written in indian ink

feast of tear-stuffed time and thistles

2011-11-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

(cactus-shopping successes, dirty evening lighting, handmade cushion covers from wonderful friends, a week of mondria(a)n and velasquez readings and impending essay deadlines)

Purge // Michael Mlekoday

[purj]
 -verb
 1. to try and be a storm, as in the way
 it always storms the day you leave a place
 2. to try and be a saint, as in the forgetting 
of the body, its blush and rushes of blood 
3. to leave the party early and alone
 4. to abandon, as in watching ivy
 crawl up the side of a house
 5. to set the house or body on fire
 6. to kneel on the porch at midnight
 until the joints ignore their own whimpers
 7. to keep exhaling until the chest is empty 
and no longer burning

all swallowed in their coats

2011-10-25T01:05:00.000-07:00

(here's to the celebration of grey sky glory, unknown source)

A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and f el absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

idiosyncrasies and such

2011-10-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

(untitled, 1979, john stezaker)

how to get a degree -

wander around the city gallery painting-gazing, before rushing back to crash a jewish society lunch, make it to lectures and read beowulf in two hours flat (introduction included, of course), walk into town for free pizza and recuperate on coffee after a massive sunday shop of frozen crumpets, listen to bowie and ignore the growing pile of laundry on the hazy seafoam green carpet in an artificially-lit room that's still managing to be cleaner than the kitchen, revel in your monday-freedom to come and the lack of rain so far.

haunted graffiti

2011-10-16T05:21:00.000-07:00

(a partial shot of diango hernandez's drawing (there are many things in the air and all of them are for free), from a summer of art-tripping)

following a week point five of meetings and nights filled with youthful enthusiasm of sleep-drained eyes and new environments, there's not so much to say. unlike the two years of india, which still leak over into the now of here with run-ins with other uwc alumni and hanging out with indians, there isn't a bassline of the 'exotic' which can be described, or at least, not yet. so here, in the gap of music talks and lecture dashing and football tryouts, is all i could find.

myth of fingerprints

2011-10-04T23:40:00.000-07:00

(on the way to a very northern corner of norway this summer)

the odd tinkling buzz of my phone prods its way through my sleep at the somewhat ungodly hour of four. the haziness of having spent multiple days amongst piles of clothing and a tiny collection of cooking implements makes this required get-up not all too difficult, mainly because i'm still in some strange trance of limbo-state-senses. this has happened before, of course, in my multiple journeys to and from the sub-continent; the stumbling out of bed to see a last-minute to-do list and a pile of well-if-there's-space items. showers of slow-motion, dressing in pre-prepared outfits, and still somehow managing to make my mother wait in the car whilst i collect myself and my many pieces in a haste is how i do it.

this time around though, i'm not off on my long-haul to heat, but on a far shorter trip across the channel. being so used to the process of overweight baggage-fear (without fail, every single piece of luggage i've carried has been overweight in the past two years, and furthermore, i've lost my luggage twice too) and mental and physical prep for sitting/staring/leaving/arriving, it's going to be weird to just be there in an hour. packing for my university beginning (i can't believe i've gotten this far!) was difficult for similar reasons; i kept assuming that i'd be returning to a campus in the countryside, where i'd need my own supplies of shampoo, dutch cheese and clothing. in my mind, 'big packing' is now strongly linked to 'packing for a hot, isolated hilltop community' - something that meant i often packed very comfortable clothing and always assumed i could stock up on scarves once i got there. now, however, it's packing for seasons i haven't seen in quite a while - and winterwear is considerably heavier than the indian summer stuff i wore for so long. it's packing for a country i already know, where i'll be able to buy food in supermarkets down the road and where people may care a little bit more about wandering barefoot students in boxershorts. i don't know yet, nor am i sure how much i'll mind others minding (then again, i doubt bare feet and boxers are a great ensemble for temperatures lower than fifteen degrees), but where i haven't a clue on what sort of person to expect or what the overriding ideology of the community is.

so now i'm at the airport, wading in transit-time, which i feel is really one of the few spaces in which one can simply sit, reflect maybe (oh the habits of being part of the triveni (cas (extra-curricular activities)) coordination committee die hard) or just zone out. of course, there's the worry of outsized handluggage to come (will i ever not be overpacked for journeys?), and then the adventure really starts. for now, i'm intrigued by the atmosphere of a passing-through space like this, where you can go anywhere and with anyone, and the gates are lit up and everything is bare. not undecorated perhaps, but in an attempt to reach efficiency, the moving pavements softly whir, the hallways gleam and the check-in desks even have automated luggage drop-offs now (these are, by the way, awful for any overpackers, because you can't even attempt the 'but i'm a student' card with them), and you know you won't leave an imprint here. and with everyone here coming from and going to everywhere, it's funny when you're completely off guessing their destination. on my way to the gate, i spotted a group of indians, and, assuming they were going home, i checked the board to see which city. birmingham.

and so the traveling continues.

years of nights

2011-09-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

how i feel about taking passport-style photos and packing, choices and changes being the double-edged knives of always.

disassemble the parts and frame

2011-09-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

(by Juliane Eirich)

and sometimes days crush together the wonderful, the mundane and the completely horrible, and sometimes you can sense the physical distances. but it's a mixed bag of nuts, this whole thing, and i guess it's autumn and life's still changing.

