Hey it has been a long time since my last post and I apologize for that.
My IS project is well under way by now all of the kids have taken photographs and gotten them developed or they are on my computer. The first batch of photographs only 19 our of 100+ images came out so I was very disappointed but thats just part of the process of doing ethnography work my mom and professor reminded me. Now I am 8 interviews down and have 10 interviews to go with the children. I am interviewing them about their photographs, having them choose their favorite photos and investigating any further meanings behind their images. So far I have concluded that family and friends are both very strong values in the lives of children at Karumpalai. It also seems that material objects dont hold much of an importance, out of all the images I have seen I can only remember about two that are of material objects. Another interesting finding is that in karumpalai which is technically a slum there are more pets than anywhere else I have seen in Madurai. Lots of families have dogs, cats or rabbits that they keep in their home and treat like pets. In most cases a person in India will have a pet but it is let to roam the streets and never allowed inside the house but that is not the case in Karumpalai.
Soon I will be posting some images the kids have taken on my blog because the gallery show will be held soon.
This weekend we went on a trip from thursday-sunday to Pondicherry. Pondicherry is about a 6 hour drive away and was once a french colony. This trip was a bit different than the other trips we have taken because it was only the students and our 2 PA's. We were to find our own hotels and plan our own activities. Me and 5 other friends stated at a Hostel connected to an Ashram that I found, this place turned out to be really nice, there was a kitchen where on the last night I made pasta with veggies for everyone. The rooms were pretty clean and the owner was a very nice man. On our first day we went to the old french quarter. We had breakfast at a place called Le Cafe which was right on the ocean. We spent the day roaming around stopping for a glass of wine here and a cup of coffee there it was quite relaxing but also extremely hot. The first night we went to this rooftop restaurant which had pretty little christmas lights all over, kitchy miss-matched furniture and good food and drinks! It was a great night there and a great first day. Oh yes, we met some nice auto drivers (like taxis) and we got their numbers and for the rest of the trip we used them everywhere we went. The second day we went to Aourville, "a universal city in the making" http://www.auroville.org/ aka a cult. We went and saw the giant golden egg which to me just looked like a giant golden golf ball. On the way back to the hotel our Auto's took us to an amazing pizza place, we ordered a 3 cheese pizza, an italian pizza and a veggie pizza which was definitely the best of the 3. After a nap and shower we headed to Serenity Beach it was very pretty and clean! The waves were huge and we spent lots of time tanning, swimming in the Bay of Bengal and combing the beach for shells! For a snack we took an auto to Baker Street Cafe where me and my friend Winter split a baguette, goat cheese and fig honey! It was delicious! Then we walked around until we found the french quarter and meandered for a while until we found Le Club, one of the places we had wine the first day. We spent almost 3 hours due to their poor service. At first it was relaxing but towards the end ridiculous and we were cutting it close to the hostel's curfew which was 11:30 pm. The third and final day we called our autos and had them take us to some local churches and temples. They were awesome, they took us to a 75 ft tall Ganesh temple and another 80 ft Kali temple. The auto drivers also acted as our tour guides telling us about the local legends and helped describe the temples to us! After hitting up some temples we went to the beach again for a second day where we went swimming again. I went out a bit to wash some sand off and ended up talking to some Indian guys who were very nice and we went swimming together for about 30 minutes They told me about some good local restaurants and things to do but we were leaving in just a few hours so I wasn't able to check them out. I spent a while just walking the beach and combing for sea shells on my own. Overall I thought it was the best trip so far. We saw some really cool temples and went to some delicious restaurants, it was very relaxing.
I have some pics to show from my friends, I used a film camera this trip so I don't have the photos up yet!
