uuuuuuumm?

I guess I'm trying to figure out how this study abroad experience really is. Talking to people, I always say that it's great and that I'm learning a lot, but I'm trying to step back from that these days to see how I really feel about my experiences here. So on the one hand, it IS great. This is an awesome country. I like the food, the clothes, how cheap things are/bargaining, the people in my program, and the different places and things I get to see. On the other hand, I had all of these expectations that study abroad would be a really formative and academically fulfilling experience. I guess I'm not really sure where I have changed at all from being here, but sometimes I just feel like I've supplanted myself from one context to the other and am basically living an American/Canadian life abroad. Yes, I do things such as take rickshaws, watch Bollywood movies, and eat mostly veg. food, but I for some reason don't feel like this is a very culturally shocking experience that is truly making me evaluate my own culture. Perhaps it is more subtle than that, that how I feel about this experience is something which is more under the surface and needs to be deliberated and articulated. This will of course be much easier to figure out once I come back to the West (which I'm not actually missing right now), but I'm still wondering what this experience is doing for me. Yes, I am learning how other people live, but I am not finding it radically different. Family cohesion and the unspoken importance of religion, for example, are not new concepts for me; that was my life at home. Certainly I am being exposed to different ways of life: Hinduism; Jainism; vegetarianism; a more difficult battle between secularism and religion; more widespread use of natural medicines; yoga and meditation and wide and deep spirituality in general; archaic gender roles; and caste-based divison and discrimination as opposed to race and/or class. So yes, I am seeing different lifestyles, and learning about them, but not REALLY living them so in a sense not REALLY understanding them. Am I missing out? I don't know. Maybe I'm just coming to understand better the ways in which different worlds overlapp because of globalization, etc. That is certainly a learning experience, that is, not having culture shock because in many ways things aren't that different. I guess I just expected to be more blown away by things.

Maybe I should come back to these thoughts after starting to live in Delhi in a flat without everything from the program, I don't know.

On the academic note, I'm also a bit disenchanted. Experiential learning is great, but we don't do a good job of connecting the different things we see. In a sense, I have a lot of trees, but not a forest. We visit great NGOs, from ones which make prosthetic limbs to ones which harvest water, and I learn about different development efforts this way, but I am having a hard time reconciling everything I see in a meaningful way. This might have to be something I do on my own more deliberately, but I did not expect to have to do that. ISP should be really great for me academically, because I'll get to study exactly what I want and take control of my research. There's fear in this independence, but I'm also excited.

Time for some updates. I did actually play Holi in the end, but it was kind of short and defs. not as fun as if I had gone to the old city. Most of the boys in the program went, and ended up being invited to some great Holi parties by perfect strangers. My Indian dream.

Something I forgot to mention before. When I was in Jaisalmer, three of us decided to take a paddleboat out on this holy river in the city. We decided upon my insistence to cram ourselves into a two person swan-shaped boat, and went around the lake to see the various monuments in the lake (I dont really know what purpose they served). At one point, we got kind of close to one of the monuments, and we just stopped moving. We tried everything: rocking the boat back and forth, paddling really fast both backward and forward, and just seeing if we would float away. Nothing worked. It was hysterical. We thought at one point that we should jump ship, but swimming in open water in India usually spells parasite. We just sort of laughed for awhile, and figured someone would come save us. Our friends kept calling us, and at first we ignored the calls, but then we eventually told them to send help. This big metal rowboat with two Indians eventually came, and they just sort of laughed at/with us when we all struggled together to pry us loose. Soon we were free and paddled back to land and freedom. Surpisingly, we werent charged for extra time; they probably enjoyed the situation enough not to demand more rupees. So great, so unsurprising. Oh, our lives.

I'll update more when I can think of more to say.

Love,
Mimi