In Autumn - Mark Irwin

The extinct animals are still looking for home
Their eyes full of cotton

Now they will
Never arrive

The stars are like that

Moving on without memory
Without having been near turning elsewhere climbing
Nothing the wall

The hours their shadows

The lights are going on in the leaves nothing to do with evening

Those are cities
Where I had hoped to live.

stun gun lullaby

2011-09-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

(by Chrissie White)

wat ik geleerd heb -
alles went,
de wereld is mooi.

tremble and shake

2011-09-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

lately, listings -
university readings, black-ink drawings and darker days of cold-tipped fingers and freshly returned expanses of days and borrowed time.
himalayan shakes, levees breaking and metaphors surround.

in lighter news -
the brilliance that was this art-cum-everything exhibition ('art meets science and spirituality in a changing economy'), unexpectedly seeing a band i knew from my mid-teen years play memories at a concert of another, discussions of countries and borders, good weekends and golden carriage national holidays.

and left-overs -
still searching for scraps of writing, substantial in the literal and figurative senses, and spreading the autumnal love to the soundtrack of flute exercises, led zeppelin and anything icelandic.

made you a map out of blood and glass

2011-09-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

hello himalayas, how i miss you.

sums and syndromes

2011-09-09T06:59:00.001-07:00

(source)

When I'm not busy (attempting to begin) reading university-assigned literature, reshaping hearts and dreaming, I like to go to concerts. Here's Sin Fang, an Icelandic singer/band, whose gorgeously drifting set I watched yesterday evening, accompanied by awkward hipsters and a lovely coyear, amongst other things. Drifting in reality too, the pokey/atmospheric size of the venue meant that we met him afterwards, obtaining us doodles on our records and accents in our ears.

suns and sleepless nights

2011-09-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

Meet Darjeeling, captured on analogue in the shrouding mid-morning mist.
Another leg of my post-grad trip, this accompanied by a Polish coyear and pots of Ladakhi apricot jam, this was definitely one of my favourite places in India. Admittedly very backpacker-friendly (we ran into several batches of travelers at our hotel, breakfast cafe and odd British pub) and a little bit of a slop to get to (a rather uncomfortable overnight bus and a shared jeep up the writhing and well-used mountain paths), the hill-station was charm itself, a series of buildings climbing the Himalayan foothills and fading into acres of tea-plantations.
We spent our handful of days there visiting the zoo, where we ran into a strange man, dressed in a horrendous checkered shirt, pointy green shoes and with a following of demure women and a film camera, wandering around the temples in the nearby town after stocking up on an amazing Indian sweet at the local bakery, and attempting to get to Tiger Hill, where the view of Kanchengjunga, the third highest Himalayan mountain, is allegedly the best. Sadly, the last activity involved a four o'clock rise, which we just about missed, and jeepless, we walked the deserted streets and peered into the horizon from the miniature train station instead.
One night, we chanced upon an adorable/amazing restaurant-cum-creative studio, run by a couple interested in design (architecture and clothing), and spent many hours there, watching Oprah, eating brilliance on plates and discussing Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. High teas in sumptuous hotels with gardens filled with white dogs and tea-shopping alongside Indian tourists followed this, and then we were off again, back to Calcutta (this time by train, luckily), where I would be told I looked like I was a Darjeeling local.

these are the days of miracle and wonder

2011-09-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

(enroute to our temporary ten-day home in Leh, during the dawn of my lengthy summer holiday)

evenings out, days of work and bicycling, the sun warming the autumn dusk and the crown of my head - and still no words up here. i think of india, about india, about what happened in india, with fondness but perhaps also like a series of old photographs now; having the people who were part of it so far removed makes the entire thing feel more like a brilliant indie film, complete with a great soundtrack (thanks to my more-musical-than-me friends), late nights and a low budget.

one earth-bound minute

2011-08-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

(Krista and my feet, one early morning with art deadlines and other endings impending)

Turning - W.S. Merwin

Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice where they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

pack my suitcase with myself

2011-08-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

(my first year room at muwci, in celebration of finally having (kind of) finished clearing up my room here in holland)

ambiguity, experience-expectation-experience.

meeting coyears who too recall the application procedure with the smiling yet modest fondness of a successfully operated patient, the strange and stilted nature of memory comes to the fore again as we dig and sum up our two years to each other, marveling at the immensity of likenesses and odd areas which sometimes undermine the unity of a twelve-school-experience.
i'm not sure where my over-description of something i don't consciously understand, future or even interpretation of some past is going, but my trains of thought reach their destinations infrequently and are prone to (m)any sort(s) of disturbances, so tracks are lost and found and i can't achieve more than a paragraph right now. life is good and busy, and my to-do list still has 'write about india' on it.

sun rays as fierce as toddler tantrums

2011-08-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

(Chris and Gita, analogue of a picnic pre-India)

Still sifting through heaps and piles, I'm glad to have found the sun returned to me from across the oceans, and have thus taken several breaks to bask in its glory. With picnics and biscuit-baking being the order of the day, it's still amazingly busy (I have managed, against all odds perhaps, to even find a job) and I'm kept away from desk-sitting introspection and (sadly) typed-India-rehashings.

