September 20^th

So, the electricity's out. It went out a few minutes ago. It's not Thursday. So I'm huddled up in the living room under the light that has a generator attached doing homework.

They fumigated ACM today. So, instead of working in an environment with disease-carrying mosquitoes, we studied in an environment saturated with poisonous chemicals. Seems like a good trade.

I think around nine of us are sick. Because of the rampant diseases in our midst, our Ganesh holiday on Wednesday is being canceled. We were supposed to have a slumber party at one of the families' houses that overlooks the Ganesh procession. Now, we aren't going to. We have Thursday off this week, though, so some of us are going to get together and do some shopping and sight-seeing.

This evening, my aai brought in a brigade of women to see the damage from last night's balcony accident. I was stretched out working on some homework, and she came in leading three of her friends so they could all see the chunk of rock that fell from the ceiling. It was a big rock.

And then, the men came to see. Apparently, it's kind of the talk of the building...

The Sky is Falling!

Friday, September 17^th

Today, I met His Highness, Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil of Raj Pipla, Rajasthan. We got invited to his palace... he said to just call whenever we want to come visit to give him some notice, and he'd be happy to show us around his palace. Raj Rao, an author, is our Indian Lit professor, and his newest book was released tonight. He is good friends with the prince, so the prince came to the release, and Raj introduced us. It was pretty awesome. I have now met a prince. Also, the prince is a musician. Apparently, the funny accordion-like instrument that I've been seeing is called a harmonia, and it is what Prince Manvendra plays. There's going to be a conference on music at his palace in a couple of weeks, and I'm kind of hoping we can make our visit to his palace coincide with this conference; there are going to be all sorts of amateur and professional performances, and I want to see it.

Other than the book release, today was just kind of chaotic. Sarah and I went to find the travel agent to pay for our train tickets to Goa in October. That in itself was an ordeal. It took four people giving four different sets of different directions to the same place for us to find the travel agency.

After that, we did a little shopping. Our resource guide recommended a jewelry store near the travel agency, so we made a pitstop there, and I dished out almost Rs. 400 on jewelry. Quite the spending spree (it converts to a little over $8). For that amount, I got a pair of silver hoop earrings about the size of a quarter, a ring, and a pair of “diamond” earrings. The salesgirl was pretty insistent that this pair of earrings was made with real diamonds, and hey... if she believes it, I will. They are little hoops designed like a celtic knot/triquetra, and they have tiny little diamond chips in them. They were my “expensive” buy, and they cost about ¾ of what I spent.

Our shopping spree was followed by going back to ACM and playing word games for an hour or so before we left for the book release. It was nice to just hang out with some American kids and play weird nerdy games. The book release was really long: over two hours of sitting in a bookstore listening to Raj and the prince and other people talk. But I was pretty content because I found a copy of Lord of the Rings to read. I wish I had brought one of my copies of the book so I could read it in my nonexistent spare time here. Finding it in the bookstore was like finding a little piece of home. Also, the Elvish Tengwar script is incredibly similar to the Devanagari (Marathi/Hindi/Sanskrit) script. I'm pretty sure Tolkien used Devanagari as inspiration for his Elvish writings like he used the Norse Futhark runes as inspiration for his Dwarvish letters. And, while I was contemplating that, I started thinking about the elves themselves in the book, and the possiblity that they could have been based on Indian people if their language was based on the Indian script. When we think of elves, we tend to picture the blonde haired, blue eyed, light skinned beauties pretty much as Peter Jackson depicted them in his movie. However, I remembered in particular that in Tolkien's book, Legolas (as well as Arwen, Elrond, and others) had dark hair. So I started looking up descriptions of the Elvish characters in the book I had to see if I could find a description of the elves to get a more accurate description of their appearances. As far as I can tell, one doesn't exist. I looked at the passages introducing Gandalf (he's not actually an elf, but the wizards have a historical link to elves, so I checked), Glorfindel, Elrond, Arwen, Legolas, Nimrodel (an elven-maiden in a song Legolas sings), Haldir and the elven scouts, Galadriel and Haldir, and Saruman (another Wizard), and only twice in all those descriptions does Tolkien ever mention skin. In the descriptions of the two girls, Arwen and Nimrodel, he says their “limbs are white.” But, it almost seems at points like Tolkien goes out of his way to avoid mentioning skin, and I find that rather interesting. In the description of Saruman, Tolkien describes grey hair that still has patches of darkest black in it, and he states that Saruman has dark eyes. The elves of Lothlorien are described as having hair reminiscent of shadows. His aversion to mentioning skin is kind of interesting, and I wonder if that was purposeful or just part of Tolkien's writing style. I also noticed that he tends to be rather vague about his characters descriptions.

