Observation exercize &c.

Hello All,

Well, things are really settled down here. I think i've got my schedle down and things are falling into place.

This weekend was really laid back. I went to the temple district to buy a few things and then from Saturday night until Sunday afternoon I more or less just sat and read in my house. Then Last night I went out to eat and ate chicken for the first time since I got here. I've actually gotten into the habit of telling people that I'm a vegetarian because it seems to make things a lot more simple- and i don't really trust the meat preparation and storage here all that much. So the chicken was an interesting change. it seemed to have been fried (like most of the food here is, I would say)- and it had a crispy red outter layer and was SO hot i could barely eat it. It was alright (and one of the only things I've had since I got here that hasn't been spicy), but I think I'm going to stick to the veg. food for now.

Last night the family that lives below us made a huge pile of wood in our yard. They then took all of the dirt around the pile of wood and dug it up and then added buckets of water to it. Women would go with their jugs and fetch the water from the well and then carry it back on their heads and leave it with the men who would do the mixing. The shovels here are long and flat and the handles sort of come out at about a 20 degree angle from the blade. The men bend over and shovel between their legs- sort of like how dogs dig up dirt. So- then they took all of this mud that they had made and mixed it with small branches and leaves and put it all around the huge pile of wood. finally they had what looked like a 12 foot high pile of mud outside our house, and then they lit it on fire from an opening below. We asked what they were doing it for, and they explained to us that they were making coal (because they are the neighborhood ironers- after you get your clothes washed you take them to the family under us and they iron them on the side of the street). Anyway- it was an interesting process to see, and I thought I'd share it with anyone who's interested. It was only sort of problimatic when the wood was burning all night and filled our rooms with smoke. Emily even tried sleeping on the roof for awhile it was that bad.

It seems as though there's always something new here. Just when I think I'm starting to understand the patterns of the people that i'm living around, something new comes up and I'm completely surprised again. sometimes there are huge fires in our yard- and I still can't figure out what they're burning. maybe trash? Sometimes there is drumming for hours, and firecrackers going off and no one seems to notice- in fact, I asked the woman who lives below me about it and she said that there weren't ay firecackers- that all people were doing that day was praying.

I went out to the potter's village today. I go again tomorrow. I think I'm not very good at it- but the potter priest says I'm a really fast student because I'm already making really big pots. It's hard work, and i get sore doing it, and really muddy. I'm also getting much better at navigating the bus system to get out there.

Last week I went to a professor's house to talk about my fieldwork ideas. He is a man named Dianechu Carr (an odd coinsidence?). He's pretty old and extremely smart. He's been guest a guest lecturer all over Europe, and maybe in the US a few times and was formally the president of a theology university in India. We talked a lot about Christianity and some about Hindusim and the use of symbols in each. By the end of it I was so excited to learn about all of it, but also completely at a loss about what I want to specifically study.

That night I went to a Roman Catholic church with Eugene, a field assistant, to do a practice observation exercize. We got there thinking there was going to be an English mass, but I guess we were misinformed or something because it was in Tamil. The church was really amazing to see though. It was really big and really colorful. There were huge statues of mother mary and christ on the outside of the church with neon signs that said, in tamil, here is your mother. Inside there were a lot of statues of different saints and a few crusifixes, and a few statues of the mother mary. It was interesting to see how people prayed there. I haven't spent a lot of time (or any time maybe?) in a Roman Catholic chuch in the US, so I was trying to compare what I saw to Hindu worshiping techniques rather than to US Catholic worshiping techniques. A lot of people were kneeling down in the front and just praying silently, focusing on the crusifix or on the figure of Mary. At the end of the Mass a lot of people got up and touched one of the crusifixes and then would bring their hands to their eyes- a guesture that is really common in Hinduism and puja ceremonies. There were some other Hindu-type elements in the church. The women still wear sacred threads instead of wedding bands and I saw a few babies with black dots on their cheeks- put there to keep away the evil eye- a hindu superstition. Also, some people took their shoes off before they entered the church, although most kept them on still.

It was an interesting experience- although I still don't really know where I should go with my research. I'm tempted to mainly focus on Hindusim and then focus on Christianity later in my life... maybe just next year. Just keeping in mind the idea that while I'm in a Hindu culture it might be good to take advantage of that.

Either way I think I'm going to try to go to a temple in the next few days- maybe over the weekend- and do a similar type of observational exercize. It seems, however, that people are more likely to pay attention to me at a hindu temple than at the catholic church. So- in temples it gets kind of difficult to be an observer without effecting the enviroment that i'm observing and thus changing the results of what i'm seeing.

well, i guess that's the update for now. I have a tamil test on Thursday that I'm not really ready for, but am not really sure how to get ready for. I have four rolls of film being developed, and they're going to put them on a CD, so maybe i'll upload them onto my webshots account when I get them back.

I hope you are all well, thanks to those of you who are sending me emails!

much love

--- catie