Thinking back though, I'm surprised at how much happened within the two year framework, and to use a cliche; it felt like forever, yet like absolutely no time at all. I can still vividly recall how sticky and dense my first gasp of Mumbai air was, how long the jeep ride felt, how large campus initially seemed. We wrestled in the mud of the monsoon-drenched lawns, kept our eyes and mouths perpetually open and grappled with foreign languages, cultures and food, both in and outside of school. And then, we were back on a plane, back in a jeep, and back in a familiar landscape that never got dull, only, at points, too intense.
Before I knew it, the photo above became two years old, the rooms cleared and monsoon beginnings seen for the last time for the near future. Although I have learnt a lot, listened a lot and obtained a lot of good music, it seems I'm still not quite so great at writing all of this down. 'Bad girls don't keep diaries' doesn't feel like the most appropriate phrase to borrow here, so I'll leave you once again with extensions of long-overdue promises and the side-note that home is happy and my first autumn in a while is slowly dissolving the greens of summer in a most lovely manner.

see the cities rust

2011-08-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

(analogue cafe table shots from two years of catching up over coffees)

Whilst I delicately step over piles of assorted clothing, books and items of no apparent use, painting my walls white and generally cleaning up a room long overdue a clear-out, familiar stone houses on the other side of the world are filling up with familiar faces. Back into the monsoon of memories, to refurbish and paint over and around last year's events and relationships; I guess we're all doing it. Although it does feel rather odd not to be on a flight and far-too-warm jeep on the road to a trusty hill, excitedly singled out by tired eyes at a specific turning on the Paud road, lunchtime with a fridge full of dairy products, loud music and the lack of heat averted my inward gaze from the darks of nostalgia - I've still got several coffee dates to go before university starts in October.

and at once i knew i was not magnificent

2011-08-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

(details of Cycle of Six Parts by Sigmar Polke, seen in Munchengladbach museum last Sunday)

On some levels, the futility of my many endeavours and lost to-do lists can only be covered up with viewing/sharing art like this; I'm still processing, unpacking, catching up, and these paintings, made of a mix of silver leaf, silver oxide and a amalgam of other chemicals, are far more meaningful than my current state of lethargy.

occident out on the weekend

2011-08-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Some analogue photos of the gorgeous scenery of the Himalayas of Ladakh, taken on a collective camera between my travelmates, which I've finally gotten around to digitalising. It's somehow become a bit of a busy summer, and, as usual, I've not managed to surpass the stage of promising updates and travel-anecdotes. Perhaps it is a little daunting a task to attempt to pick out moments to write about from two years that felt like nothing and yet, in some ways, everything. So many things were different, so much has changed, although I'm (disappointingly?) consistent in my lack of filling in those "coming soon!" updates.

Starting over, starting small though - here's a brief recount of two days instead. Specifically, two spent at Pangong Lake, about which Wikipedia tells us:
"Pangong Tso (or Pangong Lake; Tso: Ladakhi for lake) is an endorheic lake in the Himalayas situated at a height of about 4,350 m (14,270 ft). It is 134 km (83 mi) long and extends from India to Tibet. 60% of the length of the lake lies in Tibet, which is today under China's rule. The lake is 5 km (3.1 mi) wide at its broadest point. During winter the lake freezes completely, despite being saline water."

To add to the bare bones of fact and measurement some human sensations, the lake and area around it are also bitterly cold, meriting the wearing of recently-acquired vintage jumpers and a curling-up-in-sleeping-bags instinct that was speedily indulged when we arrived at our home-stay of choice. Having spent five hours winding up a mountain road to the soundtrack of our nineties youth and Ladakhi chants (a strange playlist our driver apparently enjoyed), naturally with the occasional (and varyingly enthousiastic) sing-alongs, we quickly got back to reading and further enjoying the stunning scenery. Whilst we had been hounded by Indian tourists earlier on in our drive, the final stretch of road to the tiny settlement of campsite and home-stays was blissfully unadorned, empty and almost lonely in its isolation.
We stayed overnight with a lovely trio of elderly Ladakhis, eating by candlelight and conversing with the aid of our hostess throughout; the first-year roommate of my co-travellers. In the morning, we managed to force ourselves out of the warmth of our layers of blankets and sleeping bags with the thought of seeing the lake at sunrise. Goading each other on and grumbling and stumbling down a grassy lane, we found the sun already risen at five, but sat still and watched the light grow and time change by the lakeside nevertheless. There was a certain silence about the moment, the setting; refreshing, chilling, calming. The later revelation that Three Idiots had been shot by the same lake was a little at odds with the experience we'd had there, but I suppose the emptiness is sometimes just waiting to be filled.
Soon we got cold and hungry, and a brief cup of tea and a gifting of our paperbag-wrapped fruits to the wrinkled and smiling three later, we set off back onto the winding road to Leh. Accompanied once again by the sound of Shakira, bad disco and poetic string instruments, we quickly rejoining the Indian contingent in the race to reach the next restaurant/toilet stop at the half-way point.

all dry and english slow

2011-07-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

Sitting still and warmly clad (relatively, of course, to my as-yet-still-recent Indian expeditions) in a hotel room somewhere in northern Finland, on our way to find the northern-most point of Europe.

A recent trip to Amsterdam allows me to fill up some of the impending emptiness of this blog-content with a recommendation, go here: http://www.corbijn.co.uk/

Also, other entertainments of recent times included a minor reunion with some Eurotripping friends, which provided us, the Dutch, that is, with much opportunity for 'my city is better than yours'ness and some proud 'eat this food' culinary mishaps (including a frozen kaassouffle).

Having now caught a cold and ambling along to the tunes of Animal Collective, I leave you with little greetings from Santa-land and some tales of India still on the production line to come.

afterimage ecstasy

2011-07-05T02:40:00.000-07:00

(Les Savy Fav at Metropolis, source)

It has been and will be a busy couple of days, so sitting amidst the piles of plans, clothing and items amassed over years and travels, I once again leave you with words not mine to fill some holes.

Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more) by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read’.
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.

I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

scatter like a billion spores

2011-07-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

(Hampi, second travel week)

"Padma can hear it: there's nothing like a countdown for building suspense. I watched my dung-flower at work today, stirring vats like a whirlwind, as if that would make the time go faster. (And perhaps it did; time, in my experience, has been as variable and inconstant as Bombay's electric power supply. Just telephone the speaking clock if you don't believe me - tied to electricity, it's usually a few hours wrong. Unless we're the ones who are wrong ... no people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for' tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.)"
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start

2011-07-01T06:10:00.000-07:00

(Mia Nolting)

Some rather nice drawings I found rather a while ago, that have been patiently sitting in my folder of found wonders, waiting for yet another of my forages for substitute imagery, instigated by my lack of recent travel documentation (it's coming, it's coming!).

I'm back in the lovely lowlands again, calmly doing not very much and slowly reacquainting myself with the ways of reality - bikes, full closets, a far crisper/colder summer and people I haven't seen in too long. So far, I've seen Jamie Cullum play a brilliant set at Parkpop, been out for minor reunions during the evening times and attempted to unpack (the latter being quite easily deviated from, what with the calls of chats, books, cheese, baking, friends and speedy internet, amongst other things).

I'll be getting my photos put into some sort of digital format soon, and will filter through some travel stories too, so the past month of traveling up north - from Ladakh to Delhi to Calcutta to Sikkim to Darjeeling to Bombay - will be fleshed out and coloured in soon!

green hills and enemies, these things they make us sentimental inside.

2011-05-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

Currently at 11,500 feet, which is a long way to have come from home's below sea level and the humidity of the beginnings of a Bombay summer.

I'm in the Himalayas, back in Leh after last year's brief but enchanting visit. It's a little odd to be here again, after another year that felt like decades but also like a passing breeze of thoughts and memories. It's cold, I've already acquired some vintage woolen jumpers and am enjoying the lack of oxygen and surplus of sleep I'm getting.

It's only been a couple of days since graduation, departure and the hectic horribleness of packing two years worth of items into bags, but it feels so far away already. I'll be traveling for a month before coming home, so I'll be trying to get a hold of internet, photos and final cultural experiences (read: food.) before returning to my Dutch home.

Also, there's s much left to say about my 'UWC experience', the ambiguous parameters of which I am still grappling with. I'll try and process them over the course of the summer, so this little monologue-ing forum will be up for a while longer.

Love from Ladakh.

(I'm also feeling rather postcard-loving, currently, so if you'd like one, just send me your addresses!)

hold our insides in

2011-05-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

(Celestial Vault, James Turrell, the Hague)

I've never felt more Dutch than in these two years, nor so worried about being cold during a European summer.

don't look back into the sun

2011-05-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

(photos of 'I want to paint a face', an art project I did in my very first term here, in collaboration with Zuzana)

Sitting outside on one of my last days here, I've realised that there's a wealth of things left unwritten/documented/forgotten in the rush of a stream of experiences and changes. Considering the limitations of luggage allowance, I have been sifting (and resifting) through notes and items, selecting the most 'valuable/useful' ones and having to decide on whether I'd ever look back at my Hindi notebook at home. I often find myself attributing or attaching memories to objects, and in owning the physical thinking I own the memory as concretely too, so the choices I'm making now are difficult and also an interesting reflection of what I now perceive as important - I am not going to need any chemistry notes in the future, but taking my (chai-stained) notebook along with me is something I would like and perhaps even need to do, especially as I'm leaving so much (metaphorically as well as physically) behind in this place I've given and gotten two years from.

Over coffee and chocolate, both imported in yellow parcels from a mother in Germany, I had a long conversation with my roommate and housemate today. It was along the lines of questions I've thought of and have heard raised in various forums during the two years out here; what do we base our self-worth on, what does a grade say about us and what value do and should we give to it? How do we perceive intelligence, smart people or admire others, and on what basis?
Especially having just finished all my exams early, and under the impression that I may have underperformed, do I regret not working as hard as I may have needed to, can I even assume that I have a capacity that I did not achieve and does it even matter?

Ultimately, the decisions to not attend class, which I made multiple times over the course of the year, my preference to sit in the art centre, talk to people all night, or even choose to attend all the music events and not study for a test, were what I made and perhaps not with the greatest consideration of consequences. The dichotomies of wanting to do so much and the conflicts between what I expected and got, were very much things I struggled with, but also what was incredibly important to pick up on. Who was I working for - me, others, my perception of what others would expect, or just for what I enjoyed?

Particularly in conjunction with chemistry this year, I found myself frequently wondering why I was less than engaging with something that was in certain aspects so relevant and intriguing and learn-able. A week ago, I began to truly study, quite probably for the first time in my two years here, and it wasn't fun to realise how little I had done, but I found it was possible, and preferable, for me to learn/revise in two weeks, and I had managed to do what I had wanted to at moments in the past. Going on exeats, making more art pieces, seeing concerts and being part of more committees and activities than the minimum required did mean consolidation in other areas, and it's taken me a while to consolidate my compromises and accept my own disappointments and decisions that may have been detrimental, but I feel like this was to some extent the crux of what I had to learn here.

