Just came back from another lovely run. My earbuds broke on one of the first
flights over and I haven’t had a chance to buy a pair (still waiting on a rupee
reimbursement…) but Anne let me borrow hers. So I was jammin’, probably with a Cheshire Cat smile on my
face. I bumped into the only other
possible “runner” that I saw yesterday… I wasn’t sure if she was actually
running for exercise because it looked like she was dressed in pajamas, running
after a dog who escaped while she was pouring her morning coffee. But our paths intersected multiple
times this morning and she gave me a huge wave so I think we’re going to be
friends. Maybe because the music
made me so happy, I started to elicit more smiles on the faces of people I
encountered- one biker said “good running, good running”, the security guard
yelled down a jolly “Good morning” from the top of his perch on the observation
tower and I finally got permission to run on the asphalt instead of the
concrete. Running on asphalt
pounds your joints but running on that concrete was even worse, it got
dangerously slippery near sprinklers and I constantly had to leap up and down
sidewalks that were more elevated than normal. And I found some new birds (Eliot, the birdwatcher, would
have a hay day!) and some new cool trees (Fact: seed pods resemble badminton
balls).
In
general, I feel like I’m starting to bond with more of the Indians here. Rajiv (the network engineer) and I are practically
best friends. He spent another two
hours in my room last night after an hour and a half in the morning, I learned
most of his life story and he left me his cell phone number. Not like I can call it. He might have called my room last night
around midnight to check if my problem was fixed but I passed out after dinner,
even though I was watching some Indian music videos desperately trying to stay
awake for the Internet service providers who were supposed to stop by in an
hour. Oops. Everyone’s on-line but me at this point
so I keep telling him it’s not the Internet service but he’s convinced.
Unloading
supplies yesterday provided a great opportunity for team bonding. We had a small closet filled with boxes
in one building so after lots of waiting (that goes without saying in this
country haha. I’d love to get a
statistic on what percentage of Indians are actually working at any given
minute during the workday. I’d
estimate 30%, to be generous) we had to bucket brigade the boxes down a floor,
over a building, up a floor including a segment of the journey outside in the
sweltering heat. Sweating through
your clothes in a cloud of Indian body odor is about as good as it gets (I
wonder what Americans smell like to Indian people… The most American smell I
can think of is greasy McDonalds so hopefully not that. After using this “Mysore sandalwood”
soap and eating their food three times a day, I doubt I’ll retain my gringo
scent for long). But it was fun
talking to more of the TAs and RAs.
It’s kinda silly because although I’m the youngest instructor here, I’m
one of the most revered. The two
most prestigious fields in India are engineering and medicine (business is
starting to catch up) and since there are no medicine classes here, as the
resident engineering expert, I’m one of the most well respected. Even though people are starting to
learn I’m not a trained engineer (shhh…).
I’m also the first staff member to earn a nickname “007”. (Partially because of my room number
but also because I’m as smooth and sly as James Bond… haha I wish).
After
we got the boxes up to a classroom, we were told to open and sort them
Christmas-style. Fortunately, most
of my supplies seem to be here except for my balsa wood shipment which is the
basis of the solar-powered boat and balsa-wood bridges project… which is, of
course, our first project, starting as soon as Wednesday. So hopefully they can find some in
Mysore.
I
finally got to talk to my TA more extensively and figure out why he kept asking
me the same question over and over again prior to the conversation. Apparently, his “engineering physics”
major is basically a physics major that had a couple basic engineering courses
his first year. So he’s a little
nervous about the practical, engineering emphasis of this course. That makes two of us (but I didn’t tell
him that!). Building things,
writing engineering design proposals, drawing technical sketches is definitely
out of my comfort zone (I haven’t done it since high school and my first year
of undergrad) but I constructed the course around what would be interesting and
engaging to the kids. After
talking for awhile, hopefully he feels better that this class will be a new but
exciting challenge for both of us.
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