3rd week in Pondi. Noticeable in several ways; I'm starting to feel at home in Pondi, and at the same time I miss home, and I miss Japan (and terribly so!).
I received a question of why I didn't write last week. Several reasons I guess. I missed having some photos on my blog (1), and was too tired to write anything coherent (2), and when thinking of what to write I had no idea where to start (3).
Last week & weekend I was busy reading up on the readings for this week’s lectures, being social, research group work and finding group members for the group assignment. I spent mot of the Sunday reading, but in the evening Amali, Odilia and I went to the beach promenade to see the Ganesh Puja; a festival to the god Ganesh, where they throw the Ganesh figures in the sea on the festival’s last day.
3-week’s crisis, exhaustion, more pictures, travel desires, extracurricular courses, still haven’t fixed my saree, or bought Punjabi. Slow. Discoveries in town – everyone discover things close to each other’s houses. Daydreaming, missing Japan, feeling gradually more academic – feels wonderful, still no idea of what I want to do when I get home (for a job, that is), Mr. Gecko –our pet lizard that eat flies (flies that bites us!). We love him.
I'm still overwhelmed by all the impressions we get all day everyday here.
Just riding the bus to school every morning is an adventure in itself, all the sounds, all the images that flies by as we fly by them, the different routes are getting a little familiar, but still challenges every sense of direction you (I) had to begin with. Children going to school, groups of teenage girls bicycling, auto-rickshaws full of 6 year old school boys, long lanes of children of all ages walking to their school bus, in the narrow zone between parked motorbikes and the rushing traffic. Safety in numbers applies even here. Wandering buffaloes seem to mind the traffic even less than the school kids and wander about ignoring the honking cars and autos. (Auto = auto-rickshaw, which is not the same as a rickshaw – the manual bicycle with extra seats)
One of the streets today was covered in posters and banners and ribbons in the colour of one of the local political parties today. We could hardly see the sky through all the decorations.
Bollywood dancing – sooo much fun! Not so much bollywood yet, but we have started learning some basic steps used for opening any dance performance. I think we did well the first class for being 100% beginners.
---
I left my blog post here and forgot it in the middle of packing my bag for a spontaneous weekend-trip to Bangalore. That story continues in the next blog post. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment