Journal 21

Saturday, July 8, 2006
Sunday, July 09, 2006

Dear Journal,

Ahh, Sunday…and another fairly productive weekend is coming to an end. Half of our group went to Hampi for the weekend, while Evan, Kirthi, Christine and I stayed at the guesthouse to finish up some more school work and get some rest after being sick last week.

I skipped breakfast on Saturday to catch up on some sleep and got up before lunch to start working on some school projects. After lunch Christine and I went to the library.
The library here in India is so different from any library I have been in before…now most people would say: “How can libraries be that different since all there usually really needs to be are books and computers?” Well, this library does have books and computers, but something about it is still different. When you walk into the library, there are a bunch of little cubbies (I just learnt this wordJ) in which you put your purse – normal. Then you have to walk past this guard who today asked us if we are students, so we have to explain to him “Yes, we are students, but we don’t have library cards, because we are only here for 6 weeks.” After some suspicious looks and speaking gibberish to the guy standing next to him (well, I am assuming he is speaking Telegu, but to me it sounds like gibberish) he lets us pass through. But the strange thing is that this does not happen every time. At different times he will sometimes not ask for an ID at all and sometimes he says he can’t let you go through unless you have an ID. Just like the traffic here, there just seem to be no rules, or even if there are rules, nobody is too concerned about following them very strictly.
The walls in the library are painted the same color as everything else in India…a light, faded bluish color, with spots where the paint is starting to peal of because of water damage – still pretty normal. When you walk through the library, you can see that all the books are organized by topic and by language – normal and logical. Since we don’t have library cards, we can’t take out books – yes, also normal. BUT, since we can’t take out books, there is a place in the library where you can go and have them photocopy the parts of the book you need, or even the whole book. Well, the problem is that when we went to the library that person was apparently out indefinitely and so since we weren’t able to check out books, we had no choice but to copy down the quotes we needed…I don’t know, I don’t think this is normal…since the point of going to the library is to take advantage of the sources it provides….I guess this is not an issue to most other students since they would have library cards, but I just thought that was very odd. It’s just that everything here is so unorganized and sketchy, there are no real rules, nothing really seems to have any “regular hours” for anything and there is no real administration – not normal to me. I guess coming from a place where everything is so bureaucratic and everything is so organized (this goes for both Germany and the US) I find it strange to see how things function on a completely different level. I am not saying that one is better than the other, but again, what works for Germany and the US might not work for the Indian society in their cultural context.

After all of us worked hard all day and got a lot accomplished, we thought we deserved to go out and eat out. We decided to go to “Fusion 9” because Christine was craving Steak, which is rather hard to find here, and we saw online that they had a multi-national cuisine. When we arrived we all agreed that it looked very fancy and I was getting kind of worried that this place might actually be kind of pricy, even in India…but I was wrong. The place was very, very nice and the food was fantastic. A steak with potato and vegetables, which in the States in a restaurant like this, would cost 20$ at least, was still only about 5$. The food was delicious, the service was good and the whole atmosphere was very relaxed. After dinner, we decided to stop by the “touch” to see if the Nordic group would be there and sure enough before even entering the club, we ran into Ole, one of the Norwegian Students. As soon as we entered the club we saw the whole group sitting at a table to our right, so we joined them and had a great evening with them. When we got home I checked to see if Germany was going to beat Portugal and get the 3rd place in the World Cup. I am not a huge soccer fan, but I guess being here in India with a bunch of Americans, I just had to support the “motherland.” After the game was over and Germany won 3-1, I finally headed to bed.

I again missed breakfast today and after having lunch we all went straight back to work on our papers….I definitely believe in the motto: Work hard, play hard.
Today, after we get some more work on our papers done, we might go into town and either go to the mall or go swimming. I think tonight we are going to take it slow and probably watch the World cup.
I decided that I am voting for France to win simply because everyone else is voting for Italy ;) GO FRANCE!!!!