June 19th
Thursday, June 19th –
I didn’t mention this yesterday but as I was walking back up the hill at night from wherever I was coming from my knee started to hurt, and hurt a lot. I wasn’t sure what it was from, but I knew that it wasn’t good. It seemed as though whenever I walked up hill or down hill, the extra pressure aggrevated a muscle or tendit in my knee. When I got back up to the room the night before I iced it heavily, took some ib profen and put some tiger balm on it to try and keep the muscles loose so they wouldn’t stiffen up and hurt even more. I knew I had to keep weight off it which would be hard. Anyway today I was quite frustrated throughout most of the day. It is really annoying to sit in class with so many females and so few males and discuss women’s rights issues and other issues affecting women. This is not to say I’m sexist, but it’s hard to voice your opinion. If you say something negative they call you a sexist and if you just sit there you have to eat your thoughts, which internally maks you angry.
Too much of our classes has dealt with women’s rights and has not even mentioned any issues dealing with men or gender neutral issues for that matter. Anyway, my frustration really boiled up after today’s classes in particular based on the issues being discussed and how stupid some of the girl’s responses were. Any time someone makes a hypo I have to hear girls say “well this hypo is too narrow, is not reflective of our it really is, blah blah blah.” They take everything as a direct attack and its so annoying.
Anyway immediately after class ben, arrindum, angela, Grady and I decided to go off and try some israeli food in an area of town called Bagsu. It was a backpacker area that had some cheap, quality food. Ben said the walk wasn’t that far, but as it turned out it was well over 2 miles and none of us were all that happy. Fortunately the weather was holding up so the rain wasn’t an issue. Again it rains most days and is always slightly overcast or fully overcast which is quite depressing but I suppose you get used to it after a month of it straight. Anyway when we got there the place was basically a food stand. Grady immediately gave ben crap that there was really no place to formally sit besides a few cushions in front of the shop. Anyway after we all gave him crap for the length of the walk and the lack of seating we all ordered food. All of us got a falafel sandwhich and Arrindum got a half and a half of a sabich. The food took a long time as must do here but the wait was well worth it. It tasted great and after the sandwhich and glass bottle of fanta I had a half of a nutella with banana on a pita sandwich. Man those are so good!
After lunch, Ben, Angela and Arrindum went up to see the waterfall. Grady and I took a rickshaw back to town. I wasn’t interested today in seeing the waterfall and alot of work had yet to be done. When I got to town, I said bye to Grady and walked back towards the hotel. I was looking for a place to read and relax, instead I got caught up in the internet cafe. I ended up spending almost two hours updating my blog. After the internet cafe I decided to head back to the hotel. Not only had I not done any work, but I really had to go to the bathroom. Lunch had hit the gut and I was ready to blow.
At the hotel I tried to get to work done but it was tough. A bunch of us were upstairs chatting away, which I enjoy, but this also meant that not much work would get done. Anyway after a while Sarah came by asking if I wanted to get some dinner with Grady. I said sure but I wanted to at least get the framework of my essay down.
I quickly wrote it on my palm pilot and said “lets go.” Grady took us up some crazy short cut which consisted of a muddy hill that was steep with rocks. I got my shoes a little muddy and Sarah was certainly not happy about this route. Apparently this route was faster, so I took his word for it and tried it out. When we got up to the top, we weren’t sure what we wanted but came across a place called “Jimmy’s” that served Italian food. We decided to try this place out and it was nice. Candle lit dining room with a fantastic italian style menu. I ordered some tomato basil soup which was really nice and some penne with oil, garlic and chilli. Sarah had brought a bottle of redwine which they said we could crack open, so we did. We ended up having a really nice dinner which was a nice way to change the day I had been having. Great conversation about California and other things that I found interesting. Apparently Grady’s wife comes from a city in California which Sarah really loves so Grady and Sarah chatted about it for a while. They also taught me about wine country and the different areas of wine country in California which I really wanted to go to. I think I will try and get to the wine country out on eastern long island first to wet my appettite for any cross country journey to California’s wine country first.
After dinner the three of us headed back to the hotel taking the longer but less muddy way. When we got back a bunch of us went up to the second floor balcony to hang out which was also fun. Not every night do people hang out and just chill, most people are usually sleeping early or doing their own thing. I am still shocked at how little the indian students interact with us, besides arrindum. At this point them being on the program was a failure. They barely contribute in class, again the lone exception being arrindum and aren’t that friendly. I will be informing my professors from back home about this issue and my overall experience on the program, the good and the bad.
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Josh
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