So I know we just got here but we only have about 2 weeks of class left. Crazy. It's been a month since we left Washington DC (7 August).
On Sunday we leave for "Educational Travel" to Kerala! Just got back from Pudumandapam, a neat pillared hall structure/shopping place across from Meenakshi Temple. There are a lot of tailors/textile shops and places that sell jewelry/trinkets/shawls/scarves/wall hangings/statues, some sell religious paraphernalia like incense, kumkum, and all sorts of things. I had a sleeping bag made (for the night trains during our travels), basically a couple of sheets sewn together, also known as "sleep sack." It's pretty cool, the way they do clothes here. You can pick out the fabric that you want the tailor to use and tell them the design of whatever it is you want them to make. So I'm getting a shirt (long, kurta-style with the collar and buttons) made. Ali is having a cute little dress made to her specifications, pretty sweeeet.
Later this afternoon I had my first veena lesson! My teacher is an M.Phil. student, studying mridangam. (Excuse me, I seemed to have picked up on the emphasis people place on degrees, career and "qualifications.") The strings on the veena are get thicker from bottom to top, opposite from the guitar, and there are three other "beat strings" strummed with the pinky. Since we just worked on the thinnest regular string, it dug into my index and middle fingers. It's usually pretty painful, so people dab their fingers with coconut oil before they play. I can see the potential in the strengthening/callous-forming. It's like practicing the bass.
Tamil is fun, too! I've been trying to work on it, except I haven't been speaking with my host family. Maybe I think that I can understand some words here and there in people's conversations and therefore passively absorb some of the language meself.
We climbed a bunch of sacred hills, biked many kilometers, drank one water of tender coconut and ate its jellyfish-like meat.
Holy cow, (no pun intended) these uploads are taking a while. Stay tuned for more fotos and videos on the intertubes soon. I may have to get home before... the cows come home. Plus, the girl working at this internet cafe and her maybe-boyfriend ("lover") person are being kind of scandalous.