So... today, I met a prince, and yet Lord of the Rings is my dominant topic of discussion. Good job.

The book opening lasted longer than we expected. It started at 6, and I think it was 8:30 before we got out of there. Kaka Raju (Emily's and my rickshaw driver) was supposed to pick us up at a restaurant across town at 9:30, so we had some finagling to do at that point... there was no way we could count on Indian time to have us fed and ready to go in an hour. So, Emily called Kaka and asked him to be there at 10 instead of 9:30, but his English is kind of sketchy, and our Marathi doesn't really extend to that sort of conversation yet. We also called/texted our host families so they would know where we were. And then at 9:20 he called and said he was waiting outside. At that point, we had ordered dinner and were waiting for it to get there, and he agreed to wait. I had ordered a vegetable stir-fry which turned out to actually be a vegetable-and-lots-of-mushrooms-that-make-me-sick stir-fry, so I ended up passing my plate around to everyone else to eat, and I had rice for dinner.

I got back to my host family's apartment, started writing a blog, and fell asleep halfway through.

Current blister count: 10.

Saturday, September 18^th

News from today: Dengue breakout in ACM! There are about five who have it. Five down, twenty-one to go. Who'll be next?

ACM is apparently spraying the building with insecticides in hopes of keeping the nasty Dengue-carrying mosquitos away from the rest of us. I hope it works, because I'd prefer to keep up my sick-free streak. I'm kind of a fan of not feeling gross.

Sunday, December 19^th

Today, I made breakfast. It was my first experience cooking since I got to India, and it went pretty well. There was no baking powder, so I used baking soda. I'm not entirely sure what kind of flour I used. And the milk... well... they don't separate milk and cream like we do in the states, so it was kind of lumpy and had a solid layer of fat on top. But, the pancakes turned out pretty well. Emily came over to eat pancakes, so it was just a pretty good morning.

Yesterday was the last day of the Hindu holy month, so my family is no longer doing a non-veg fast. Tonight, Aai is making a non-veg feast for the family (and something that isn't dead for me) to celebrate the first day in a month and a half that they can eat meat. Maybe they'll let me invite some of the non-veg ACM students over for dinner sometime, because I think I'm in one of the only families that eats meat.

Today is laundry day, round two. I'm kind of glad I brought so many clothes because I only have to do laundry every couple of weeks. The washing machines are different here. Basically, you fill a machine full of soapy water and clothes, and then it mixes them around. The machines don't fill themselves, and they don't have some special place to put soap so it will mix in later. Then, you manually drain the washing machine, move the clothes to the “dryer.” The dryer basically does what our washers at home do: it spins the clothes really fast so that instead of soaking wet clothes, you have kind wet clothes. Then you hang things to dry. Basically, the whole process is a few steps up from handwashing things in a bucket, but a whole lot more interactive than I'm used to.

Those tiles are 1ftx1ft... and that's the big pieces of the rock once it hit the floor. 

