So today I had my first test. Let me tell you something about me and this test. First off the test was simple he gave us the three questions on the test the week before so we could study only what was necessary. Great wonderful.... except that my motivation level for the past few weeks has be zero, zip, nada! So I found everything and anything to do other then study. SOOOOO i finally get to last night and realize I have no choice at this point, i HAVE to study. So i end up just writing out what i want my answers to look like...pretty much write my notes in paragraph forms and then I made note cards off of that. well get to class today and i'm like man i'm never gonna remember any of this...i don't know how but i felt like i wrote my notes directly onto the paper. I was impressed with myself...just thought you all should know that. oh and tests here are just essay tests usually but they want pages of information. which well i write a lot at home so i think i'll be good. the Indian students told us somewhere between 6-8 pages aka fill up the blue book. i got about 7 pages so i'm pretty happy with it. apparently though a lot of American students have never taken essay tests before and they were all really confused and couldn't figure out how you write so much... thank you SIUC professors for essay tests as much as I hate them, I'm one step ahead of a lot of students on tests here in India.
Although I lucked out too this semester because the majority of my teachers dispise tests and think it tells them nothing about what's in your head so we have papers and power point presentations instead...ok i can do that.
ok not much else goin on here had a red alert bandh on saturday but nothing happened. Friday went to an ashram, spiritual center focused on meditation....wellll they were spiritual all right. I think i shall call them a cult. not all ashrams are like that but this one man those people were nuts and im not sure how many times the guy told me to repeat...I AM A SOUL! crazy people seriously. and sunday melissa stacy and i went to the mall and i got some much needed clothing...i can't tell you how often i do laundry here cuz i don't have much clothing with me (on purpose) so i tend to have to wash often. oh and we went to the book store and wellllll i got a nickolas sparks book but they didn't really have a young adult section...which tends to be some of my favorite books to read and i didn't know half the authors so i just kinda gave up. i think i might get some books on amazon and have them sent here. there are some books in the common room but most are about india and or they are really sad or things i'm really disinterested in reading. so we'll see that's all i got for now.
miss you all and love you lots.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Chai
Social Science Canteen
Ok so I was just talkin to the brotha man and realized I have never told you all about tea time. Well first of the sayin here is any time is chai time. So if you want tea you can just go to one of the many canteen's on campus. So a cantene is kinda like a road side kitchen for snack foods and most importantly chai. Now when i say we are gonna have a cup of tea it's not like at home where we have mugs...we use the little tea cups for tea.
F-Hostel Canteen
So everyday in our building we have tea time from 4-5:30 i believe and you have chai and biscuits or crackers depending on the day and sit around and chat with whoever showed up. topics go anywhere from starting up a book club to travel planning. today we talked about how dresses never fit and had the oh so common debate about which is better little boobs or big ones .... always entertaining. it's different then meal times when people are either sitting for a long time eating or running in eating quickly and running off to class. if you show up to tea time you have nothing to run to or be done at the moment so you just sit around and talk.
Now the next question i'm sure is on your mind is it anything like chai in the states...well it's tea. but ultimately it's pretty different... and they both are good in different ways. Chai here is first off very sweet. But unlike at home it's not made from a chai tea bag or mix. u start with boiling water and put different spices in it and let them flavor the water first. then you add hot milk and then you put in a black tea bag and sugar in the end... that's what i remember when i asked how it was made at least. the tea bag goes in last because otherwise you end up with straight up black tea which has a bland flavoring to it. if you let the seasonings boil for a few minutes the flavors are sucked out into the water. you can control how strong the tea is as well if you add the tea in last, some people don't like their tea as strong although unless you are making it yourself you take what you get.
Most of us are addicted to chai time and watch our clocks for 4 to roll around maybe it's the caffeine and maybe it's the lack of anything else to do but either way chai time is my favorite time of day for sure.
Sumana said she was going to teach us to make it at some point and abhishek gave us a recipe in the last email so if you would like it i'd be happy to send it to you and u can try it out.... or wait and i'll make it for you when i get home.
North Campus Jai Telangana
We also had a bunch of telangana painting show up on the roads on campus. there was a rally last weekend about it but i haven't really heard how that went. the day trip we took last weekend to warengal is where the rally was supposed to end on sunday. we went on friday tho so nothing hug was going on other then people stopping traffic and singing some song, but if they were asked to moved they didn't get angry or anything they just moved. we also drove through osmania, which is where most of the students pushing the telangana movement are at but it was calm and we didn't have any problems.
South Campus Jai Telangana
Love and miss you all
Ok so I was just talkin to the brotha man and realized I have never told you all about tea time. Well first of the sayin here is any time is chai time. So if you want tea you can just go to one of the many canteen's on campus. So a cantene is kinda like a road side kitchen for snack foods and most importantly chai. Now when i say we are gonna have a cup of tea it's not like at home where we have mugs...we use the little tea cups for tea.
