It's been a while

Wow- I just realized that I haven't written in a while, so it's about frickin' time, right?

Hm... What have I been up to in the past week or so? Well, last weekend I went on a quest to find a yarn store in Hyderabad with my friends Batia, Rachel and Becca. It was quite a journey. We took an autorickshaw to Lingampalli where we hopped on a train, which goes around the city like a subway, to get to where we wanted to go to in the city. The ride on the train took about an hour, and we got to view the city from a very different perspective, which was nice. Batia had google-mapped the directions to the yarn shop from the Kachiguda Train Station, and we followed them quite well to where we thought that the shop should have been. When we didn't find it we asked for directions in two different stores, and in the second store one of the guys ended up taking us to where it was. I doubt that we would've have found it otherwise. Finding anything here takes a lot of effort. It feels like such a triumph when you actually find what you're looking for. I bought two different types of yarn, and I crotched a hat for myself. (I'll post a photo of it later if I can).

I had a lot of fun this weekend as well. I went to a place called "Shilparamam," which is this "craft village" where all of these local artisans sell their wears. I bought a 100% pashmina shawl and some beautiful fabric to make another salwaar kameez out of. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Then in other exciting news, two of my friends here are major singers, so we spend hours last night and this afternoon singing madrigals together. We're planning on trying to learn a new madrigal each week and performing at the end of the semester. I love it because I haven't sung like that since high school. I didn't realize how much I missed singing in small vocal groups until last night when we were harmonizing together so beautifully. I'll let you know how it goes. I was thinking about recording us on garage band one day and posting it on the blog so you can hear what I've been up to.

Tabla lessons are going really well, so well that I prefer practicing over doing homework and such. It's funny because so far I've preferred doing everything but school work, and I'm not really freaking out about the fact that I'm not doing a ridiculous amount of school work. First of all, the academic system here is so different that it doesn't seem to expect much out of you, and much of what I've experienced so far, i.e. the lectures and assigned readings, has been really boring. They're system doesn't really seem to value active learning as much as we do back in the states. For example, I would rarely go to class/discussion group without having done the reading, but here, you either aren't even expected to do all if any of the readings, and when you do, it doesn't matter because the lectures may be structured so that they just summarize the article you should have read for the class. Needless to say, I'm not as excited about my classes as I was in the beginning. I do like my Hindi class though, but that's probably because there's only three of us and it's very interactive with homework every night.

Also- I played soccer last night. My friend Siury and I were the only girls out there (surprise, surprise), and we totally kicked butt! I stole the ball from the opposing team at least 4 or 5 times. My team won 4-0.

Finally!

Last Friday marked the one month mark of my time here in India. Now I finally feel like I've adjusted to living in India. I don't feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster anymore, I have returned to my equilibrium of general happiness, and it feels so good. Also, I think I'm finally over my nasty head cold that lasted for two weeks.

Anyway, in other news, more exciting news, I bought my first set of tablas yesterday, and I had my first lesson today. Before you know it, I'll be a tabla star!

A night of culture

Last night they treated us to a beautiful performance of Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi Dance. The former being indigenous to Tamil Nadu and the latter from Andhra Pradesh, the state that I'm currently in. The pictures I took are from the invocation they did in which they invoked the god Ganesha, who is known for being a remover of obstacles among other things.

Later on they did a dance in which they narrated parts of the Ramayana, one of the two important Indian epics, and that was my favorite part of their performance. I also was very impressed by the coordination between the dancers and the musicians because I know that it is very difficult for the two to flow so well together.

Girl's Bridge Camp

On Saturday we went to a girl's bridge camp where they teach girls for six months after taking them out of "child labor" and putting them into schools at the appropriate level. I'm not really sure why they took us to this place other than the fact that it opened my eyes to the reality that child labor is still a problem in India, and this organization MVF is doing something to change that. I really enjoyed my time spent there nonetheless because we got to play with the girls and teach them some of our typical childhood games, and they shared some of their dancing and songs with us.

After eating lunch a group of us started playing volleyball in a circle, and I had the best time showing some of the girls how to properly hold your hands to hit the volleyball. Then when they had the courage to do it, it made me feel so proud when they stepped up and hit the ball. One girl even gave me a high five whenever we would hit the ball well.

Afterwards, even though we only spent a couple of hours with the girls, I felt like I forged a real connection with a couple of the girls, and it was hard for me to say goodbye because I knew I would never see them again.

Things that I didn't expect...

We had this assignment to go around taking pictures of some things that surprised us or that we didn't expect about India, so I thought that I'd share some of my pictures with you.

No door knobs. They just have bolts and padlocks on the doors. It's kind of annoying to lock it and unlock it whenever you leave/enter the room.

The Bathroom: It's all in one. I didn't expect that the shower wouldn't be separate from the whole bathroom. Also, it took me about a week to figure out how to get the hot water to work in the shower.
Yeah, we can't flush toilet paper down the toilet ... we throw it away next to the toilet and it's cleared away every morning. Just a bit odd, but I'm used to it now. I definitely worried at first that I might forget and throw t.p. down the toilet out of habit, but I haven't made that mistake yet.
A Lizard... Inside our guest house? Yup.
Garbage out in the open. I expected trash out in the open, but I didn't expect this much.

My new clothes

My tailor made salwaar- kameez. This is probably one of my favorites.
The tailoring only cost 100 Rs. which is about $2.50.

My New Outfit

I know, it took a while for me to post picts. of my new clothes. More will be coming, it just takes forever to upload them. So here I am in one of my new Salwaar Kameez outfits. Pretty sweet, no?

Three Weeks

Now I've been here for three weeks. Crazy, no? It feels like the first two weeks took forever, but this week just flew by. I have now settled on what classes I'll be taking, and I turned in my registration form this afternoon to the Study in India Program Office. I signed up for four classes:
1. Intermediate Hindi
2. Religion, Culture and Society in Medieval India
3. Sociology of Gender
4. Art and Architecture in Medieval India

I feel really excited about all of my classes. I'm still trying to get a handle on what's expected of us academically though, so I've asked a couple of my teachers for their input, but I'm still a bit unclear. First of all, any of the readings that they assigned aren't necessarily required; you're expected to pick a couple and do a presentation on them and write a book review. Then the books aren't that easy to find, and when you do find the readings you have to photocopy them. It's such a new concept for me; rather than buying all their assigned books at a bookstore, they find them and photocopy them. There are many photocopy centers around the campus, so that's not too bad. I just feel like it's a bit wasteful, but at least it's cheaper than buying all the books right?

I don't have many big plans for this weekend because I have a cold, so I'm planning on sleeping as much as I can this weekend, which is difficult because so many people are inviting me to go out with them, and I have to turn them down. I keep telling myself that I'll be here for five months, so it's better that I get well rather than go out and allow my cold to continue bugging me.