And although I may not feel this way all the time, I can only look back and not alter a thing anymore.
So I'm glad for everything that was difficult, utter crap, beautiful and tiresome.
And maybe I'll write a more 'I'm in India!' post soon (:

sure in a cinematic way

2011-05-16T05:13:00.000-07:00

(another one of my bones, wax and oil paint on thigh, 2011)

moss.
by William Thomas Moore

what will happen
 now? she asks.
 now, i say,
 now,  
the dishes will pile  
up in the sink  
and there will  
be only one
 pair of shoes  
at the door.

(So I'm done with school and still busy packing/cooking/watching Israeli films/bonfire-ing. More extensive update soon!)

wage this war of one

2011-05-03T23:11:00.000-07:00

(Shelter Stone/Stone Shelter, wax on stone)

A little further along with exams now, and the weather's still bright, somewhat stifling and generally rather glorious. Still trying to comprehend the impending closure of 'being in India', or more specifically, 'at MUWCI'. Here's a poem while I attempt to cram in as much as I can, both knowledge and experience-wise.

Art and Facts // Autumn Giles

My dearest museum, I burnt the last painting today, just like you told me. I wanted a holiday— a day just for me. I whisked the frames around my waist like hula-hoops and then caught them on fire. It didn’t hurt because I thought about you. Now that I am completely unemployable, we can be together. You can keep me; I’ll sit still. Find me in the flames. I would look great in the foyer.

future rust and future dust

2011-05-01T03:42:00.000-07:00

(view out of a MUWCI window, a couple of years ago.)

thoughts on a supposedly studious fortnight:

1. where did all those days go?
2. my room is finally decorated and my desk cleaner than ever before
(my teeth and feet too, funnily enough)
3. oh hello, hindi exam.
4. a multitude of subject/group dinners have been held, in which I:
- dressed up as a "ageing china doll" fortune teller
(cue red lipstick and layers of brightly-printed baggy dresses)
- sat around the pool talking primary-school-memories with fellow science students
- didn't even leave the wada one night, and was fed much ice-cream under a space stage-lit
- talked films over frozen pineapple cake for a final 'cinema and the city' session
- danced to a bombay band (think strokes meets southern rock meets coldplay's keyboards)
post-pizza eating, garnering some attention too.
5. teacoffeeteacoffeelaundryteacoffeetalkcoffeetea sleep.
6. dear koninginnedag, you'll have to wait till the 13th. you too, royal wedding.
7. mangoes are in season!

temporary shelters

2011-04-29T01:49:00.000-07:00

(shots of my final art exhibition as i attempt to re- and deconstruct the homes I've built)

dreams of beyond

2011-04-19T05:24:00.000-07:00

(photos taken by the lovely Karanjit)

Some photos of Active English (where we taught the children in the local village English on a weekly basis), while I stumble my way through piles of assorted notes.

Algerian War of Independence/Reactions of Alkanes/Trangression in God of Small Things, anyone?

throw away survival kits

2011-04-06T03:23:00.000-07:00

Campus races to photocopy, scan, fix, finish art in all its forms and features have begun, so here are some images of Hampi, a deserted little hippie-temple-rock town, and of my mental state in Bangalore, pre-MUWCI-return to races and running and typing at double-speed.

As for the rest of life, INC is coming up, which means the selection of the 'new generation' of Indian UWC kids, and I'm still only adjusting, readjusting and actually just settling in to the continuous changes of pace that make this place so exhaustingly interesting. In the last week alone, our headmaster resigned, Mamma Mia (the musical) was performed with much gusto and extravagance, and mock exams rounded off with a dull thud and the gradual pain as we realise that we may just have to study sometime soon. Maybe.

Besides all that, here's a poem from the book I'm so successfully concealing myself with in the last picture.
Love from a sunny India!

Kid // Simon Armitage

Batman, big shot, when you gave the order
to grow up, then let me loose to wander
leeward, freely through the wild blue yonder
as you liked to say, or ditched me, rather,
in the gutter ... well, I turned the corner.
Now I've scotched that 'he was like a father
to me' rumour, sacked it, blown the cover
on that 'he was like an elder brother'
story, let the cat out on that caper
with the married woman, how you took her
downtown on expenses in the motor.
Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!
Holy roll-me-over-in the-clover,
I'm not playing ball boy any longer
Batman, now I've doffed that off-the-shoulder
Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number
for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper;
now I'm taller, harder, stronger, older.
Batman, it makes a marvellous picture:
you without a shadow, stewing over
chicken giblets in the pressure cooker,
next to nothing in the walk-in larder,
punching the palm of your hand all winter,
you baby, now I'm the real boy wonder.

fear of flying

2011-04-02T21:08:00.003-07:00

(analogue snapshot of a corner of my Dutch room)

Here's something I wrote a couple of months ago for an English assignment, which was inspired by a prompt piece about love. Art and workbooking calls, and having just rounded off my mocks with thousands of fountain-pen inked words hollowed of meaning, I'm feeling as empty as the receding tide. Time and applications and self-reflective thoughts that circle and spiral inwards towards a centre I hope is fixed, it's April and I'm still passing my time listening to guitar-strumming co-years sing tales of lives far removed. I'm repeating steps in my mind, with my feet, hearing the sound of illusionary settling and the shattering glass of expectations, as things continue to change, as I want and need and can't stop them from doing.

Spaces in Togetherness

Spooning in a small bed, they talk about everything and everyone under the stars and moon and sky. Merging into one being with two sets of eyes, limbs and toes is a secret longing of hers. She imagines it would be so much more effective, stronger and more resilient to have a spare or double of every and any piece the world only gave her one of. If they did merge, she would be a they, they would be one and no spaces would need to be filled between their physical beings, no chasms of mental differences would need to be bridged.

