A few short notes on a few things I’ve been thinking about

Common room in the Heritage House

The Translators: Observations on India and Haiti

The Theatre guys helping Tad map out the community

Tad's Birthday at Chharanagar

I’ve noticed, both in my experiences in India and Haiti, that while you are trying to speak to others, be it the people of the village in Haiti or the Chharas in India, a relationship is developed not necessarily with the people you are trying to communicate with, but rather the people that you communicate through. The guys at the Budhan Theatre, who are all about our age, have been great with helping us to get to know the community better and understand the way it works. Over the past few weeks though, we’ve become friends with them, similarly as we did the translators in Haiti, and I think that establishing this friendship is an interesting gateway to understanding the culture of a people and a place. They even threw Tad a birthday party last Thursday and gave him a cake. It was so nice!

No One Killed Jessica

So Tad and I saw our first Indian movie a few days ago! About 30% of it was in English, the other 70% in Hindi. For the most part, we could follow what was going on (it was a murder case, inspired by a true story). For some reason, they liked to start a whole long narrative in English, act like they had something really important to say, then break into Hindi…which obviously just left us hanging, but it was still enjoyable. Tickets were only Rps. 100, which is slightly over $2. It was kind of strange though, they had assigned seats in the theatre, like we were going to a play or something. Overall though, it was a good time!

Here's the trailer: No One Killed Jessica Trailer

The dog we refer to as "Scooby's Indian Nephew"
 finishing off some lunch and chai at the CEPT canteen

Chai and Food

I believe that earlier in my blog I expressed my skepticism of the ever popular “chai” that seems to be essential at any conversation, social gathering, or break. Well it didn’t take too long to convince me of it, and now I’m more or less obsessed. I usually end up having about three cups a day (it’s only about Rps. 5 for cup! Which roughly is $0.11!). I even bought my own chai cup from the canteen at CEPT :) I’ve also been adjusting to the food rather well, figuring out what I like and what my stomach can handle.