jrink

Aha...I'm a bit delayed in writing these next couple of posts. As the program progresses I'm getting less and less motivation, as it often goes with experiencing new things. At first it's really exciting and everything you do is new! and wonderful! and you want to use exclamation points to end all your sentences! But eventually you start to get used to things and don't try to learn as much. I think part of it, too, is that I haven't been able to get much exercise here so I'm losing my eternal endorphine high. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Anyway, back to actually reporting on the fun stuff. On Sunday we got the day off from hours and hours of lectures and got to go visit some sweet temples in Belur and Halebidu, Karnataka. Just as in our trip to ... read more

Yesterday we got a day off from lectures and instead we got to go sightseeing! We woke up early and piled on the bus at 5am to take the ~200km trip to Mysore. In a car or on a motorcycle it probably wouldn't have taken too long, but on a huge trundling bus the trip there took around 3 hours. NOT my favorite way to spend the morning, but I'm pretty flexible about where I can sleep. And, in fact, I would have slept quite well on the bus since I smuggled a hotel pillow out and planned to prop myself up in a corner and snooze and drool until we reached our destination. (Okay, "smuggling" is a bit strong. I kinda just walked out with it...) But, there was something that I did not account ... read more

I can tell we're all getting tired of this break-neck pace, here in India. It's getting harder to convince myself to blog every day, which is why I've gone and missed one yesterday. Sorry everyone! But not really much happened yesterday, so there's not a whol lot to report. I convinced Bala to order me a "cheese burst" pizza from Domino's, non-veg. It was delivered to my room in less than 30 minutes just like they promised (I was really surprised) and was pretty tasty. The sauce is more BBQ than tomato, and the toppings are similar to a supreme pizza. The difference is the "cheese burst" part--they put a bunch of melty cheese between layers of crust on the bottom. It's pretty darn tasty, though ridiculously rich. I should not have eaten as much of ... read more

Whew! I'm tired. I think I've been fighting some sort of sickness for the last two days or so. Perhaps that sore throat that's been going around has caught up to me. I was doing really well up till recently but I think this lack of sleep these last couple days is what tipped me over the edge from 100% to 90%. I'm still fighting it and hope to get to bed soon so I can sleep and recover, but I had to write blog posts for the last three days since I've been so busy. I was supposed to do work for my advisor today, as well, but it took me this long to get the posts written that now I am just going to go to bed after this. Whoops. Nothing very exciting today, ... read more

Some of you may ask, "Why Jenni, how could you possibly have seen lions and tigers and bears at the ANCRiSST workshop you were supposed to attend today?" Well, my dear readers, there are two likely possibilities. The first is that the workshop hosts decided to bring a menagerie at lunch to entertain us guests--not an unlikely scenario considering the immense hospitality I've seen here--and the second is that I skipped out on the conference. As you may have already guessed, I did indeed play hooky today! After talking late into the night with Bala, Hussain, et al. I heard their plans to skip out on the conference and go see some tigers at Bannerghatta National Park. Naturally I was thrilled at the opportunity to a) get some extra sleep, b) have another adventure in India, ... read more

It only took two shopping trips, a trip to a back-alley tailor, and a couple hours of chaos but we finally got to wear our saris! It took the three of us (Sam, Fae and myself) a long time to get ready because we didn't know how to put on saris at all, of course, and Sumedha did not have much practice at getting them to look just right. I got to put on my sari first, and even though it took awhile we were able to get my sari fully assembled with just Sumedha's and Naveet's help. When we tried to get Fae and Sam set up, though, they couldn't quite get the whole thing arranged. Their saris were two-toned, which made it a bit harder to get it to look right, and the girls ... read more

I am very tired today; staying up so late blogging is not good for me! After lectures us girls and Gift (pronounced "jift") and Duan went to pick up our saris from the tailor and buy some accessories. I got earrings and bangles, and will be wearing my dress sandals that I bought. Apparently it's going to take 2 hours for us to fully get ready so we're going to ditch the entire afternoon workshop session to have time to prepare. Don't tell on us, 'kay? I'm going to go to bed now--it may only be 9:45 but I need my sleep and the bus leaves at 7am tomorrow morning (ugh). 'Night.... read more

Eventually there will be a day when nothing really out of the ordinary happens and I'll have to resort to summarizing little things that I've noticed here and there but haven't really been able to fit into any other post. Today is not that day. The first half of the day was pretty normal. Exact same breakfast buffet as described earlier (except I tried watermelon juice). Lectures weren't excessively noteworthy except for the fact that our second lecturer ran 40 minutes over because he had gotten the wrong stopping time. I got to unicycle during lunch, yay! My hand pump to inflate Tweaker broke while I was trying to inflate the tire--not surprising since I paid only $2 for it plus shipping--but Keshav's friend had an air compressor in his car so I was soon tooling ... read more

This post might be a bit shorter than the others as I am pretty tired and my A/C has decided to go on the fritz. I talked to the front desk and they sent someone up, but unfortunately he and I couldn't communicate. It's terribly frustrating, since I was talking to some of the guys from India on the bus perfectly fine, yet I just couldn't grasp the what this man was trying to say. He did say something about it being cool for 5 minutes, or something, but i just could not understand what he wanted from me. And I think he was frustrated that I didn't understand him. So I have no idea if/when they'll fix my A/C. :( The day started out a bit earlier than I expected: my 7:30am wake-up call came ... read more

Today was another solid day in my Bangalore trip. It started out quite early, around 4:30am or so, because my body still hasn't quite adjusted and decided that it had had enough sleep, thank you very much. I actually wasn't tired because my brain had gotten into the habit of sinking straight into deep REM the instant I fell asleep (thanks to excessive sleep dep.) so even though I only slept for less than 5 hours I was awake. Around 4:40 or so the islamic prayer came over the outside loudspeakers--a man's voice in a wailing, ululating cry that echoed a bit eerily around outside. Not that I really heard it over the howling dogs. Yes, that's right. People who have been here for a couple days inform me that every morning around that time the ... read more