She likes bridges, of course. Bridges are useful, she knows that. Every morning, she crosses at least three, living in the small, canal-segmented city of Delft as she does. Bridges are ingenious, she knows that. She loves the massive Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam, the architectural achievement it stands for. Even smaller, more mental bridges are great. Connections built through new knowledge, bridging the gaps between two facts that were previously seemingly unrelated. In relationship terms as well, she feels an appreciation for the skill constructing and maintaining bridges of comprehension requires. But, she'd rather be a single entity, a solid piece of land without intervention, without bridges that would imply small streams of troubled water.

He is big, tall, broad and safe. Enveloped in his embraces, generic as that sounds, comfort her and make her feel at home. He is not small, like everything she has grown up in and around. It is brilliant.

"She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet."

(Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

I'm not a spare tire, he thinks. He knows she wants nought but all, but he needs to find some room. It's a comfort thing, he understands, it's a size thing, he gets it. In his mind though, he is not in the cramped room with the clingy girl, but out in Iceland, with the free and the wild and the alien of the unknown. He's too big for this space.

I always wanted to be an astronaut, he thinks. Can you imagine the insane feeling of being completely separate from the world? His favourite song used to be the one about Major Tom, the one about the man who manages to lose contact with Ground Control. He pictures himself in space, in endless amounts of space and stars and emptiness. He needs emptiness.

I like balloons because they're empty, he thinks. The notion of negative space, something that only works because so much space is left alone. He pictures himself in a bubble, a personal bubble of space. If he had his own bubble, he would look like an outsized goldfish. Maybe he wouldn't even have to wear clothes - the bubble could be opaque and only open for food and love. If everyone lived like that, in a private space of their own, then nobody could lose themselves into others unless they intentionally stepped out of their bubble. She always loses herself, he thinks.

He stirs, she stirs, the alarm rings. They set off to work, their separate ways, where distance will hopefully make the heart grow fonder.

stars eat planets

2011-03-14T00:21:00.001-07:00

(Leh, last summer, being eighties and cold in India)

With February long past and March fast whizzing around my head and into the realm of memory too, I've been keeping myself busy.

Having had a week off school, I spent a lovely ten days exploring yet another area of India and basking in the warmth of the soon-summer sun. With phrases of poetry (think T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood) floating around in my head, and a large rucksack packed hastily last Friday, I set off to Bombay. I travelled with a German co-year, a Malaysian first year and one of my second years - Rosie, who'd flown back over for another four-month jaunt around India. Together, we covered Bombay, Hampi and Bangalore at a leisurely, reading-filled pace, which was a well-needed breather following the hectic final-deadline-hand-it-all-in style of February.

I haven't quite gotten round to getting photographs off my co-years as yet, and it's currently UWC-week, which I'm rather proud about. More on everything soon, hopefully.

Love from India!

innumerable sailboats

2011-01-24T09:46:00.000-08:00

(Safety Space, site specific, December 2010, 80 kg of salt, 6 rolls of double-sided tape, a sari and some cushions)

One long Monday and a weekend that already seems eons ago later, I've now spent the evening drawing out tickets and posters for the upcoming play - The Fairytales of Mr Night - that has been written and directed by two lovely coyears of mine, and will be happening this Saturday and Sunday. Cue minor panic on my, the producer's, behalf, as I've got quite a couple of props and costumes left to source. Considering the play is about fairytale characters (who begin to consider that the Brothers Grimm aren't the ones in charge of their destinies), there are some odd items I'm still hoping to stumble upon somewhere in this rural countryside area of India.

As for the rest of MUWCI-living, we had a College Meeting on communication and decision-making again today, although once again it remained rather ambiguous as to why and what and how we were discussing. There's a Change of Pace day on Wednesday, as it is India's Republic Day, so that'll be good for EEing/sleeping/doing some more art.

To explain the above piece, it was an attempt at creating a 'safety space' - I'd researched into bunkers and tried to consider what safety might mean. I discovered that salt had a lot of interesting, contradicting meanings in religions and cultures, so I wanted to use it as the core material (the texture is also rather appealingly gritty) to convey a concept of inherent contradictions of vulnerability/security, preservation/destruction, freedom/captivity. There was already double-sided tape from a previous exhibition on the walls, so I added to that to allude to previous inhabitants and a void of attempted personalisation of the room. It also remained sticky, making it uncomfortable to lean back, as over-the-top safety often makes one felt clung unto. There are also some allusions to Gandhi and the sea, which I could go on about but I think I'll just post the document I wrote about it at some other point, and try and refocus on India and sleep.

Love.

fairytales of grim and glory

2011-01-23T06:54:00.000-08:00

(Madurai, during winterbreak)

To backtrack a little, I traveled for ten days in December, down in the Indian south. We spent a great amount of time on buses, which varied from beds as seats to rockhard tiny benches with deafening Bollywood music playing in the early hours of the morning, but managed to also see a lot of beautiful things. Madurai itself wasn't the nicest city, and we'd had what I would say was the worst bus journey of the lot, as there was a continuous draft, no way to get comfortable and the bus station was smogged out and ten kilometres away from the centre.

The temple, on the other hand, was rather impressive. A World Heritage Site, with a multitude of colourful tower-things (called gopurams) that are painted once every twelve years, it contained a mini museum of sorts and required my travel-companion (a Danish boy in shorts) to put on a lungi (a type of wrap-around cotton skirt worn by Indian men in the south).

