Hey all! I've meant to leave an update on my activities this summer. Here's a basic breakdown of my days:
Monday through Friday I had school every morning from 9 AM to 1 PM. The American Institute of Indian Studies is an immersion program, so I spent all morning speaking - or attempting to speak - Urdu. Though I still have a long way to go (I can't understand normal speed conversations yet), I have learned a lot and I speak much better than I did on arrival. I had three classmates, all male, at the intermediate level.
Our lunches were provided by the institute in the form of salty, over-cooked mush. Most of us had assumed that we would lose weight in India, but apart from my one weekend in Rishikesh, I don't think I've lost an ounce. One reason is the incessant stream of carbs I'm putting in my body, but also it's the sedentary life I've had to adopt. School, work, and homework have done nothing for my cardiovascular health.
One thing that has helped is that my friend Melissa and I decided to learn a Bollywood dance while we were here. After a few classes our teacher dropped off the planet and we never found her again, but not before we'd covered enough basics to finish the dance. Problem was, it was too racy for a conservative Muslim school, so at the last minute another student at AIIS who had done Bollywood dancing for years choreographed a simple number for us. We performed for the cultural presentation and it went really well!
In the afternoons I do one of several things:
I go to my internship with Sanchetna (sanchetnaindia.com) where I have been working on their employee manuals and now a presentation for the website which should premiere sometime this week. Sanchetna is a micro-finance organization that gives micro-loans to rural women to start dairies.
Sometimes I just go home and do homework but shop along the way. I'm often buying eggs and fruit along for breakfast the next day. I love love love shopping in India! I love markets, I love bazaars, I love fruit-wallas and subzi-wallas and bakeries. I love bargaining, I love street food, I love the intense colors and the smells of the spice markets and the constant activity and the sparkling bangles.
Or, I go to my tailor and have her do some custom work for me. This has been a mixed bag of experiences. It started out really good but our relationship has soured. She decided since I had not complained about price she should start charging me top dollar. When I put up a fuss she had a million excuses. And the final work she did was not up to par. Grrr....
Aaj kul...
Now the program is over and all my roommates have left. I'm still living in the house but instead of 8 people it's just me and 3 or 4 mice with the run of the place. I have booked a tutor to teach me how to read Devanagiri (the Hindi script) 2 hour a day this week. I really want to be able to read signs for crying out loud!
I'm continuing to work at my internship as well. I have a few friends in Lucknow and a ton of material to read and write, so there's no danger of me being bored. Those of you who know me best know that boredom simply does not occur. There is always something I can fill my time with. If I'm idle, it's by choice.
The end of this week I'll either be in Rishikesh or Mumbai. Plans keep shifting according to which of my friends is available.
Would I do it again?
Given the choice between not doing the Urdu program in Lucknow at all, and doing it this way, I would do it. However if I could change several things about this summer, I would. I found a lot of things frustrating and wish I had known in advance how things would work out so I could have planned better.
Housing is one major one. We have had a difficult time with our landlady. It has ranged from overcharging to not providing promised services to a dangerous German Shepherd that does her job of guarding the house VERY well! I paid a lot for this housing even by my American standards, and I would have sought different accommodations if I had known in advance this would be the deal.
I would also not recommend the Urdu program to beginning or intermediate speakers. I think advanced students had a good time of it, but the pedagogy for intermediate learners was lacking. We stumbled along, wasting a lot of time. I expected my skills to have increased much more this summer than they did. I still improved, without question, but could have done so much more if the program had been run better.
I would seek an internship with an organization that provided me direct interaction with poor women. I have been sitting in an office, at a computer...the very thing I swore I would not do again once I went back to grad school. The lifestyle doesn't suit me, and I have had no chance to contact the women I wanted to interview for research purposes.
Things that have been great are my roommate, Christina Welsch, who is a long-lost soul twin. We continued to discover that we had a ridiculous amount in common, and the things we didn't share, we could engage in frank discussion about.
Did I mention I love the shopping?
I also truly sincerely love India. It is a crazy, dirty, screwed up place and all the richer for it. I love that little things don't matter, big things do, and if you don't want to do it, you can pay someone (ie laundry goes to the dhobi, a cook comes to make meals, a cleaning lady comes to sweep, an auto rickshaw will pick you up)... For every negative encounter, I have had four beautiful ones. It's nice to live in a place where politeness is neither a form of deception nor a barrier against emotional vulnerability.
The end of this week I'll be off again, and I'll find some time to document my gypsy wanderings. Until then... Hoda Hafiz.
Our lunches were provided by the institute in the form of salty, over-cooked mush. Most of us had assumed that we would lose weight in India, but apart from my one weekend in Rishikesh, I don't think I've lost an ounce. One reason is the incessant stream of carbs I'm putting in my body, but also it's the sedentary life I've had to adopt. School, work, and homework have done nothing for my cardiovascular health.
In the afternoons I do one of several things:
I go to my internship with Sanchetna (sanchetnaindia.com) where I have been working on their employee manuals and now a presentation for the website which should premiere sometime this week. Sanchetna is a micro-finance organization that gives micro-loans to rural women to start dairies.
Or, I go to my tailor and have her do some custom work for me. This has been a mixed bag of experiences. It started out really good but our relationship has soured. She decided since I had not complained about price she should start charging me top dollar. When I put up a fuss she had a million excuses. And the final work she did was not up to par. Grrr....
Aaj kul...
Now the program is over and all my roommates have left. I'm still living in the house but instead of 8 people it's just me and 3 or 4 mice with the run of the place. I have booked a tutor to teach me how to read Devanagiri (the Hindi script) 2 hour a day this week. I really want to be able to read signs for crying out loud!
I'm continuing to work at my internship as well. I have a few friends in Lucknow and a ton of material to read and write, so there's no danger of me being bored. Those of you who know me best know that boredom simply does not occur. There is always something I can fill my time with. If I'm idle, it's by choice.
The end of this week I'll either be in Rishikesh or Mumbai. Plans keep shifting according to which of my friends is available.
Would I do it again?
Given the choice between not doing the Urdu program in Lucknow at all, and doing it this way, I would do it. However if I could change several things about this summer, I would. I found a lot of things frustrating and wish I had known in advance how things would work out so I could have planned better.
Housing is one major one. We have had a difficult time with our landlady. It has ranged from overcharging to not providing promised services to a dangerous German Shepherd that does her job of guarding the house VERY well! I paid a lot for this housing even by my American standards, and I would have sought different accommodations if I had known in advance this would be the deal.
I would also not recommend the Urdu program to beginning or intermediate speakers. I think advanced students had a good time of it, but the pedagogy for intermediate learners was lacking. We stumbled along, wasting a lot of time. I expected my skills to have increased much more this summer than they did. I still improved, without question, but could have done so much more if the program had been run better.
I would seek an internship with an organization that provided me direct interaction with poor women. I have been sitting in an office, at a computer...the very thing I swore I would not do again once I went back to grad school. The lifestyle doesn't suit me, and I have had no chance to contact the women I wanted to interview for research purposes.
Did I mention I love the shopping?
The end of this week I'll be off again, and I'll find some time to document my gypsy wanderings. Until then... Hoda Hafiz.
It sounds wonderful and exciting-or at least exciting:} I hope you can do another program, that is better, soon.. You look so happy:)
ReplyDeleteKarolin