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.