Miscellaneous

Nothing too incredibly exciting to report, but I'm afraid if I don't post every now and then people will stop checking my site...

On Saturday my housemates (3 girls from Ireland, 1 guy from the US, and my classmate Erin) and I decided to go out for a non-Indian dinner (which my stomach very much appreciated) in the touristy part of Kolkata - there aren't really any good places to go out near where we live, and the area itself is not extremely safe at night.  I ordered the chicken tenders with french fries and a side of naan (I love naan but unfortunately it is only available in the nicer restaurants, and I mainly buy from street vendors), and also a few Indian beers.  A cold beer on a hot day is a truly great thing, and we have had more than our fair share of hot days over the past two weeks, so it felt great to indulge a little.  We went out to a bar afterwards as well, and it just felt good to get back to "normal" for a night.

Even though it appears that my main project for the summer won't be getting under way until at least mid-June (if any of you see a Mrs. Paul that works at the Loreto Day School in Kolkata please let her know that I am looking for her), I have still been keeping myself busy by tutoring the older girls in English.  Teaching English as a 2nd language can be very challenging at times, but I have really been enjoying myself.  Several of the pieces that the girls are reading and analyzing would be difficult for even English-speaking American high schoool students, so it has been fun to both challenge and support them through the process.  Below is one example of a poem I recently worked with them on:

Where The Mind Is Without Fear, by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and
the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken
up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost
its way into the dreary desert of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into everwidening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

I love the "clear stream of reason...dreary desert of dead habit" line, but it was certainly a challenge to explain to my students - an enjoyable challenge, though, and they seemed to have a good time watching me try.  Tagore is a famous author from West Bengal (he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the early 1900's), and I recently bought a book of his short stories - I'm still not sleeping incredibly well, but like I said, I'm reading more than I ever have...