So sorry its been so long since I've written, I kind of lost track of time!
Anyway, I believe I left off on Thursday. At work, Maria and I were messing with a bunch of data that we were asked to help manage, as well as reading up on the uses of social media in business. We spent all morning on this, and because Thursday's are our half-days, we left at about 2pm and headed to a different area of Koramangala to our lecture for the week. We grabbed lunch at a biryani place around the corner, and then got to listen to someone from RuralShores speak. RuralShores is an organization that promotes the development of outsourcing centers in rural areas of India as opposed to urban centers. This allows for slowed migration to urban areas while bringing jobs to those individuals in rural areas who need them. It was an interesting lecture, and especially neat after hearing about Ashoka last week. After the lecture, the whole GSE group and our advisors went to dinner at a Tibetan restaurant. YUM. I'm not totally sure what exactly I ate, but I know it was good. Apparently we had things called "crispy veggies", "momos", and a desert made with sesame seeds and honey, among other things. After that dinner, we all made it back to our apartments by about 9:30, and we were in for the night.
Friday was another day at work, although it was strange, because there was virtually no one in our office. Maybe Friday is an unofficial work from home day that we didn't know about. Anyway, Maria and I briefly met with Lily in the morning (who came in for a couple of hours just for two meetings) and then we kept working on the data and research parts of our project. We went to lunch at about 2pm with Yoshi and Amanda, and after another two hours of work or so, we all realized we were pretty burned out and needed a breather, so we all left the office at about 4:45 and went and got ice cream on our way to the bus stop. After a little bit of a relax time, we got on the bus and came home home. A bunch of us decided that we so enjoyed the Tibetan meal from Thursday night that we would try the Tibetan place here in our neighborhood, so we went and again had a great meal. Maybe Tibetan food will be our new staple here.... in India. It had been a long week, so we pretty much all settled in after dinner.
Saturday morning, Kristen, Navee, Maddy and I ventured off to Garuda Mall to meet Naman, another Wooster student who happens to live here in Bangalore. We spent a few hours looking through stores (including a great bookstore) and trying cold coffee (which is more or less a coffee milkshake- yummy), and visiting. At about 2:30, Kristen and Navee had to go somewhere, so Maddy and I caught the bus back to the apartments. We sat around visiting for about an hour with the girls that were still here, and then Maddy and I went out on an extensive shopping trip. We decided that on Sunday night we wanted to make a big Indian dinner and try and make several different things, so we had to go get a bunch of stuff from multiple grocery stores. After the shopping trip, I did a little bit of work back at the apartments, and then a big group of us went out to celebrate Matt's 21st birthday. We had a nice time out, but we had trouble meeting up with the rest of the group, so we came back to the apartments at about 11 to see everybody else. After a fun night, we all headed to bed because we had to get up for a lecture this morning...
But it was really enjoyable! From her time living in Rajasthan, Laura knows someone who worked with the Ashoka foundation early in its life, in the 1980's, and who is a Gandhian economist. He talked to us for a couple of hours in a pleasant yoga studio about a variety of topics related to India, economics, social entrepreneurship and more. When that was over, Navee and I stopped by the store on our way home because there were just a couple more things Maddy and I needed for our cooking extravaganza tonight. When we got back from the store, we made Maggi noodles (basically spicier ramen) for lunch and then I spent a couple of hours doing some work on my laptop. At 5pm, Maddy and I started cooking. Who knew we were in so far over our heads! We started chopping an entire grocery-store's worth of vegetables (picture 20 cups of potatoes and not enough bowls and pans to put them all in), and mixing up a bunch of spices. Our kitchen isn't bad but it isn't great, and its biggest fault is that it doesn't have a fan. So, when you get a couple of burners going on the stove, it gets pretty toasty in there pretty quickly. And then (and this is a completely hypothetical situation, of course), when there is a little sweat on your upper lip and you have been chopping green chili peppers and you wipe the sweat away only to set fire to your lip because of the chilis, that just adds to the charm. But we had fun making aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower), paneer and some sort of sauce, sweet and sour potatoes, roti, gulab jamoon (a dessert) and also mango lassi and mango mojitos. We finally sat down to eat (out of pots and pans, glass lids, and of course, newspapers) at about 9:30, after four and a half hours of running around the kitchen. But the food wasn't bad, even if it was a little rough around the edges. For example, the dessert which should have looked like little donut holes in syrup dissolved into a doughy syrupy mess- that still tasted fine. And making both of the mango drinks was interesting because we were supposed to puree the mango except we didn't have a blender. So we smooshed it around for a while with our hands. The drinks were still a little chunky, but I think more authentic, too. Anyway, after a lot of cooking and cleaning, (and skyping with my parents for the first time since I've been here!), its now off to bed to get ready for another week!
