The past week has been rather enjoyable, largely so because I've actually had some classes. Crazy, right? The nightmare of trying to register for a language course is now (hopefully) over; I walked in with my Hebrew sheet during last day registration and when I handed it to the LEAP (Language Experience for All Program) director he said, "Oh . . . you're that girl." Awesome words to hear. But I should be set on that front. Hebrew starts this Wednesday so that should be pretty exciting. I've always wanted to learn a language that doesn't write down vowels.
Research Methods is my Monday class, and I have to give a big shout-out to Dr. Imai on this one. This is the class that basically teaches us how to write like academics and how to construct a dissertation, etc. There are about 30 of us in that class, and the convener (because if I didn't mention this earlier, we don't have professors here; we have conveners) went around the whole class and asked us to talk about what kind of research we'd done in the past and what we thought research was. Apparently most British undergrads have to write a dissertation to graduate, so they already sound much smarter than we foreigners on two counts - not only do they have very cool, academiclly-inclined-sounding accents, but they've already done one of these dissertations. So the convener went around the room and everybody talked about what research they'd done in the past (some of it sounded really interesting - the Swiss girl I met at Induction did one on the image of Africa and Africans in children's books from the 1930s until the present; I'd be very interested to read that, actually), and when he came to me I said that American undergrads don't generally do dissertations but I talked about the hypothesis testing papers I'd done for Dr. Imai. When I mentioned the testing of the hypothesis, his eyes lit up and he said, "Yes, finally!" In that class of 30, I was one of only three kids (I guess I should stop calling us kids, since we're all 22 and over) who had a "proper" conception of research. So Dr. Imai, once again thank you for making us an awful lot of stuff that we really, really didn't want to do at the time but that ended up helping us out later on.
My Tuesday class is an actual Holocaust course - the Holocaust in History. There are three students, including myself. The other two, Karl and Juliette, are both native Brits and seem extremely friendly. The convener is French and is adorable in that marvelous way that Frenchmen always seem to be adorable. This is not to sound demeaning or like I don't take the French seriously, but there just seems to be something about Frenchmen that makes so many people say, "Awwww!" Maybe it's the scarves and berets; I don't know. But regardless, this guy (Dr. Dreyfus) really seems to know his stuff. He's going to be taking this from a largely theoretical perspective and have us analyze different theories, largely sociological, about the hows and whys of the Holocaust. It should be fascinating but very challenging as I'm not a sociologist. I would have been completely lost doing this week's reading if I hadn't taken Social Theory last year (a shout out to Dr. O'Brian for letting me stay even though I wasn't in the major). Dr. Dreyfus also took the reMARKable (Father, I hope you appreciate that) step of photocopying everything he wants us to read this term; I now have a stack of papers 7 inches high sitting on my desk. Much of it's dense reading due to the theoretical emphasis, and the paper I was assigned to give a short presentation on for next week is very heavy stuff - Moishe Postone's "The Holocaust and the Trajectory of the Twentieth Century," if anybody's looking for a little light bedtime reading. His argument is that the Holocaust can be explained in terms of capitalism, and if we break capitalism down we can associate it with modern antisemitism and that will explain not only the Holocaust, but postwar attitudes toward it. Not sure I buy it, but it was interesting, albeit long. Oh, and it this point it looks as though I'm the only one left in my discipline; there was one other guy but he was only part time and it looks like he may have left . . .
And now I'm sure you're all excited to hear about the Indian food promised by the title . . . this came about when we were having a rather wonder flat-bonding evening last week with the whole crew - Carlos, Avi, Fauzan, Irene, and yours truly, plus Avi's friend Nithya. She's absolutely marvelous, and she was actually hoping to move down here (she lives on 12th floor) because there's still nobody in the fifth room, and she's really taken to all of us (I must say, as a flat we are pretty darn awesome). So the six of us were having a grand old time, brought together by the fact that Avi decided he wanted to cook us dinner. He prefaced this with "I'm not sure if you'll like it or not . . ." which referred to an incident that took place earlier that week when he held out a container of something and told me to take a whiff. It was super-hot Indian chili powder, and man does that stuff clean out your nostrils. But I told him that whatever he was gracious enough to cook I would certainly try, and it turned out to be a very traditional way of making chicken, eaten with rice. Let me tell you, it was amazing. I can say it was actually probably some of the best chicken I've ever had, and I'm gonna have to get the recipe from him. It was a little spicy, but not enough to be overwhelming. He also made an okra gravy, but didn't know the English word for okra. Apparently they call it lady's finger and he thought it translated a little better than it does (I asked him what was in it and he said, "A lady's finger." I raised my eyebrows and told him I really hoped that wasn't the case; Nithya cleared up the misunderstanding). The gravy went seperately over the rice, and it was okay (I think I just don't really like okra), but it couldn't hold a candle to the chicken. Tremendous chicken, truly.
