Wednesday

Okey dokey. It’s Wednesday and I feel like blogging. Today has been an exciting day. It started at 6:20 when I woke up with 2 of my flatmates, Annie and Alison, and we decided to head to this stadium we’d heard about. We took an autorickshaw to Mangala Stadium and it was soooooo awesome. There were so many people walking around the track and a few running and people doing stairs and situps all around this track. It’s 400 meters around which I was thankful for since running miles on a 200 meter track can get old so much faster. We started to run and Alison and I were together for a few meters and then she wanted to go her own pace and she had her ipod so I moved forward. I ended up falling right behind this guy who reminded me of Coachy a little bit. I paced off of him for a mile and then moved alongside him and we stayed that way for 4.5 miles. He told me about 2 miles in that he had already done 28 laps but he had more to go and so I decided to just finish with him. I was so happy that he was there because it was the perfect pace for coming to running and it felt so good. I know it’s only been 2 weeks since I’ve run, minus the 1500 last Saturday, but the run this morning gave me a much greater appreciation for the sport. It felt so good to be out there again moving my legs and getting into the swing of things. It was early so it wasn’t really hot until the last mile or so. I know I need to drink more water and liquids to stay hydrated. I hope that I can make it to the track w/ my roomies a few times/week and this trend gets started. Because mmmmm hmmm, it felt good : )
After running, I came back and got to skype with Candace which was very fun as well! Then after class in the morning and lunch we had a guest speaker discuss Disaster Management. It was very interesting. He talked about what the students could do when they became a social worker when a disaster strikes and how people can prepare. I don’t know if at Juniata Disaster Management is part of any of the social work classes but I think it should be. Next I went to another field placement exposure. I may end up going here. It was a place for senior citizens to go in the day time for recreation and such. Monday, Wednesday and Friday is yoga in the morning for 45 min or so. Also they have some sport which they are practicing for and then the place also does home visits and medical care. I’m not sure what I’d be doing there exactly but I may end up going there. Lastly, I went back to college and watched a game of ‘cub-aaad-ee?’, give or take. It's: Khabadi. But it kinda looks like wrestling played on a volleyball court type thing in sand and there are 2 teams. Each team has 6 people. The one guy from a team is sent over to the other side and they have a certain amount of time before they have to go back to their side. In that little time they try and touch the other team with their feet or hands and the team tries to tackle them without letting the person touch the line in between their 2 sides. If you didn’t understand any of that, it’s totally understandable because that is just the part I could pick up from watching the guys at school play for an hour and a half, there are any more rules I couldn’t follow as well. Either way, it's pretty fun to watch, just add music. They are so quick on their feet and it's like dancing and they get so pumped. Then again, maybe that's just the boys at school. who knows anymore?
Yesterday I got a sweet Henna tattoo on my arm. The girls at school like to do it and so they drew sweet ones on all the Americans. Not all Indians get Henna on them and some only get it right before they are married so their husband can find it. It’s ‘hidden’, although I feel like if they are covered up with their dress over much of their body, having a hidden Henna tat wouldn’t be too hard. Speaking of tattoos, no mom, I am not getting one, but I totally could if I wanted one! Hahaha They are so much cheaper here. It’s kinda ridiculous how cheap they are, like 500 rupees, depending on the conversion rate, about 12 dollars. Ha!
Classes have been going pretty well. They are definitely different than Juniata, that’s for sure. My one class discusses Indian social problems and so far we are talked about beggars and prostitutes and it’s interesting to hear the way they are teaching it. I’m glad we have to take this class (it’s the one class that BCA makes everyone take) because I would never get such an inside look at JC. We talked about how if prostitution became legal then it would become better because they could be in charge, not a pimp, have their own hours, say no if they wanted, have labor laws apply and solicit in their own place. I never thought about it like that and I don’t really know where I stand on the issue but it gets you thinking. We read 5-6 articles from various newspapers on the 2 sides of prostitution and all of them agreed that child prostitution was horrible but they were split on adults.
I hope you all are having a wonderful week. Keep smiling, running, laughing and eating chocolate :) Love to you all!