Fall break!

I made it to fall break!  Today I slept in because my wonderful husband got up with the whining dog.  However, my wonderful husband also forgot to turn off his alarm so I woke up to it at eight.  That's still sleeping in an extra hour and a half so I'll take it!

After spending some time around the house, I drove to Plainfield to go to lunch with my friend Laura.  We went to an Indian buffet appropriately named Favorite Indian Cuisine.  It was so good!  I enjoyed every single dish I tried, but I have to say I'm partial to the paneer masala because paneer's something you only get in Indian food.

Then it was over to the dollar store so she could pick up cleaning supplies for her new house (she's closing on it tomorrow!) and I picked up some stuff for decorating my classroom for Halloween.  I found some really good stuff that seemed even better because each item was only a dollar!

This year my students are really into it.  They have planned more ahead of time this year than any other year.  Our theme is going to be abandoned asylum complete with specimen jars full of blood, brains, intestines, and other scary items; a fake body that's going to fall out of the ceiling and hang itself; students dress as former asylum patients laying on tables; a student sitting in an electric chair; and an operating table with me as the doctor operating on a patient!

We have a general plan and some of the supplies gathered, but we still have to figure out how to make an electric chair.  At this point we're thinking using my office chair and tying a students arms down to the arms of the chair and having them wear a bowl that's covered in tin foil with wires sticking out of it.  Other suggestions?

Book review: Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India

Image from here

This was an interesting book about a woman who moved to Delhi, India and lived there for six years. It's part memoir and part commentary on some of the Indian customs, including arranged marriages, the caste system, and the differences between India and America. It was funny and quirky and kept me reading. I thought it did a great job of summing up some of the best and worst and most confusing parts of India.

"If India had been a man, we would have had a very unhealthy relationship indeed.  The place overwhelmed and infuriated me; sometimes, after a hot day of frustrations, I felt as though it was taking blood from me to feed itself.  In the mornings, though, waking up with India beside me, I was a girl newly in love.  I'd lie very still, blinking into the bright white light.  I could hear Radha moving around in the apartment, and I'd pray that she wouldn't intrude.  I like to let the outside cacophony wash over me, as though it was a part of my dream.  If I lay perfectly still, I imagined, it would stay with me for the whole day."

- Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India by Miranda Kennedy

From India. With Love.

Image from here

One of my favorite bloggers is having a giveaway for her birthday over at From India. With Love.  She is living in India and of course posts gorgeous pictures of the people and things she sees on a daily basis.  Can you tell I'm a little jealous?  Head over to her blog to enter to wish her a happy birthday or to enter the giveaway yourself.

This is awesome

Picture taken from Things Organized Neatly

Thoughts on Eat, Pray, Love

Image from here

 I went to see Eat, Pray, Love with two of my friends over the weekend.  I have to say I had really high expectations for this movie.  It's not that I loved the book that much, more that I loved the idea of the book.  The idea of traveling to Italy, India, and Indonesia (or more specifically Bali) as a single women without much of a plan was intriguing to me, especially because I'm someone who always has a plan.

I also find it interesting that Elizabeth Gilbert's book has received all of this attention when there are other books that are extremely similar to hers that have been completely ignored.  The main one I'm thinking of is Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman.  I read her book before reading Eat, Pray, Love and thought it was amazing that she was able to truly live with and learn from the people and places she was visiting.  The experiences of these women are so different and, in a way, I think that Elizabeth Gilbert's book has received more attention simply because it is easier for people to picture themselves traveling to different countries, living there, learning what they want to, and then leaving.  That seems much more accessible to most people than the way that Rita Golden Gelman truly embraces the culture she is living in, which is an extremely scary thing to think about.

Honestly, I find the experiences of both women intimidating because I am not someone who is good at being away from my family and friends.  The month I spent in India was the most time I've spent away from anyone I've known and, even then, I was going with a group of students led by a professor from Hope.  I am in awe of their ability to step (or more accurately leap) out of the comfortable lives they had created for themselves and embrace what the world had to offer.

As it turns out, I really wanted to get my thoughts about the books out instead of writing a review of the movie because I don't really know what to think of the movie.  Were parts of it good?  Yes.  Could parts of it have been done better? Yes. Did it show India the way that India is?  Yes and no.  Yes in the scene where she's in the taxi in India traveling from the airport to the ashram because they made a point of showing the chaos that overwhelms you and the children that are constantly begging you for money/attention/love.  No because she spent much of her time in India in the ashram.

I think the main reason I had such strong feelings about the movie is because my experiences in India have had such a deep emotional impact on me that the thought of other people experiencing India in a different way is difficult for me to grasp.  I know it happens, but I'm not always ready to acknowledge that it happens.

Sorry if these thoughts don't make sense.  They don't really make all that much sense to me.  But I thought I needed to try to get some of these thoughts out of my head before I spent too much time there thinking about India and traveling and all of the other things that these books and the movie bring up for me.