Tamil lessons, etc

First and foremost: we found two amazing things last night. Ice cream and beer. Our TA, Ravi, recommended going to the Park Hotel to try out a popular club. The club was closed, though, and we ended up at the hotel bar--Leather Bar. While I was slightly weirded out by the fact that everything including the floor and ceiling were made out of leather (as well as morally opposed), it didn't stop me from enjoying a draft Kingfisher. Audra and Leslie and I also found the restaurant, which, to my great delight, had ice cream!! My tummy feels much better after some dairy. We enjoyed the night rickshaw ride back to the hostel. The night ride brought out a different, even more vibrant feel to Chennai.

We started off the morning right with some coconut water straight from the coconut. Ravi was sweet enough to go out with a few of our classmates and get everyone his or her very own coconut. According to Ravi, the water is fully fortified with all kinds of good stuff. It was unlike anything I've tasted...and it was really fun to drink out of a coconut.

We then ventured off to Mahabalipuram, which is home to several temples and monuments built during the 7th, 8th, and 9th century. These are all UNESCO world heritage sites, and they are kind of a big deal. So the sites are scattered throughout the town, and you see shops and homes in the same frame as these beautiful historic structures. What's really amazing is that many of the temples were hand carved out of huge existing rocks. Like a huge rock was whittled down to several ornate temples. By hand. In the heat. It was so hot out there that my nail polish melted off of my toes. Now I couldn't even make that up if I wanted to.

It's also really interesting to observe who was all there visiting and think about who all has been there over these hundreds of years, from building the site, to praying at the site, to now touring the site. I ran into a family visiting from another state in India and they seemed pretty interested in us white people. The mother kept asking me to pose for pictures with her children. They were really sweet about it and seemed genuinely interested to see different people. As one of our supervisors at ICTPH said, "we Indians are just a curious lot." I like it.

The car ride back to Chennai was equally informative. Baba, the driver, helped us with our Tamil. We all have been really interested to learn at least the basics so we can show some respect when we're out in the field. It's been slow though. Baba was super patient with us and even led a counting session where he counted in Tamil and we repeated. Hopefully by the next post I can throw a few Tamil phrases in.

Before coming back to the hostel we stopped at the shopping mall. Dun dun dun. And I hated it. It's this huge air conditioned cage full of designer shops and KFC and Subway. But, I'll admit, I did have Baskin Robbins and throughly enjoy it. So what is the reason for going here? Sheets. I wanted to get a bed sheet for the train ride tonight. We are going to be in the sleeper car in bunks. I've heard snippets here and there about how cockroaches make for strange bedfellows; it's not uncommon to have them nest in the sheets provided. And I'm already weird about sharing sheets and beds, so it was well worth the $4 for something clean.

We did have some interesting conversations in this corporate, capitalistic mecca though (sorry, I will stop now). One thing a few of us commented on that was interesting was the way in which men interact with men and women interact with women. It's really common to see men with their arms around each other's shoulders or even holding hands. However, I haven't seen any women showing any affection to each other in public. I thought this was interesting given that in most countries I've been to, it's really common to see women linking arms, but not men. Another thing we talked about was the actually stuff in the stores. So the women's clothing on the (white) mannequins was not acceptable to wear out in the streets. Is it for a special class of women going to special places in Chennai? Or for western women? Or Indian women going to the west? Meep. I just felt like I couldn't figure out the cultural identity of this place, who it was for, or what it was supposed to represent...

Anywho, time to quit rambling and pack for the train...and hopefully not make any close friends in my bunk tonight...