November 3, 2004
Dear Parents,
We'll soon be entering another transition phase of Global: as the November days pass, our minds will be on India, Thailand, and Hong Kong all at once. Add to that the fact that we've all been away long enough to have some homesickness "well, sickness maybe isn't quite the right word; let's say we've all had pangs of longing for home; both family home and St. Olaf "home". Yes, in spite of living through days that move like whitewater from one new experience to the next, we do miss family and friends.
We have a couple days free right now. Some students have gone off to a wildlife safari; others have gone to the coastal area of Kerala, a few have gone fishing; and some took a one day wildlife preserve/zoo trip yesterday and are hanging around the ECC, Whitefield, and Bangalore today. Some are even writing papers for our class. Good for them!
Tomorrow we are back in our classroom again. We have three hours of class on Sikhism and an afternoon visit to a Sikh temple, a gurudwara. (I see that my computer spell check doesn't know the word gurudwara.) I have, however, arranged for morning tea to be served in our one TV lounge so that we can watch election results from the US. From what we hear about the acrimony and noise of the campaign season there, we're thinking we might be fortunate to be out of the country. Many of us have voted already, not all. For example: Carol and I went to the Rice County Court House together back in August. We filled out forms and handed them to the same person at the same time. When we arrived at the ECC, my absentee ballot was here waiting for me. Carol's has not arrived yet, and this is November 2.
Students from St. Olaf's Biology in South India program came to visit us on Sunday and Monday. All enjoyed the time together. They know more about India that we do "they stay in India the whole semester" but we know more about Egypt than they do. We shared stories. And we shared a Halloween party. Every year Global students are expected to entertain the children of the ECC staff with such a party. It was quite the dress-up event this year, though I was especially impressed with the jack-o-melons. If you haven't got a pumpkin, hey, a watermelon will do.
I would try to explain India to you, but I can't. The pictures you will see when your son or daughter gets home will help explain some of it, I think. But India is multi-faceted. One almost has to stand in the middle of it, turn in a full 360 degrees, and try to absorb the startling extremes of beauty and decay. The streets are crowded all the time with auto rickshaws, buses, cows, bullock carts, bicycles, motorcycles, pedestrians, push carts of various goods. And the sides of the streets are lined with palm branch roofed huts, high tech business compounds, small carts of cooked food, bundles of socks or shirts, piles of incense or spices, sleeping dogs, sari-clad women sweeping sidewalks, heaps of rubbish and broken cement, men peeing on walls or trees, billboards for the latest movies, video cameras, or computer software. It is colorful and amazing, with heart-rending poverty and inspirational resilience at the same time.
And on this day-off, I've been reading another batch of student papers. Those papers are all the reassurance one needs to know very clearly that Global is far more than just a tourist binge around the planet. This experience is not just being gathered up into photos and good memories; it is being processed, probed, questioned, analyzed, and finally appreciated by intelligent students. It is a joy to experience all of this with them.
Peace to you all,
Bruce (and Carol)