F-Hostel Canteen
So everyday in our building we have tea time from 4-5:30 i believe and you have chai and biscuits or crackers depending on the day and sit around and chat with whoever showed up. topics go anywhere from starting up a book club to travel planning. today we talked about how dresses never fit and had the oh so common debate about which is better little boobs or big ones .... always entertaining. it's different then meal times when people are either sitting for a long time eating or running in eating quickly and running off to class. if you show up to tea time you have nothing to run to or be done at the moment so you just sit around and talk.
Now the next question i'm sure is on your mind is it anything like chai in the states...well it's tea. but ultimately it's pretty different... and they both are good in different ways. Chai here is first off very sweet. But unlike at home it's not made from a chai tea bag or mix. u start with boiling water and put different spices in it and let them flavor the water first. then you add hot milk and then you put in a black tea bag and sugar in the end... that's what i remember when i asked how it was made at least. the tea bag goes in last because otherwise you end up with straight up black tea which has a bland flavoring to it. if you let the seasonings boil for a few minutes the flavors are sucked out into the water. you can control how strong the tea is as well if you add the tea in last, some people don't like their tea as strong although unless you are making it yourself you take what you get.
Most of us are addicted to chai time and watch our clocks for 4 to roll around maybe it's the caffeine and maybe it's the lack of anything else to do but either way chai time is my favorite time of day for sure.
Sumana said she was going to teach us to make it at some point and abhishek gave us a recipe in the last email so if you would like it i'd be happy to send it to you and u can try it out.... or wait and i'll make it for you when i get home.
North Campus Jai Telangana
We also had a bunch of telangana painting show up on the roads on campus. there was a rally last weekend about it but i haven't really heard how that went. the day trip we took last weekend to warengal is where the rally was supposed to end on sunday. we went on friday tho so nothing hug was going on other then people stopping traffic and singing some song, but if they were asked to moved they didn't get angry or anything they just moved. we also drove through osmania, which is where most of the students pushing the telangana movement are at but it was calm and we didn't have any problems.
South Campus Jai Telangana
Love and miss you all
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Modern Indian Art
Ok so adding to yesterday I got the power points from modern indian art and i came to the conclusion... I really like Thomas Hickey as an artist. I was saving a few of the pictures to my computer to attempt to upload them on to this here blog and every picture I saved was by thomas hickey.
This one is Thomas Hickey, "Portrait of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, Surveyor-General of India with his Attendants” Oil on Canvas, 1816.
Thomas Hickey, “Jemdanee Bibi of William Hickey"
Oil on Canvas,Calcutta 1787
Oh a Bibi is a Dancer/Harlem lady and these women were the only women in society at the time who would show their faces in public. they were exotic and captured the british males attention. many bibi's became mistresses or wives to the british officials. the marriages were not condoned by the churches however so the bibi's and their illegitimate children were ostracized usually. Many of the officials had family's back in England as well.
Thomas Daniell, “The Nautch”
Watercolor, 1810
(not Hickey but still very beautiful... very different from hickey's style too being that it is focused ont he entire picture of an event and not just on a single person)
Thomas Hickey, "Portrait of Muizuddin, Son of the defeated and Slain Tipu Sultan of Mysore?"
Oil on Canvas, 1801
Just thought i'd share some good art with you all enjoy
This one is Thomas Hickey, "Portrait of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, Surveyor-General of India with his Attendants” Oil on Canvas, 1816.
Thomas Hickey, “Jemdanee Bibi of William Hickey"
Oil on Canvas,Calcutta 1787
Oh a Bibi is a Dancer/Harlem lady and these women were the only women in society at the time who would show their faces in public. they were exotic and captured the british males attention. many bibi's became mistresses or wives to the british officials. the marriages were not condoned by the churches however so the bibi's and their illegitimate children were ostracized usually. Many of the officials had family's back in England as well.
Thomas Daniell, “The Nautch”
Watercolor, 1810
(not Hickey but still very beautiful... very different from hickey's style too being that it is focused ont he entire picture of an event and not just on a single person)
Thomas Hickey, "Portrait of Muizuddin, Son of the defeated and Slain Tipu Sultan of Mysore?"
Oil on Canvas, 1801
Just thought i'd share some good art with you all enjoy
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Classes
So it's Tuesday and that means woman's studies and Modern Indian Art. My two favorite classes, especially since woman's studies actually met today! Ok time out, why do you spell especially with an s? i always spell it with an x which i decided is how it should be spelled. time in so woman studies rocks my sock she pretty much told us today we are going to study a little of all indian women culture and its history and focus on things we decide are interesting, she'd rather not make us learn about things that bore us. plus she doesnt believe in tests so instead we are going to each have 2 power point presentations, on one of the topics that interest us, and a paper. i think i can manage that ha! I like the power point presentations since there are only 5 of us in the class its really just us teaching us each other what we know, which is my favorite way to learn, I don't like to read it cuz it takes forever and i have to re-read a lot and lectures get boring but conversations give you the knowledge you are actually going to remember because you are interacting with the information....more teachers should teach like that, a lot of us would get so much more out of it.
