Winter Setting In

The weather has taken a turn for the colder here as winter sets in. While everyone reassures me that I won't wake up to snow on my front porch, it is still significantly colder; cold enough to make me want to wear lots of layers and stay wrapped in my blankets in bed. Houses here don't have central heating or insulation, so your warmth is what you wear. My house has mud on the inner walls, so that helps some, but none of my windows really seal and my ceiling has no insulation at all.

Coming from Minnesota, I can deal with cold as I know how to dress for it, however, even there, heating provides some relief from the chill. I'm toying with the idea of getting a space heater for my room when it gets even colder. My landlady stopped up this morning to tell me that she's going to get me a hot water bottle to put under my covers at night to keep me even warmer. This time of year, people drink a lot of chai too (although it seems like everyone is always drinking chai no matter what time of year it is).

I was also interested to discover that, since most people prefer wearing sandals here, socks with sandals are not a fashion fau pas as they would be in the Unite States. In fact, everyone does it. That way, you can show off your lovely socks to everyone. They even make socks specially for thong sandals with the big toe separate from the rest, much like tabi socks in Japan.

One thing that continually throws me for a loop is that, although winter is setting in, there are certain things that are coming into season. At least one type of tree is blossoming right now and people are planting new crops in their fields. I’ll need to get used to plant life still existing in winter.

Now that my Hindi lessons have fallen into a rhythm, I figure now is a good time to talk about a little what they are like. Our tutor is a girl named Indu, who is in her late teens. Anya knew of her because her father is a gardener in Didipur. She is very bright and wanted to go to college but couldn't because she was needed to help at home and in the fields.

Anya and I meet with Indu twice a week. Our lessons usually consist of four parts. First, she looks at the sentences we have written for homework since the last lesson and goes over any issues we have. Next, we usually do a reading from one of our books. Since Anya and I are different levels, she uses and intermediate reader (by Usha R. Jain) and I just use the Hindi dialogue textbook from SASLI's second year Hindi class. We trade off week by week which readings we actually do in our lesson, though we both are practicing reading outside of class. Then, for listening and spelling practice, Indu goes through the reading and finds words we had trouble with, and we have a sort of spelling test. I'm slowly getting better at hearing the difference between long and short vowels and aspirate and unaspirated consonants. Finally, we have conversation practice. Sometimes Indu gives us a topic or situation and sometimes we just pick our own.

After our Hindi lesson is done, we switch over to English and tutor Indu in English. She is an eager student and probably does her homework better than all but a few of the students in my classes.

Granted, I know I could be a better Hindi student. It's easier to study daily when you have class daily, but I find my studying slipping off at the end of the day. I go to bed telling myself, I'll study more tomorrow. That's certainly something I need to work more on.

Wedding Feast

On Thursday I attended my first Indian wedding. Granted, we weren't there for the whole thing, but I got to experience a part of it. Weddings around here, to my understanding, are at least a three day process. There is an evening for the women to put henna on their hands. There is the wedding ceremony, and then the following day, there is the feast and more celebration. What we attended was the dham, the feast.

Somehow, I knew people on both sides of the marriage. The bride was the daughter of Dr. Barbara's cook and the groom was the brother of Phillip's landlord, who attended our combined birthday party and invited everyone there to the marriage. We, however, didn't get to see the bride and groom themselves.

Anya, Kelly, and I, dressed in our finest suits, trekked across several fields, managing to pick up an escort of all three Nishta dogs on our way, before we reached the wedding. When we arrived, the feast had already started, and what I saw was much like the village feast of earlier this fall. Sitting on long mats on the ground with leaf plates in front of them were wedding guests. People with baskets and bowls of food ran up and down the aisles between the plates and dumped food onto each plate as they passed.

Here, odd numbers are auspicious, so wedding feasts usually have either five or seven courses. Likewise, when we gave our offering envelope, more or less to pay for the food, we gave 151 rupees between us. Giving 150 would have been back luck.

Everyone was wearing beautiful clothing, though there were no saris even there. It was fun to look at what everyone had chosen to wear to the celebration. The father of the bride wore a bright red scarf tied in a sort of turban on his head.

There was not enough room for everyone to eat at once, so as soon as one group had eaten it's seven courses, they would throw out their leaf plates, wash their hands with whatever water was left in their cups (this is a finger food occasion), and then the next group would flood onto the area and find a seat.

While people were eating, women from the wedding party would pass out little bags of bangles to random guests. I think this is another auspicious thing to do.

After the feast, we sat in the shade for a a while, then went up to Phillip's apartment for coffee before heading back home.

a little bit of excitement

There has been quite a bit of excitement around here lately. First of all, my class has started up again. Thanks to a number of holidays and confusion around their teachers disappearing to Kashmir, I had incredibly patchy attendance from all of my students. Most of them missed taking the midterm test. Once I came back, I hoped that things would straighten themselves out, but there were still rampant absences. Thankfully, I have all of their phone numbers, so I send all of them text messages reminding them to show up to class this last Saturday. Even still, there were some people missing, but today the last of them came back again. It's a relief to know that my classes will start running normally again.

Secondly, Kelly, the Shansi fellow in Madurai, came up to visit. Anya cut out of the retreat in Kashmir a bit early and went to meet her grandparents in Calcutta. There, she also met up with Kelly. They two of them traveled around Calcutta and Varanasi before come back here on Saturday.

While the retreat in Kashmir reminded me that I was part of something bigger, not just a disconnected English teacher in the Knowledge Center. Now I am reminded of something else bigger. It's not just Anya and I here and, our fellowship isn't just about navigating the ins and outs of Jagori. I had sort of forgotten all of the other Shansi fellows around Asia and that we're not just teaching machines. It's about cultural exchange, traveling, and growing in understanding of the world as well. Anya scolded me the other day that perhaps I take my classes a bit too seriously and that I need to consider traveling sometime soon. To that end, Kelly is going back to Madurai about the time that this current class session finishes. I am toying with the idea of going back with her and seeing a bit of south India.

On top of just reminding me of my place in things, it is wonderful to have Kelly around. Although we only met during our winter term training, we've become friends. It's always nice to have a fresh face around to liven up the group.

The third bit of excitement is that, for the full moon, the Jagori Grameen website was launched today. There are still pieces that I need to fill in more, but it is online now at http://www.jagorigrameen.org.