Enter the Man in the Stripey Jumper

Ok, this article in the Economist seriously made me laugh out loud more than once yesterday.
I think the headline and the photo caption is what made me laugh... Caption: Not just a fashion victim.

Just in case you were wondering, this man is not one of my in-laws, but the new Bolivian president.

our house is now "American"

my dad has been staying with us for 3 weeks(?) now. slowly, our household is becoming normalized. here are a few, new American additions:

• coffee EVERY morning instead of sometimes tea
• football on the TV
• lots more chicken
  
• lots more bread
• gin
• American movies
• video games
• in-house handyman

in other news, classes have started. here are the classes i am taking:

• international trade law with tiny, chinese professor. i think this class will nicely compliment the economics of trade class i took last year. but the book is big and scary and i sometimes glaze over when i start reading the legalese. and i am comforted to now know that i am much more competent than most law students, even the ones dressed in ann taylor with pearl earrings.
• ethics with hippy/peace corps vet philosophy professor. we are reading a lot of international/ human rights topics, which will piss off many in my class but at least we are not reading about social security or medicare
• program evaluation-- i am betting this class will be laid back and easy. except by tomorrow i am supposed to have read a book which i do not have yet. already behind!
• independent study-- did i bite off too much to chew?

i am now listening to wait, wait don't tell me and trying to write about criticisms of the nobel prizes...

back to the motherland

as i may or may not have reported earlier, hell froze over and santosh is getting married! his fiance's name is Lovely. well, "Lovely" is not her real name-- her real name is something like priya or ragini or priyanka. I feel ridiculous calling anyone "Lovely", so lucky for me I can call her "Bhabhi" to her face. "Bhabhi" loosley translates to "older brother's wife." i have posted some pics of the happy, engaged couple. Can you spot the difference between the two pics of Lovely? Look closely, and I may give you a prize!

so, guddu and i, after many many calls to travel agents and internet searches, have decided to go to the wedding. this was a difficuly decision because going to india requires quite a bit of vacation time and money. But we have pulled it off. so we will go for 2 weeks in march.

right after the wedding (march 10th-12th) is Holi (14th). This will be my first Holi in India and I am kinda scared because it can get quite rowdy-- lots of colors and bhang... see what might happen.

Real Drive

Here is a quote from a soon-to-be martyr of the Tamil Tigers:
"Before my death sentence is carried out, please remove my eyes and transplant them to a Tamil without eyesight. I will not able to see the free Tamil Eelam but, at least, let my eyes see it."

in my "off time"

last week was busier than expected. for a few days i did medical interpretation for a physical therapy patient. this pays quite well, but too bad so many indians know english.

i have also been busy doing job applications. i have two major applications i need to finish before this weekend. i need to write a short essay (500 words) on a major current international topic. i'm having a very hard time picking a topic, and unfortunately i can not recycle any old essays becuase they are either obsolete or on domestic topics such as Medicare. i also want to NOT write about India. but i might have to. i also do not want to write about Iraq. but i might have to. perhaps i will write about economic development policies... 500 words is really not much space...

today i began organizing the linen closet. we have sooooooo many indian bedsheets. i have organized the linens into piles on the floor. maybe this afternoon i will have the stamina to put them away.

i have been reading a book called Imperial Hubris this past week. it is VERY good! but kind of scary and i think it gave me a lot of anxiety over the weekend. If you don't know what hubris means, it is not a good trait.

Hopefully Guddu will get his citizenship soon. In preparation, he tried answering a few of the practice questions. Here are his ACTUAL answers:

1. How many stars are there in our flag? 4
   
2. What color are the stars on our flag? BLUE
3. What do the stars on the flag mean? FREEDOM
4. How many stripes are there in the flag? 4
5. What date is the Day of Independence? 4 July (so that's where the "4s" come from!)
6. Independence from whom? The Britishers (just like India!)
7. What country did we fight during the revolutionary war? The Britishers
8. Who was the first president of the United States? George Tenet
9. What do we call a change of the constitution? ???