India Week 4 (November 1st - November 7th)
Happy Halloween!
This week we got to celebrate two major holidays! After
participating in Diwali festivities, we put on our silliest and most creative
costumes and celebrated Halloween on November 1st inside our Chennai
compound! We invited our new friend Professor Vijay, and although he was a bit taken
aback by our goofy Halloween garb, he enjoyed the different games we played. We
played Papri-Pap-Pap, a concentration game introduced by Vijay, and Bani-Bani
game by Sydney. We also brought and enjoyed too much candy and ended up with a
bag full of leftovers.
This week we also finally had an opportunity to visit the
University that has been hosting us and organizing our schedule throughout our
stay in Chennai: Madras Christian College. We received a warm welcome from
faculty and students within the philosophy and social work departments. The St.
Olaf students split off into small groups with MCC students and engaged in
conversations covering ALL topics (including the current US presidential
election, education, Indian architecture, social life, social media, dating
culture, etc.). A few days later we returned to Madras Christian College and
reunited with the faculty for a beautiful farewell meal and ceremony—perhaps
the first of many to come!
Not only that, we also got to visit the cultural center in
India called Dakshina Chitra. This place was a museum that collected the houses
of different states in India, including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra
Pradesh. Each houses of different states had its own distinct beauty and
culture. In addition to looking around the different houses in different
states, some of us had a chance to make our own pottery using the wheel. After
we ate lunch in Dakshina Chitra, we also visited the Crocodile Park in Chennai.
This place had more than 2000 crocodiles of 40 types from various regions of
the world. It was amazing how so many crocodiles were just sleeping right in
front of our eyes. After the crocodiles park, we visited the special tents that
kept venomous snakes and demonstrated how they extracted venoms from many
poisonous snakes in India, including cobra and viper. After seeing the
crocodiles we attended a traditional Indian performance telling a well-known
Indian story through song and dance.
We also celebrated Sophie’s 21st birthday
(November 5th)! To celebrate we had the chef make a special North Indian
vegetarian dish, Paneer Masala. Then the St. Olaf students celebrated by going
to a Tapas restaurant for appetizers and desserts!
For our last few days in Chennai, we got to rest, pack and
work on our presentations and essays. Our German friend Jonathan from Quo Vadis
in Tiruvannamalai visited us and we watched some movies, and ate pizza! Our
final time in Chennai was also spent finishing and presenting our final step of
individual research projects. And to celebrate the end of a wonderful stay in
Chennai we lit sparklers on the roof of our compound as the Chennai police
watched with worry.
Shout out to the compound for supplying us with 62 one-liter
water bottles per person (930 total) during our stay in Chennai!
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| Alex, Laura, Vijay, and Becca in a Sari store |
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| The snake masters at the Crocodile park |
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| Alex, Laura, Becca, Pazong and Zozo enjoying ice cream at the MCC farewell lunch (S/O to Michael for the flattering photo!) |
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| Crocs J chillin' |
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| Traditional dance in Chennai |
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| Sophie, Sydney and Becca celebrating Sophies birthday! |
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| Celebrating the final night in Chennai with sparklers! |
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| 184 water bottles from Siri, Alex and Katherine's room |
Brought to you by the Transportation committee (Siri, Laura and Michael)
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