(If I wasn't slightly scared of him not appreciating the photos I took of him in it, I'd post them. Alas, I suspect they'd be detrimental to his masculinity?)

The temple was already full of praying people when we got there at eight in the morning, and the place held a certain haunting quality that definitely stifled the garishness of the stalls selling gold plastics and religious paraphernalia. It was massive too, and we spent a while simply wandering around barefoot on the cold stone floors, before heading off to the Gandhi Museum and our next destination of Tanjore.

this orient

2011-01-17T21:15:00.000-08:00

(Fort Cochin)

(Mysore, incense rolling)

(Pondicherry)

Some photographs of my wintertime travels as I readjust to the erratic pace of campus-living. Theatre Season starts this weekend with Blackbird, and in the meantime, this is a poem that somewhat described the dislocation sensation of being home/interviewing/home/traveling/home/in France/home/in India this past holiday.

Mayakovsky - Frank O'Hara

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and

brown and white in trees,

snows and skies of laughter

always diminishing, less funny

not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of

the year, what does he think of

that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,

perhaps I am myself again.

rain in the realm of fantasy

2011-01-13T19:59:00.000-08:00

(photo taken by Jeppe during Ganpati in September)

Issues are slowly culminating on this little hill of ours. It really feels like part of the 'experience' - we're struggling with the implementation of (surprising?) rules, spending time in meetings and heated courtyard discussions instead of studying or sleeping, and through all this controversy of sorts figuring out our ideas, ideals and priorities.

At least, so I like to think.

We've been told about rules that will now be properly enforced, such as the one about not sleeping in other rooms and have been presented with new ones, including the appointment of some sort of 'paternal figure', who will aid us in our 'living' here. Everything is a little dubious and ambiguous as of right now, but discussion (as long as that will truly occur) ought to help all of us (as the 'community' we like to call ourselves) work out something, at least personally.

On a less serious note, I went down for Active English today for the first time this term. I got a group of boys to play games with outside, which was a lot of fun and a welcome relief to be able to imitate animals, race through 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' and just generally think no further than the next 'educational' game we could play to keep up the energy.

explosion explode

2011-01-09T22:18:00.000-08:00

close up of hans hartung's T. 1966-R.4

winterbreak 2010/11 is over, and thus i have returned to india for what will be the last time in a while. it's exciting, it's worrying, it's nostalgia-inducing, it's sunny, it's disorientating and school started today.

hans hartung, T. 1966-R. 4

busy with piles of ib coursework, laundry and social 'obligations', it's incredible how fast the time here at a uwc has gone. i feel changed, static, tired, a mixingmeltingpot of fears and hopes and thoughts and loves.

irma blank, eigenschriften

last term, i went to see the dalai lama talk at a peace festival in pune, celebrated ganpati (honouring ganesha and throwing red powder at eachother) and diwali (the festival of light), made another art installation and traveled the south of india. i've been home too, and i'm trying to remember to keep dreaming.

nieuwjaarduik scheveningen 2011 (source)

we went to paris, where these art photos are from, and spent time in france, during which i finally started my ee properly. at home, i did the new year dive for the third time, and got interviewed by a chinese radio as they spotted my chinese heritage. after brief visits to the museum, town, library and friends, i was back on a plane out.

i ran into an italian friend from school on the plane, and am now working my way through the things i need to do. hopefully, i'll have pictures of traveling/art/campus soon, so this blog will be kept a little more up to date.

here's to one more term of writing in indian ink!

an itch so slight

2010-12-06T23:26:00.000-08:00

I REMEMBER 02/03/2010

I remember nothing. Everything. You, time, events, my views, what we wore and when. She sent me a picture the other day, Thursday perhaps, ironically I cannot recall the day. It was us, frozen in a moment, in a space forever there if we remember it, a corner in the framework of my, your, our time. The sun was up and drawing out sweat and smiles from our ready bodies, if I try I might even feel it again. Or rather, I will feel my remembering of it.

Memory, like photography, captures something, but there is a lens, a layer, a distance between my memory and that moment. I remember everything.

expanding life

2010-11-10T02:08:00.000-08:00

Arkaye Kierulf; Textbook Statistics

On average, 5 people are born every second and 1.78 die.
So we’re ahead by 3.22, which is good, I think.

The average person will spend two weeks in his life
waiting for the traffic light to change.

Pubescent girls wait two to four years
for the tender lumps under their nipples to grow.

So the average adult has over 1,460 dreams a year,
laughs 15 times a day. Children, 385 more times.

So the average male adult mates 2,580 times with five different people
but falls in love only twice in his life—possibly

with the same person. Seventy-nine long years for each of us,
awakened to love in our twenties, so more or less

thirty years to love our two lovers each. And if, in a lifetime,
one walks a total of 13,640 miles by increments,

Where are you headed, traveler?
is a valid philosophical question to pose to a man, I think, along with

Why does the blood in your veins travel endlessly?
on account of those red cells flowing night and day

through the traffic of the blood vessels, which if laid out
in a straight line would be over 90,000 miles long.

The great Nile River in Egypt is 4,180 miles long.
The great circle of the earth’s equator is 24,903 miles.

Dividing this green earth among all of us
gives a hundred square feet of living space to each,

but our brains take only one square foot of it,
along with the 29 bones of the skull, so

if you look outside your window with your mind only,
why do you hear the housefly hum middle octave, key of F?