My modern indian art class is kinda the same. she lectures a bit more and likes essay tests (which i like cuz even if you don't know the exact thought you can tell them what you do know and get some points) but she uses pictures to talk about what she's teaching (good thing since we are talking about art) but she also has us teach ourselves what to see in the paintings. like today we were looking at portraits and she showed us three very different styles and had us tell her what we thought the stories for each were...and we actually got really close to the actual stories based on colors and small cues in posture and other objects. Mind you half the time i feel like im the only student responding to her questions but that's ok im learning more then the kids chillin thinkin someone else will answer, and i believe the point of having classes is to learn. She is also a teacher in the US ever other semester so her class is....STRUCTURED!!!! she just got back to india from last semester in the states and it's lovely, she articulates her words so we know what shes saying and she gives us a study guide of what she's going to talk about that day. its so wonderful.
so needless to say my tuesdays and thursdays are really nice and my classes are enjoyable.
now monday and wedensdays are well monday and wednesdays. kuchipudi dance is frustration...i cant move my hips and im not good at keeping them still apparently since im always getting yelled at for moving my weight back and forth, im not the only one the girl who studied in africa does it too and so does the latino chick so i dont feel so bad. but monday we did this move that we jump on our toes and lets just say my joints hurt in my legs from doing it. and my feet are very unhappy about me stomping on them soo much.
and my afternoon class migration and diaspora is a joke. its the only class that only fills that time frame and doesn't clash with any of my other classes. the other day we were learning about african diaspora and i felt like i was in second grade history learning about the triangle slave trade...why did we spend time on that? and we talk about the US a lot in that class. i mean i get that there are a lot of different people in the us but im not in that class to learn about the us! he said in a few days we are gonna focus more on indian diaspora but i have a feeling that will be a joke too. hes kind of hard to understand some days too. he was trying to explain the test which is an essay test and i was so lost...it was good the other 6 sip students understood cuz i was havin a hard time understanding him that day.
other then that i dont know much nothings really going on around here. telangana protesters were told to keep the protests peaceful the other day by the police (i read it in the paper when i stole mr.das's chair (he's the guy who runs our building)) but other then that nothings happening with that as far as i know. started reading my sister's keeper, its sad but i like the way the author writes the story from different characters points of view in each chapter. it builds characters well and you see things that other characters might not point out, kinda cool.
My modern indian art class is kinda the same. she lectures a bit more and likes essay tests (which i like cuz even if you don't know the exact thought you can tell them what you do know and get some points) but she uses pictures to talk about what she's teaching (good thing since we are talking about art) but she also has us teach ourselves what to see in the paintings. like today we were looking at portraits and she showed us three very different styles and had us tell her what we thought the stories for each were...and we actually got really close to the actual stories based on colors and small cues in posture and other objects. Mind you half the time i feel like im the only student responding to her questions but that's ok im learning more then the kids chillin thinkin someone else will answer, and i believe the point of having classes is to learn. She is also a teacher in the US ever other semester so her class is....STRUCTURED!!!! she just got back to india from last semester in the states and it's lovely, she articulates her words so we know what shes saying and she gives us a study guide of what she's going to talk about that day. its so wonderful.
so needless to say my tuesdays and thursdays are really nice and my classes are enjoyable.
now monday and wedensdays are well monday and wednesdays. kuchipudi dance is frustration...i cant move my hips and im not good at keeping them still apparently since im always getting yelled at for moving my weight back and forth, im not the only one the girl who studied in africa does it too and so does the latino chick so i dont feel so bad. but monday we did this move that we jump on our toes and lets just say my joints hurt in my legs from doing it. and my feet are very unhappy about me stomping on them soo much.
and my afternoon class migration and diaspora is a joke. its the only class that only fills that time frame and doesn't clash with any of my other classes. the other day we were learning about african diaspora and i felt like i was in second grade history learning about the triangle slave trade...why did we spend time on that? and we talk about the US a lot in that class. i mean i get that there are a lot of different people in the us but im not in that class to learn about the us! he said in a few days we are gonna focus more on indian diaspora but i have a feeling that will be a joke too. hes kind of hard to understand some days too. he was trying to explain the test which is an essay test and i was so lost...it was good the other 6 sip students understood cuz i was havin a hard time understanding him that day.
other then that i dont know much nothings really going on around here. telangana protesters were told to keep the protests peaceful the other day by the police (i read it in the paper when i stole mr.das's chair (he's the guy who runs our building)) but other then that nothings happening with that as far as i know. started reading my sister's keeper, its sad but i like the way the author writes the story from different characters points of view in each chapter. it builds characters well and you see things that other characters might not point out, kinda cool.
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