Question of the Day

How can one place be so familiar and so foreign at once?

Back.

I’m back in India after a semester of analyzing, breaking apart, writing, reading, studying and trying to make sense of the summer I spent here in Bangalore. For now I am in Koltaka (Calcutta) for a wedding of a friend I met last summer.

It is strange and wonderful to be back. After the experience of the fellowship stress and requirements to my way of looking at things, it is nice to be here on real holiday.

I have new eyes now and being back here makes sense of a lot of the struggles I had last summer and last fall in trying to put it all together. I think this will really come to fruition when I am back in Bangalore next week. For now, I’m just taking in the beautiful chaos that this city is.

The wedding was beautiful. It was so nice to meet new people here, I spoke with many young people and stayed up late dancing and singing with little girls. There is something so powerful about the laughter of children that made the late night jet lag okay.

Today I am going to be touring the city for a bit, following around Mother Theresa’s story and a few other historical sites.

Anyway, I’m back, so expect a change in the storyline for a bit.

International Adventure Time.

It has been a long time since my last update, I apologize. As school years progress, there always seems to be some spiraling period in a semester when a lot is happening and not a lot of reflection  is going on. Commence my last few weeks.

Last we left off, I was disappointed by Waterford but optimistic about the Aran Island trip. The Aran Islands trip was cancelled due to too much wind. Lame, right?  Luckily it has been rescheduled to a weekend when I can go, because that would have been completely devastating as the Aran Islands is somewhere that is high on my Ireland priority list.

Not too long after that I was fortunate enough to be able to head over to one of my favorite cities, Rome, to visit the Brandeis Catholics (and a few select Jews!) It was nice to see a few of my friends and familiar faces… and eat FOOD. I had the lucky encounter of meeting a girl on the plane from Dublin to Zurich who was also headed to Rome. Her and I talked and had lunch during our layover in Zurich and really hit it off. She travels independently often as well, so I really appreciated having a similar go-getter around.

Funny story. On our flight from Zurich to Rome the systems were malfunctioning quite a bit and made some.. “interesting” announcements occur. At first we were told that we were not going to Rome but Budapest (Which, by the way, I am headed to with my high school best friend in April!!!) and upon our final decent we were told to ‘stay calm and brace for impact… the flight attendants will be distributing blankets and pillows to help brace the impact.’ Almost immediately the flight attendants came through the aisles pushing carts hastily through. Someone flagged down an attendant to order.. hand lotion? It was in flight shopping. What was going on!?

In the end it all was just a ‘malfunction’ .. took them 15 minutes to fully announce it.

That next weekend went went up to Belfast and Giant’s Causeway. This was an incredible experience, both seeing the history of conflict and the beauty of nature up the North. I could say a lot about what I saw, but it is impossible to explain the experience of standing in front of the wall between the Catholic and Protestant sides of the city.. it was devestating in a way I have never felt.

I’ve been on a real whirlwind of adventure. Rome was beautiful. So nice to be back in a city I’d been to before. There is something really empowering about knowing your way around a place.

Which is what I am really looking forward to soon. My next post will explain better.

Ps. Photos to come!

 

My First Mount Everest

I’m still feeling the pangs of drudging up the ‘mountains’ of Wicklow. It might as well have been Mount Everest.

Let me preface by saying, I really don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to go on a 6 hour hike. I assumed it was trail hiking, and therefore, not to strenuous. Also, Wicklow has “tiny” mountains, and therefore, even a novice like me should be able to do it.. right? Oye. I was wrong.

Don't ask me where we went, because I have no idea.

First of all, I bought the wrong shoes. Because I said I was going to be hiking in Wicklow, the man at the shop told me that I could get hiking shoes, not boots. They’re lovely sneaker-like shoes, but they offer very little support when going through terrain. Which, I was hiking through.

Second, I am not in good physical shape. I’m not even going to pretend on that one. But I assumed that since it was just trail hiking I’d be fine.

Yeah, no.

Within the first 10 minutes of my hike I fell into a pit of quicksand-like-muck and had to be pulled out from it by two of the guys along the hike. They told me not to worry that it went over my knees in muck and gunk, once someone got almost over their head in it! This, did not make me feel better. And now, only a few minutes into the hike, my whole body was soaked, worst of all my feet.

We went up one very steep hill and as we were going up one of the guys stayed back and went slower with me. I felt really horrible about this, but he said that its a team and if someone has to go slower, its not a big deal, they will wait. He was very nice and talked to me about Boston. He also told me we were close to the top.

