Highs and Lows (written Friday, Sept. 28th)

Tomorrow marks my first month in India! So far, life here has been largely an experience of riding my own emotional roller coaster, waiting out the truly demoralizing times and waiting patiently for the exciting and heartwarming experiences that unpredictably come as well (although not as frequently, darn it). Yesterday was a hugely frustrating day for me, and for the first time I finally let all my negative emotions spill out into my journal, and after finally purging them, I felt much better.

There are two other interns here, one of whom leaves in a week and another who will remain until December. They were both away at trainings yesterday, leaving me alone to assist the staff when usually there are more of us. According to Barbara, who’s been here for six months and is Scotttish, whether there are seven interns or only one, the amount of work is always overwhelmingly huge. So I felt the full burden of that yesterday…..typing emails for everyone, editing things, fixing fax machines, helping people use the internet and trying to work on my own projects. The expectations and customs here are extremely challenging to adjust to. People don’t say please and thank you; they simply tell you in a matter-of-fact way they are giving you a task. They hover over you on the computer and say they need to use it, and do not budge until you have stopped what you’re doing and relinquished your chair. The culture here is just very straight forward….which at first I though may be a language issue. That perhaps they just didn’t know the conditional tense, politities, etc. BUT, from what I’m told, whether they were speaking Hindi or Marathi, their approach with still be just as demanding. That’s just their style J Which, over time, can make a girl go crazy.

However, unlike yesterday today has been fantastic. What I thought would be a disasterous attempt at teaching English (for two hours!) in Brenna’s absence was actually the most fun I have had since I got to Mhaswad. There are five young college students, all twenty-year old women studying chemistry or botany, that make up the twice-weekly advanced English class taught in our office. I was feeling HUGE trepidation about how this would go…..I really don’t know advanced English grammar, and unlike Brenna I have no experience writing curriculum or teaching foreign languages. My approach, then, was pretty simple. I just passed out newspaper articles, and asked them to circle words they didn’t understand. Then, we talked about them, defined them, and identified three synonyms. The words were actually more challenging to define than I expected! Tournament, admire, hogging, (full) throttle, petition, hurling, interveners, harassment, orchestrated, thorough, psyche, crucial, dwelling…it gets really difficult to define words using words they already understood. But they seemed to really like the approach, and it wound up facilitating broader discussions that lasted well over the two hour class period. It was so much fun! I was shocked. Unfortunately, when Barbara leaves in a week and I get handed off one of the classes, I’m going to have to teach more than vocab. Meh.

Anyway, this illustrates the highs and lows of living here….yesterday I was ready to scream at someone or start crying, and today I’m completely refreshed and happy. From what I’m told, that will never change, no matter how long I stay. Flexibility and patience, patience and flexibility…..