So, my life flashed before my eyes a little bit tonight. I called my parents tonight. They've been out traveling around Arkansas and Missouri and doing some camping, so I haven't been able to chat with them in the mornings like I normally do. I went out and sat on the balcony to talk. We were wrapping up our conversation, and a chunk of concrete bigger than my head displaced itself from the balcony above me and landed right next to me. I got showered by dust and smaller chunks of concrete, and the big piece (after splitting in half) hit me on the bounce. Yes, concrete can bounce. The balcony door was open, and the debris got scattered in through my room, and there were even little grape-sized chunks of concrete all the way into the hallway past my room. I was about a foot away from experiencing my first trip to an Indian hospital. I'm a little terrified to go out on the balcony now. The sky is falling, and I'm still picking it out of my hair! (In all seriousness, though... I really am).

Thursday, September 16^th

Today, I wore my new pants. According to Shridita, they're called harem pants. They're quite comfortable, and I think I might get a few more pairs.

We had Contemporary India and Indian Literature. In Contemporary, we basically just talked about the structure of the Indian government and how it's basically an amalgamation of British and American structure. It has the bicameral government with an upper house and a lower house. It has autonomous states. It has a written constitution. It has three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judiciary. However, the executive and legislative branches are kind of lumped together because the president is part of the congress and things like that. Despite the fact that states are autonomous, they don't have their own constitutions. They just have governors and chief ministers that work off the national constitution.

In Literature, we talked about Train to Pakistan. It basically divided into a few separate arguments. One lead to the statement by our professor that Americans are uncomfortable with ambiguity. The end of the book describes the martyrdom of an unnamed man; however, despite not telling his name, it vaguely describes the main character in the book. A lot of people in the class were uncomfortable with assuming that the martyr was the main character because the author, despite hinting at it, did not unarguably state that it was.

Another topic was selfishness. The martyr in the book martyred himself in saving an entire train full of people. However, he was doing it for one girl on the train and every other saved life was merely a side effect. Part of the class seemed to think that this was a selfish act, and that he wouldn't have done it had it not been for the one person on the train he wanted to save. The other part of the class tended to think that it was selfless of him to give up his life just for the one person. Personally, I don't really see why it matters what his motivation was or even his intentions; it should just matter that he did something. We also discussed love to some extent; more specifically, we talked about the difference between love and possessiveness.

This morning, I learned a very important lesson. My host father is more insistent on feeding me lots of food than my aai. This morning, Baba was in charge of making me breakfast. So, I had two apples. And before I was done with the apples, he put a pot full of oatmeal in front of me... so I had about three bowls worth of oatmeal. And, as I was finishing that, he says, “wait! You will have an omelet!” So I had an omelet, too. I always compare our cat Panda to the fat cat in the Swedish folk story, but now I kind of feel like that. The story is something along the lines of “He ate the gruel, and he ate the pot, and he ate the old woman too... and Skohottintot and Sir Linkinlot and a flock of birds... etc.” (And Dr. Nick would say something about linking that comment to the fact that vegetarians are just cannibals waiting to happen).

Also, today at lunch, my aai made a comment about “when you go back to America, Baba and I will always remember you because of how much you eat.” I think I might need to reevaluate my eating habits a little bit. But then again, it makes them happy that I like their food so much, and it makes me happy to eat their food... so maybe there's not a problem.

My host family is remodeling their kitchen. Today, they showed me cloth samples for the chair cushions and asked my opinions. One of the options was a reddish plaid fabric, and immediately upon seeing it, my unconscious mind recoiled and was like “NOOOOO!!! Not the plaid!!!” Thank you, Monmouth, for giving me an aversion to all things plaid.

Today, at a lovely establishment called Fine Foods on Karve Road, I found red wine vinegar. It's basically an international food store, so it had sushi ingredients, jams, pickles, Greek olives, ice cream, etc. I doubt I'll go there very often because the local food is pretty awesome, and the stuff there was pretty expensive by Indian standards. My 17 ounce bottle of vinegar was about $4.