Which we weren’t, I found out as we were continuing up this crazy hill, only to enter this otherworldly snowy place…

And I was told that there was still a ways to go. The air up there was thinner and it was very cold, my water bottle froze and my thermos of hot soup went cold. But I made it to the top! (45 minutes later..)

I got really lucky, we went on a high visibility day. The sun was out and it was nice. Except when we were up here. It was so foggy and dense, you couldn’t see anything around you. It really felt like another world. But suddenly…

Everything became beautiful again.

Look Mom! I really did it!

After getting up that hill I felt like a million bucks.  I was so happy even though my feet were freezing and I had the beginnings of some huge blisters on my heels. But I did it! And I mean, what kind of people climb multiple mountains in a day?

These kind.

I looked over and saw two large hills. The leader of the group said that we would climb one of those and that it would take no more than 20 minutes. I am naive. I don’t know about mountains. So I was happy to hear that there were just 20 minutes more.

Yeah. Right. Don’t ever listen to hikers. They lie.

Two hours later.. we ended up climbing both of them, of course. This was a bit painstaking to say the least. But, while going up I got to talk to a nurse who had been in India two summers ago. We swapped hospital stories (cuz I have those too..) and travel adventures. She was great because she also loved to talk about art with me.

I also got to hike alongside a man who was much older than me, so it made me feel like I was super lazy if I couldn’t keep up. He was great, a PhD student in History who also had tons of art appreciation, so while drudging up the mountain we were talking Picasso and Rembrandt. Classy.

At the top of the mountain were these patches of frozen water. The boys fell in love with this. I did not understand their fascination and then realized that they don’t go sledding or ice skating every winter, so this was their moment of glory.

I was happy to take a much needed break.

and to have a chance to see the scenery..

But not for long because there was one more hill to climb. 

As you can see, I was always behind the group…

But I made it to the top!

The view on the way down was really beautiful.

Then, when we got back to solid, flat ground again.. it was also beautiful.

But the most beautiful place I saw all day?

The pub.

I was pretty happy to see this.

When we got to the pub I began to realize how wet and cold I was. I could barely walk straight, but it didn’t matter because I was in a pub. We all sat together and chatted about our homes, most everyone was from Ireland, but there were others from Germany and London, and everyone wanted to know about Boston.

I will go again. I have spent too much money on hiking gear not to. I will attempt to work out better this next week in hopes to do better on the next Sunday hike.

This weekend I am off to the Aran Islands, off the West Coast near Galway. The Aran Islands are a beautiful little place that still speak Irish, the native language here that I am learning. So.. be ready for more stories soon!

Thoughts on Patterns of Emigration in Ireland

I mentioned before that Ireland’s history has been filled with emigration. I am reading through my notes for my Irish society class and found this one quote to be quite insightful as to how community is defined and seen here. I think it is an interesting way of looking at home and personal connectivity found in a place that has a population that is often in flux. What does it mean to be in a place, a home, a community? I feel like I’m looking at Ireland again from the perspective of how I analyzed India- what is community here? How does it function? What brings community to a place that has constant change in its population?

‘A history of emigration gave to Irish culture a particularly sharp realisation of the fact that a home is much more than a house…It is also a whole set of connections and affections, the web of mutual recognition that we spin around ourselves and that gives us a place in the world’ (O’Toole, 1997: 136-7)

 

A Wicklow Weekend Part I : Day Tour

So this weekend I spent exploring Wicklow, a county just south of Dublin. It’s a beautiful little place, dubbed “Ireland’s Garden”.

On Saturday we did a day tour of the county, traveling through the mountains and into old monasteries and through where PS I Love You and Braveheart were filmed. It was a great journey in and around with my Americanos Spencer and Stephen, and my roommate Jenna.

Still to come, the story of my 6 hour Sunday hike of Wicklow..

Also, all photos are linked to larger versions of them, so feel free to check them out that way as well.

Part of the peace and reconciliation place we went to.

Part of the quilt for reconciliation and peace

It was an old military base (irony!) where global peace and reconciliation dialogue occurs.

Beautiful Wicklow

Group photo!

I told them to be pensive. I love Spencer’s face.

Stephen thought it was funny to be pensive.

Jenna and I

Stephen really loves ducks.

