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Elle Kunerth spent 10 months in India as exchange student

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Elle Kunerth has an entire photo album filled with pictures of the things she saw, people she knew and the places she went during her ten months in India.

"There were definitely a lot of hard times but it was a good experience," she said, sitting on a couch in the living room of her home in New Ulm. "It's kind of obvious to say this -- but it made me appreciate what I have."

And to think Elle, a vegetarian, was originally supposed to go either to France or to Germany as a Rotary Exchange student.

As luck would have it, the French Rotary has a policy against vegetarian exchange students because food, including meat, is an important part of French culture. There wasn't a host family that could accommodate her in Germany or in Turkey for that matter, either.

It came to a choice among countries like Thailand or South Africa or India. Elle chose India. She left New Ulm in August and returned home in April.

Elle graduated from New Ulm Cathedral High School in 2002. At the time, she decided to travel instead of going to college because she wasn't sure what she wanted to study. She had already been to France and Spain through other student exchange programs.

The New Ulm Rotary Club paid for half of her travel expenses. The Rotary Youth Exchange is designed to foster international relations.

The trip took 22 hours by plane, ultimately landing in Nagpur in central India. Her first host family met her at the Nagpur airport and drove another three hours to Amrabatz, population 1 million people, which is small by Indian standards, she said.

Unlike Minnesota, India has a very hot climate. The coolest temperatures are often in the 70s at night. Elle arrived at the end of India's monsoon season, in which it rains constantly for months on end. Summer began shortly after monsoon season ended. The temperatures shot up to 120 degrees during the day.

The way most Indians live would be considered primitive by American standards because the slums are heavily populated. Many cities in India don't have sewers, and many Indians throw their garbage out their windows. The air in many cities in India is dirty and hard to breathe because of pollution.

Most Indians don't have air conditioning, only electric fans and there's no such thing as a shower, only a bucket and a cup. There's no hot water, either, and nobody but the most wealthy have toilets.

The roles of women in Indian society is one thing that Elle had a particularly tough time accepting. Indian women have few choices and do little except go to the local market and cook food. Men and women in India don't talk to each other unless they are married. Women are not allowed out at night unless they are escorted. Marriages are arranged by families. Since Hindus don't drink alcohol or eat meat, there isn't much of a night life except in large cities. However, her host families were very involved with the Rotary Club and hosted parties at their houses. Young people spend most of their time concentrating on their studies because India is a very competitive country.

"You realize people have their daily lives like we do," she said.

Kunerth found some satisfaction in dispelling some myths in India about Americans and U.S politics. One of her host mothers taught her how to make a few Indian dishes. Elle spent a lot of her time at school studying yoga, learning Indian body art mehndi, Indian dance and learning to speak Hindi, India's national language.

She also found quite a bit of enjoyment in the tour of India that a group of Rotary exchange students took during October. The group, comprised of Germans, French, Australians, Mexicans, Brazilians and Americans, spent a total of four weeks in the southern and northern parts of India. They saw several Hindu temples, beaches, spent the night in the Indian desert after a day on a camel, went whitewater rafting in the Ganges River, paragliding in the Himilayan Mountains and visited the cities of Delhi, Bangalore, Mysore, Jaipur and Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located.

Elle has several gold crystal-encrusted ankle and wrist bangles, six Indian sari dresses, a blanket, a silk tapestry, a set of brass goblets from the 18th century, a water vessel filled with Ganges water, two brass figurines of the Hindu god Shiva and a brass elephant figurine, which now decorate her bedroom.