But today was a really long day. Lots of shopping and walking and long classes. So, I got back to my host family's place, and I went to bed. And then I ate dinner, and now, I'm about to go back to bed. My Aai has been out all day. She went to visit her sister, I think. But that means my Baba cooked dinner. It was really good. I was actually a little bit surprised that he could. He made dal and a potato dish and some spiced rice. And it was a lot spicier than Aai cooks, which I appreciated. However, there was one point at the meal where I had set aside a giant chunk of chili pepper to avoid, and all of a sudden, my mouth was burning, and that part of my plate was cleared. Good times. I've turned into a rather inattentive eater now that I like pretty much everything available.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I'm with a non-veg family. My host family eats meat. A lot of us have had complaints about the way we were situated in host families because of our eating habits. There are at least three people on the trip who are avid meat-eaters, and they were placed in strict vegetarian homes that won't even allow meat in the houses. And then there's me, a 9-year rather strict vegetarian who got placed with a family who eats meat, and I have to worry about whether they're accidentally serving me chicken stock or something like that. We had to fill out questionnaires before we came here, and virtually the only thing I put on mine was “I'm vegetarian, and I would like a veg family.” So it seems like the priorities of the person in charge of housing were very different than the priorities of the students.   

Tuesday, September 14^th

Today, I had lessons... two hours worth of lessons. In high school, I took thirty minutes a week. At Monmouth, I have an hour of lessons a week. Today, I had a two hour lesson. Thursday, I'm going back for another one. It's a lot.

And they aren't like my lessons in the States. I'm not just working on technique and learning new pieces of music. I'm learning an entirely new way of music. New posture. New note names. New scales. New style of playing. New rules. New style of learning. New meter signatures. New name for meter signatures. The only thing that's really the same is the fact that I'm playing a violin, and when I put my finger in a certain place, the same sound comes out.

Before this trip, I thought music was universal; I thought that music was something that I could go to any corner of the world, and it would be understood. I actually still believe that, just in a different way. Music is universal. Language is also universal. However, just because I speak a language doesn't mean I can walk up to any person in the world and communicate with them. We can speak at each other as much as we want, but nothing really passes between. And that is the roadblock I have hit in the world of music. I can play my music, and Vidya can play hers, but the communication between them has not yet opened. My music portrays a mood. Hers evokes one. My music comes from a page that represents the impressions of a composer. Hers comes from her own interpretation of a feeling.

All music is learned aurally here. Nothing is written down. My instructor says a note (in Marathi) and I'm supposed to play it. My instructor says a series of notes, and I have to play them all. There isn't really any set notation because the music is so fluid and changing. But that means that I have no written guide for what I'm supposed to be playing.

Everything is in a scale of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni (like Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti or D E F# G A B C#). My instructor will say something like “Sa Dha Pa Ma Re Pa Ma Re Dha Sa” and I have to immediately associate that with the notes I know and play it for her. And I have to remember it and play it later.

I'm definitely not an auditory learner. Visual learning is my forte. I can read things and remember them immediately and for a long time. I can learn kinesthetically. I can learn by experimenting on things. I am incredibly bad at learning things just by hearing them. In classes, I solve that by taking thorough notes of what professors say, and then remembering what's written in the notes. In everyday life, if you tell me your name, I'm not going to remember it five minutes later unless you're wearing a nametag. The only way I'm making it through lessons is by watching my instructor's fingers move.

Also, my lessons sometimes coincide with the lessons of a ten year old boy. We're learning the same raga of music, so my instructor says it's beneficial for us to play together sometimes. And the boy very much likes to show off his skills. There is nothing more humbling than being shown up by a ten year old.

On another note, I'm up to eight blisters on my feet. And no, that's not my running total. That is the number of blisters that currently occupies my feet. Four of those eight are on the pads of my feet; the only time I've ever blistered the bottoms of my feet was when I went barefoot at Six Flags with Robin in 8^th grade and literally burned my feet to the point of blistering. Now, they're blistered because we walk. All. The. Time. And it isn't like my feet were particularly wimpy when I got here. My feet are pretty tough, what with the walking barefoot across college campus and the farm and everything.