So we spent quite a while talking and joking and laughing hysterically about Fauzan's attempts to wrangle some cute Mexican girls and about the "big hairy Spanish guy" who walked into his buddy Alfian's room in the middle of the night looking for the bathroom and then offered to give him a back massage, and the subject of food and cooking came up. Apparently Fauzan and Irene love the idea of cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, but a real one - not my turkey sandwich idea, but a real stuffed turkey. Avi and Nithya were very enthused about this idea as well, and apparently there's a similar Indian festival at the beginning of November, although not with quite as much historical significance (I had to explain the meaning behind Thanksgiving and where the tradition comes from, but I explained using the term "Indians," and Avi was really confused; he said, "Really? That was us? Cool; I never knew that! I thought we got there a lot later . . ."), so we've decided that we're gonna try to combine the two events into one big Indian-American day of awesome food and cooking. Now how's that for promoting international diplomacy? Especially since a Ugandan, an Indonesian, and a Mexican will also be involved, and one way or another Kola will probably be invited so that will add a Nigerian as well. Go us!
My second experience with Indian food this past week came three days ago when I went into the kitchen to wash something and Avi was in there cooking something. He said it was his favorite dish, although I have no idea what it was called. It involved some kind of sauce and some kind of meat and five eggs all in a pan together and eaten over rice (I think). At any rate, I stayed and chatted for a while and at some point he tasted the broth (which was a lovely fall shade of orange) and then brought a spoonful of it over to me and told me to try it. Well, I did . . . my tongue was burning for 20 minutes after the fact. Not because it was not, but because it was spicy. He then told me that there were 14 spoonfuls of that chili powder in it, and that was actually considered relatively moderate. He laughed so hard when he saw my reaction . . . I honestly couldn't tell you what it tasted like, or if it tasted good/bad, etc. All I was conscious of was the burn. Quite the experience . . . I saw Nithya later on and she grinned and said, "I heard you got a little spice this morning, hmm?" She really is a doll; we found out that she's not being allowed to move down here, which is really a shame.
The things I've been asked since I've been here really make me smile. I don't know how much of this I've mentioned, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself . . . these are coming largely from Avi; apparently Indians have very interesting ideas about what goes on in America. For example, I've been asked if it's true that all parents kick their children out of the house with no money as soon as they turn 18, why don't we revolt on a regular basis, and if it's true lawyers and policemen hate each other. My absolute favorite, though, was when Avi told me how great it was that the police in America treat everyone the same, and that there's no corruption. I told him that wasn't exactly the case and he really was shocked. I mean, maybe compared to the Indian police force we're not that bad, but I don't think you could say that our police departments are without corruption and all that fun stuff. As far as general knowledge goes, I've also been asked how to cook a salmon, what a hamburger is, and how a freezer works (not too many freezers in India, apparently). Avi also now thinks he's allergic to frozen foods because his lips swelled up after he ate a frozen shrimp; I think it's a little more likely that he has some kind of shellfish allergy. But Avi, if you read this, you know I love you :D I've also been able to introduce him to some classic American music; he asked me to make him a playlist of American love songs, for his edification and delight, and I put "Cherish," "My Girl," and "Smile a Little Smile for Me" on there. Today he told me that he absolutely loved "My Girl," and sure enough, I could hear it on repeat, coming faintly through the connecting wall. Spreading classic American music across the world . . . it was an even trade though; he burned a CD of A.R. Rahman songs onto my computer (he would be the genius who did "Chaiyya Chaiyya" and the music for practically every Bollywood movie ever made), so here the two of us are, dancing around to music from the other person's country that we can't really understand. Good times, good times. I feel like we're supposed to be grown ups, but none of us feel like doing that just yet. I think I'm actually the youngest one here; I know that Carlos and Irene are 4 and 5 years older than I am, respectively, and I think Avi and Fauzan are both older by maybe a year or so, perhaps two. But as Irene said, "As soon as you get back into a college dorm environment, you start to act like a kid again, so why not enjoy it while you can get away with it?"
And speaking of other countries, etc., when we were having our courtesty-of-Avi dinner last week, he and Nithya spoke briefly in Tamil and when she stepped out for a few minutes he asked me if I liked how it sounded. Well, when haven't I liked how a foreign language sounds? I told him yes and then asked him to teach me how to say something. He thought for a moment and then said, "This is 'How are you?'" I can't really transliterate it, but it would look something like "Yuparri ilka" but with the "r"s and the "lk" aspirated. Well he said it for me and when I repeated it back to him he almost fell off his chair. Apparently my pronounciation was dead perfect. Now, not to sound boastful, but if you're reading this you probably do know that I have an ear for that kind of thing so it wasn't as extraordinary as he made it sound, but he was so impressed. He asked me to repeat it, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and then he just sat there grinning and shaking his head. He taught me a few other simple phrases to say to Nithya when she came back, although I can't remember them now. It was quite a bit of fun. Apparently, though, Tamil sentence structure is just like German, which I never would have thought since they're in no way related.
I think that concludes my fun update for this evening, although I will leave you with a piece of very deep, moving literature that I discovered earlier today. This poem was written by our very own Todd Bryant, and it looks as though he's inherited Dad's gift for offbeat rhyming and lyrics; enjoy!
Untitled, written by Todd Bryant
On a hot day in sunny Iraq,
I had a small cyst cut out of my back.
It doesn't hurt, which makes me say,
"Why did I wait all the way to today?"
I'll tell you why . . . here's the shtick.
The idea of a cyst makes me sick.
It took me a while and I had to go far,
But now I have one heck of a scar.
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