Anyway, I believe I left off on Thursday. At work, Maria and I were messing with a bunch of data that we were asked to help manage, as well as reading up on the uses of social media in business. We spent all morning on this, and because Thursday's are our half-days, we left at about 2pm and headed to a different area of Koramangala to our lecture for the week. We grabbed lunch at a biryani place around the corner, and then got to listen to someone from RuralShores speak. RuralShores is an organization that promotes the development of outsourcing centers in rural areas of India as opposed to urban centers. This allows for slowed migration to urban areas while bringing jobs to those individuals in rural areas who need them. It was an interesting lecture, and especially neat after hearing about Ashoka last week. After the lecture, the whole GSE group and our advisors went to dinner at a Tibetan restaurant. YUM. I'm not totally sure what exactly I ate, but I know it was good. Apparently we had things called "crispy veggies", "momos", and a desert made with sesame seeds and honey, among other things. After that dinner, we all made it back to our apartments by about 9:30, and we were in for the night.
Friday was another day at work, although it was strange, because there was virtually no one in our office. Maybe Friday is an unofficial work from home day that we didn't know about. Anyway, Maria and I briefly met with Lily in the morning (who came in for a couple of hours just for two meetings) and then we kept working on the data and research parts of our project. We went to lunch at about 2pm with Yoshi and Amanda, and after another two hours of work or so, we all realized we were pretty burned out and needed a breather, so we all left the office at about 4:45 and went and got ice cream on our way to the bus stop. After a little bit of a relax time, we got on the bus and came home home. A bunch of us decided that we so enjoyed the Tibetan meal from Thursday night that we would try the Tibetan place here in our neighborhood, so we went and again had a great meal. Maybe Tibetan food will be our new staple here.... in India. It had been a long week, so we pretty much all settled in after dinner.
Saturday morning, Kristen, Navee, Maddy and I ventured off to Garuda Mall to meet Naman, another Wooster student who happens to live here in Bangalore. We spent a few hours looking through stores (including a great bookstore) and trying cold coffee (which is more or less a coffee milkshake- yummy), and visiting. At about 2:30, Kristen and Navee had to go somewhere, so Maddy and I caught the bus back to the apartments. We sat around visiting for about an hour with the girls that were still here, and then Maddy and I went out on an extensive shopping trip. We decided that on Sunday night we wanted to make a big Indian dinner and try and make several different things, so we had to go get a bunch of stuff from multiple grocery stores. After the shopping trip, I did a little bit of work back at the apartments, and then a big group of us went out to celebrate Matt's 21st birthday. We had a nice time out, but we had trouble meeting up with the rest of the group, so we came back to the apartments at about 11 to see everybody else. After a fun night, we all headed to bed because we had to get up for a lecture this morning...
But it was really enjoyable! From her time living in Rajasthan, Laura knows someone who worked with the Ashoka foundation early in its life, in the 1980's, and who is a Gandhian economist. He talked to us for a couple of hours in a pleasant yoga studio about a variety of topics related to India, economics, social entrepreneurship and more. When that was over, Navee and I stopped by the store on our way home because there were just a couple more things Maddy and I needed for our cooking extravaganza tonight. When we got back from the store, we made Maggi noodles (basically spicier ramen) for lunch and then I spent a couple of hours doing some work on my laptop. At 5pm, Maddy and I started cooking. Who knew we were in so far over our heads! We started chopping an entire grocery-store's worth of vegetables (picture 20 cups of potatoes and not enough bowls and pans to put them all in), and mixing up a bunch of spices. Our kitchen isn't bad but it isn't great, and its biggest fault is that it doesn't have a fan. So, when you get a couple of burners going on the stove, it gets pretty toasty in there pretty quickly. And then (and this is a completely hypothetical situation, of course), when there is a little sweat on your upper lip and you have been chopping green chili peppers and you wipe the sweat away only to set fire to your lip because of the chilis, that just adds to the charm. But we had fun making aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower), paneer and some sort of sauce, sweet and sour potatoes, roti, gulab jamoon (a dessert) and also mango lassi and mango mojitos. We finally sat down to eat (out of pots and pans, glass lids, and of course, newspapers) at about 9:30, after four and a half hours of running around the kitchen. But the food wasn't bad, even if it was a little rough around the edges. For example, the dessert which should have looked like little donut holes in syrup dissolved into a doughy syrupy mess- that still tasted fine. And making both of the mango drinks was interesting because we were supposed to puree the mango except we didn't have a blender. So we smooshed it around for a while with our hands. The drinks were still a little chunky, but I think more authentic, too. Anyway, after a lot of cooking and cleaning, (and skyping with my parents for the first time since I've been here!), its now off to bed to get ready for another week!
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