Emily got back from her family's farm today. She'd been there since Friday, so I was the first American she had seen since Thursday. I was the second person thoroughly fluent in English she'd seen since Thursday. She was happy to see me. Apparently, though, she and her family talked about religion this weekend. Emily is Jewish (I think at least four of the 26 people on this trip are Jewish, and that seems like a kind of high ratio to me considering I know more Hindus and Muslims in the states than I know Jews), and she had to explain to her family that she only believes in one god and that her religion forbids shrine worshiping and things like that, and she said that they were actually kind of baffled by that idea. It's strange to go from America where a vast majority of people believe in only one omnipotent god to a place where the common religious construct consists of multiple gods. And I think I'm less phased by that than most of the other people on this trip. I keep my nose in Roman books where polytheism is the accepted norm, so I've been thoroughly exposed to the idea of multiple divinities. Because of that, I don't really find it as unusual as many of the other American students do; I'm more thrown by the theriomorphism of Ganesh than the multiplicity. On that strain, Classics basically just gives me a healthy level of detachment from modern reality, so I'm pretty accepting of any idea.

Today, I talked to Kate about her experiences in Italy so far. She complained about there not being places to pee. Last weekend, when we were traveling to Ellora, we were on buses for about six hours a day. There are 22 girls, and at varying points, we all had to pee. When we did, the bus would pull over for a bathroom break. Ten girls would, without complaint, file off the bus into a corn field or a patch of bushes. All of India is a bathroom, and frankly, it smells like it.

September 13^th, round 2

So... last week, I think, I talked about the fact that other people here are getting lectures about wasting food and not eating enough, and I'm getting the opposite, right? Tonight, at dinner, my host aai offered me another serving of rice, and I turned it down. But, I asked for some extra bhaji (vegetables) instead. So she served me some bhaji, and then asked if I wanted rice again because she gave me too much of the vegetable dish to go with what I had left. So I said sure. And she just smiled and said, “You must put on much weight before we send you back to your parents.” First of all, it's probably true. Second of all, it really is some crazy Indian goal to fatten people up. Third of all, it reminded me of the witch in Hansel and Gretel. I've always said that if I were a fairytale character, I'd be that witch. I guess I came to the right country.

The llama song is now in Latin, all 51 lines of it. That's actually not really all that impressive considering that over 20% of the words are actually “llama.”

September 13, 2010

I left home a month ago today at 4-something in the morning. It's hard to believe that so much time has past. At the same time, though, it feels as if I've been here so much longer. It seems so normal to get up in the morning and hop in a rickshaw and go across town to ACM.

I'm still not used to not having internet all the time, though. It's strange that we've gotten so reliant on internet in so few years. I remember when e-mail was the new big thing that no one knew how to use, and now, we hardly go a day without checking our e-mails.

Today, Molly and I walked about a kilometer to the grocery store. ACM doesn't provide our lunches anymore, and we can't really go home for lunch, so we stocked up on stuff like Indian ramen noodles (called Maggi – they eat them with ketchup here), peanut butter, bread, and cheese (all the cheese here is either made with microbial rennet or marked 100% veg, so I can eat virtually any of it). We have a fridge and stove at ACM, so we can easily make sandwiches and noodles here for lunch. I got at least a week's worth of lunches for about six dollars.

My computer's been on the fritz lately. It dislikes the 220volt outlets. It gets a static buildup, and things just start to malfunction. Sometimes, it's the mouse that won't work. Sometimes the battery won't charge. Sometimes I can fix it by taking the battery out or unplugging it for a while. Sometimes, it just doesn't fix until it wants to. Today, under the instructions of online help after being unable to charge my battery for two days, I played the in-out game with the power-cord for fifteen minutes, and eventually, the charge took.

Today, I started translating The Llama Song into Latin. It's actually kind of pointless considering the general lack of coherence in that song, but pointed things are overrated.