in general we have not fully grasped the benefits linked with social media for educational purposes.  While there were a few references to an online discussion, the article did not seem to hint that this online discussion could be held with others outside of the classroom and in the real world.  Facebook was the only type of media mentioned, which was discredited as a way for teachers to creep on students and even cause some distraction, where other resources, such as academic blogs, were not even mentioned.  Professor Parker, a religious professor, mentioned that he does not “see social media playing a large role” in any of his classes,” and I think many professors are in that line of thinking.

Back in the Game

Me?  Why no, I'm not overwhelmed at all.

I've been really good at letting India take a backseat to all of the rest of the madness going on in my life right now.  Taking classes while trying to tackle course work while simultaneously making meaning of an experience like India is not the easiest load to juggle, but what do you do?  Deadlines are approaching, and I know I will feel a world better once I start.

Starting is the important thing.  After meeting with my faculty mentor, Dr. Burton, I've realized that I need to get my travel essays done a lot earlier than I anticipated.  If I am to publish an eBook, I need to leave myself a lot of room to find an audience, learn formatting, find outlets for my work, and just figure out the logistics of it all.

The cool thing is that this is much more than a honors thesis.  The hard thing is that this is much more than an honors thesis.  But it is going to be so much more rewarding knowing that I am establishing my writing presence on the internet.  This, right along with my novel writing class, has gotten me very excited about learning the ropes of self publishing.

So here is a brief to-do list:

• Email Professor Bennion two solid drafts and my coursework
• Start drafting more travel essays so that I am ahead of schedule
• Figure out if I am going to try for an ORCA grant
• Decide what final outcome, other than my eBook, I would like to have to show what I have learned through my experiences with emerging media.
• Get my personal writing group together to start talking about these topics
• Balance coursework with my current classes
• Keep this blog updated!

Photo credit to comerecommended.com