My Aai was worried at how little food I ate tonight. I only made it through three full plates. I knew I shouldn't have stopped on the way home to have snacks with Sarah today... twice. It really cut into my appetite for dinner.
Aai also asked if I had washed the t-shirt I'm wearing recently. I went with the typical ambiguous Indian response of “yes, I have washed this shirt before.”
Today was for jewelry shopping. I bought three pairs of earrings. One is a pair of small silver hoops. One is a pair of medium sized silver hoops. The third pair is amethyst with fourteen good sized stones in them. The three pairs of earrings set me back $17.60. Sometimes, India is really good to me.
Tomorrow is for sari shopping. One for Yemna. One for me. I originally wasn't going to get myself a sari because my host family got me one as a present in the beginning. However, in Kerala, we saw funeral saris... and they look like Greek togas, basically. So now I want one.
We're getting to the end of the semester. Today, we finished Anthropology. Tomorrow is our last day of Marathi. Thursday is our last day of Politics. Friday, we finish off our Literature class. Saturday, we're having a farewell dinner. And then next Tuesday and Wednesday, we take finals and turn in projects. And then home. Yay home.
For the farewell dinner, we all dress up in saris and have dinner. Some of us give recitals. I'll play violin. Some people are going to dance. Sam's going to play his guitar. I think we're all really looking forward to it. The down side is that I can't wear a sari when I play the violin. It's just not possible. So I'm going to have to explain to my Aai that I can't actually wear the nice, pretty thing she got for me specifically to wear at the farewell dinner. Laura doesn't have a sari, though, and she's about my size (only ten inches taller), so she might wear mine. At least that way, someone will get to wear it.
On the Indian grading system... it's different than in America. They work on the premise that 100% is perfect. Perfection is unattainable, so no one gets 100%. The next step is 90%... that's really close to perfect, which is also fairly implausible, so no one really gets that, either. Then there's 80%... that's what really good papers or assignments get. So the students of ACM are comforted in thinking that on the Indian scale, when we get 8/10, that's really good. And then we realize that when India sends our grades to America, 80% is still going to be a C+ in America. We hope they fix that.
Also, there's Raj. He's our literature professor. We still don't know what he wants in our papers. Our assignment prompt is something along the lines of “write a couple of pages on the books we read.” We've turned in 7 of them by now, and when he hands them back, they have grades, but no comments. Sometimes, you'll turn in a really well-written literary analysis and get a 70% and not know why. Sometimes, you'll turn in a really badly done summary and get a 90% and also not know why. Sometimes, he disagrees with your opinion, so you lose points. It's rather frustrating.
As I'm sitting here trying to see if everything I have will fit in my suitcases, I can't help but question my judgment in some of my purchases. Three months ago, I somehow thought that buying a large, solid marble mortar and pestle was a good life decision. Now, as I mentally calculate the weight and volume of everything I have to fit into a small amount of space, it seems like less of a good decision. Marble is heavy. And it is large. On the plus side, I'm 97.2% sure that the flight home won't break it.
No comments:
Post a Comment