When I decided to study abroad, one of the benefits that was pointed out to me- by several people, but the person who is standing out in my mind is my "kindred spirit" Mary King- was that when you want to sit inside and not go anywhere or see anything or do anything, you can. Four months I think is the perfect amount of time to live somewhere else, you can spread out your site-seeing over a period of weeks, every minute does not have to be scheduled with some "activity." So the past few days, we have all been doing just that. Hanging out in our apartment, doing laundry, venturing out for food and that is about it.
This week I was supposed to meet for 5 classes- my social work internship class, 2 blocks of Green India, and 2 blocks of Bollywood. I've gone to two. I told you all about my social work internship class on Monday, and on Tuesday we had our Bollywood course. The class works like this: we meet every Tuesday morning then about four hours later, we watch a movie; then we meet again Thursday morning to talk about the movie. So this morning (its about 1:30PM here now) we were supposed to meet. Today is the last day of the festival for Ganesh, and thusly the streets and the city are going to be CRAZY, CROWDED, and, for young American tourists, potentially Dangerous. The logical thing to do then, is shut down the school. Tuesday afternoon we watched Lagaan, one of the first Bollywood movies to be nominated for an Oscar. In short the movie was about how the British were taxing the Indian villagers, and when the villagers tried to ask for a break on the tax, because they couldn't pay due to a drought and bad farming conditions, the British challenged them to an Indian cricket match. I'm leaving a lot out, but its definitely worth watching if: you have a spare four hours or so, don't mind subtitles, and LOVE random outbursts of song. Bollywood films are abound with music, seriously, its great and I love it, but if you don't like exagerated shows of emotion and completely overblown, completely impossible story lines, Bollywood movies are not for you. Sorry.
My Green India class was cancelled because our teacher is in the States, unable to teach us, so I'll have my first class of that next week.
Last night when we went out to dinner, we were sitting an empty table away from a Bollywood Actress. Apparently she is a huge deal, but I don't know her name and we were very polite and didn't stare, but Ishan tipped us off, so we all stole a quick glance at her.
This isn't the most exciting post I know, but I promise I'll be more exciting sometime soon.
Finally I want to throw a link out there for anyone who wants to do some reading about micro finance and the importance of financially empowering women. I got this in an email from the Champlain Women's Group and really enjoyed it so I thought I'd share: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1.
Enjoy!
Peace, Love, Elephant Kisses- Emmy
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I can't believe you're apologizing (wrongly) for a less then exciting post. I think it fabulous you sort-of-kind-of dined with fame! You must compile a list of your fav bollywood movies to watch upon return. If you end up back in the RA scene, educational program!
ReplyDeleteIf not, we'll watch it with some pretty hoers d'vors. Is that how you spell the appetizer word? You're cultured...you should know this...
Enjoy clean clothes. Muah bye!
Hi Emmy, Your Dad is here helping me to get from one up-date to the next. I am glad to know you are enjoying India and seeing so much more of Mumbai than I did. We had a tourist guide take us around the only day we had there and then off to Belgum. The place I remember is the garden on the top of the water tank. I hope there is one still there, it was so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteYour Dad has work to teach me how much I could do on the computer and my memory is not good.