Courses and Clubs

Today marks a big day in my trip here so far- it’s the day I joined my clubs and finalized my schedule. This sounds pretty benign until I tell you that before I made it to my final 6 classes, I have enrolled for 11.  My schedule has just been a wreck here. Courses are difficult to get into and even more challenging to schedule if you are working in multiple departments. BUT, that is over and I can finally write my schedule in pen because I’m done changing things around. I am taking:

Modern Architecture
I really love this class because the professor is so passionate and intelligent. She’s also American, so I understand what she’s saying and better yet, her jokes. She loves to talk about Indian architecture. She loves to tell us stories that are totally unimportant but proves she knows her stuff. She loves to talk to me about the East Coast after class. Also, we’re going to be analyzing Faneuil Hall at some point in the class, which I deeply appreciate.

Perspectives on 18th Century Architecture
I like this class and I like it even more because it comes directly after my modern architecture course. The two classes really play off each other in interesting ways that challenge and assist the way I think about them. This professor is a really calm and intelligent man who walks up and down the lecture hall and puts the names of all the buildings and architects on the slides. I like this a lot. Also, we talk a lot about art and the influences it had, so I like that too.

Irish Painting
Okay, this is where the professor gets too excited about her field. I appreciate the passion that this lecturer has, but I can’t keep up with her. She jumps around constantly and seems to have too many trains of thought going on at once. They often meet in the middle and just get so lost and confused my head spins and I forget what’s going on. I’m not really sure of what I’m supposed to be getting out of this class.

Irish Culture and Society
There are over 500 people in this class.  I have a hard time focusing on anything going on because I am too busy people watching. This course is interesting in that it is Ireland viewed at its most basic sociological levels.. it’s very easily laid out, but in that has come really sad stories. We have a tutorial for this course, (a small group discussion section) in which all the Irish students just talked about how there are no jobs and their lives are pretty hopeless in the future. It’s pretty bad… and if it’s not depressing and I’m feeling bad about Ireland,  I instead have an impossible time focusing.

Celebrity Society and Modernity
This course would be really interesting, were it not for the way that the lecturer reiterates his points 100 times. I love the topic and I think its a fascinating sociological concept, but he just goes on and on about nothing for the entire class. I like this guy though because he’s Australian and doesn’t believe in giving us a test worth 70% of our grade.. so all our assessments are paper-based. I appreciate this.

Feminism, Power and Politics
So in the mess of registering for classes, this was the number 6 course I came up with to round out my schedule. I don’t know why I didn’t fall back on women’s studies courses to begin with, but I’m happy I found one. This is a much smaller class and I think I’ll enjoy the discussion… only problem is, it’s highly centered around Irish politics, of which I know very little. And it’s depressing. As is feminist history in general.

I have Fridays off, which is awesome. The only real problem with my schedule is that I often have 3+ hours between classes. Monday I have a class at 10, 1 and 3pm. Thats annoying. But I think I’m going to enjoy my classes. I still don’t really feel like I’m in “school” here.. its strange to be learning outside of Brandeis. And I really really miss being in small classes, my focus just dies halfway through class. But I’ll figure something out.

As for clubs, today I signed up to be in Amnesty International, St Vincent De Paul’s, Softball Club and Mountaineering. Amnesty brings in good speakers each week that I think could be interesting, De Paul’s is the service group, and I want to set myself up to tutor kids- I think  that’s how I’ll really learn the people… Softball club was a total whim, I was wearing my Red Sox jacket and they wouldn’t let me leave without signing up. It should be nice though, they have social events and I do really miss throwing a ball around.

Mountaineering I am most excited for. Each weekend we go on climbs all over- which is an awesome work out and a great way to bond with people. The rock wall is available to me throughout the day, so I have no excuse not to get some exercising done. They go on a rock climbing trip to Wales, but I think I’ll be away then already. Still, the group sounds super cool and I am really excited. Con? I need to buy hiking boots, warm clothes, waterproof things.. all of which won’t come cheap, but if it gets me active and makes me happy, I can justify it.

It costs money to join groups here. 2 euro for the two societies (Amnesty and De Paul’s) and 5 euro for softball, 15 for mountaineering. The cost covers your insurance coverage with the group, which is a plus, but the cost also stopped me from signing up for other groups. Though, I’m already getting emails and my weekends are filling up with events.. so its probably for the best.

I’m also taking Irish classes on Tuesday nights. My life is getting pretty full here.

In other quick news, I saw The King’s Speech tonight, which was REALLY good. If you haven’t seen it, go!