If you listen to the cat on the rug by the fire with
the 32 muscles in your ear, you will hear

100 different vocal sounds. Listen to the dog
wishing for your love: 10 different sounds.

If you think loneliness is beyond calculation,
think of the mole digging a tunnel underground

ninety-eight miles long to China
in one single night. If you think beauty escapes you

or your entire genealogical tree, consider the slug
with its four uneven noses, or the chameleon shifting colors

under an arbitrary light. Think of the deepest point
in the deepest ocean, the Marianas Trench in the Pacific,

do you think anyone’s sadness can be deeper? In 1681,
the last dodo bird died. In the 16th century,

Queen Elizabeth suffered from a fear of roses.
Anne Boleyn had six fingers. People fall in love

twice. The human heart beats 3 billion times — only — in a lifetime.
If you attempt to count all the stars in the galaxy, one

every second, it’ll take 3 thousand years, if you’re lucky.
As owls are the only birds that can see the color blue

the ocean is bluish, along with the sky and the eyes
of that boy who died alone by that little unnamed river

in your dreams one blue night of the war
of one of your lives. (Do you remember which one?)

Duration of World War 1: four years, 3 months, 14 days.
Duration of an equatorial sunset: 128 seconds, 142 tops.

A neuron’s impulse takes 1/1000 of a second,
a morning’s commute from Prospect Expressway

to the Brooklyn Bridge, about 90 minutes,
forty-five without traffic.

Time it takes for a flower to wilt after it’s cut from the stem: five days.
Time left our sun before it runs out of light: five billion years.

Hence the number of happy citizens under the red glow
of that sun: maybe 50% of us, 50% on good days, tops.

Number who are sad: maybe 70% on the good days—
especially on the food days. (The first emotion’s more intense, I think,

when caught up with the second.) So children grow faster in the summer,
their bright blue bodies expanding. The ocean, after all, is blue

which is why the sky now outside your window is bluish
expanding with the white of something beautiful, like clouds.

Fact: The world is a beautiful place—once in a while.
Another fact: We fall in love twice. Maybe more, if we’re lucky.

summertime clothes

2010-11-07T23:04:00.000-08:00

Almost winterbreak!

adolescent sky

2010-11-07T22:40:00.000-08:00

Still working on my research workbook, and this piece by LucyandBart is how I feel right now.

It was Diwali this weekend, so Friday was a Change of Pace day and required some dressing up and relaxing, which was good. Sunday rang in with a Pakistan/Indonesia fund-raising fair, and a brilliant Sunday Spotlight with a sitar player doing an hour-long improvisation that completely tranced me out.

Now it's a Monday, and we're off on Project Week in three days or so.

At some point, I will return to my usual waxing lyrical about events here, but right now it's all being channelled into obscure portraits and discussions with my coyears.

inverted world

2010-11-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

Working on my research workbook, and loving this.

Here's some words to more than substitute my silence of late:

My Heart // Frank O’Hara

I’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar.

love from India.

watch the glow

2010-10-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

I hesitate to say 'since I've been back', considering how long overdue this post is, so instead:
In the gap of web-based silence, I've been sitting around in India.
We're just about half-way through the first term, although, in all honesty, we haven't done very much at all. It's been difficult coming to terms with the 'loss' of our second years, the flood of first years who now inhabit our old rooms and the workload, which seems to be so much more important/heavier/longer this year. We are and will survive though.
I'm off to class now, but I will write up on Ganpati, debate finals and life in general in the very near future!

be gentle with the edges of the world

2010-08-08T08:44:00.001-07:00

some of summer 2010, captured mainly on analogue

Richard Wilson's 20:50 in the Saatchi Gallery, London

(source)

Ernesto Neto's Edges of the World in the Hayward Gallery, London

(source)

Dal Lake, Shrinagar

(digital)

On my way home, The Hague

Coffee with Nana and Veerle, The Hague

Biscuits baked for a boat trip with STEK, The Hague

Rockin' Park 2010, Nijmegen

Stereophonics, Rockin' Park 2010, Nijmegen

C is for COS, Copenhagen and Camping, the start of Nana/Sophie/Veerle's party

down by the water

2010-07-02T22:43:00.000-07:00

The Hague, 2009, 2010 (analogue)

Things of note this week:

i. Holland 2, Brazil 1.

ii. Rockin' Park 2010 - Vampire Weekend, Pearl Jam, White Lies, Black Keys, Stereophonics, Amy Macdonald, Custom. and me.

iii. Nana, Veerle and Sophie's C-themed leaving party.

iv. Dusseldorf for a weekend of art coming up.

v. Seeing Jens (my coyear in Wales) and watching Holland - Slovakia in the KABK with a heap of artistic people and in Centraal Station with an eclectic bunch of folk.

he's nearing the brink but he thinks first the parallel universe perhaps could be the perfect scene.

2010-06-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

A minor photo update of the year now past, whilst I gather my thoughts and self for the report of more recent times.

UWC-NL jaargroep 2009-2011 in the early days

Paud orientation (the first week in)

Second Years Show, theme: flamboyant tellytubby zombies (hence the laundry baskets)

First Exeat (long weekend) in Bombay, outside the Taj hotel

An inspired Art HL double block with Zuzana and some paint (masks painted by Zuzana and I, photography by Marius)

Travel week in Rajasthan, in March

A tea party in my courtyard for a belated birthday celebration

Leh, Ladakh, on a postgrad journey to the cold North

let's consider a change of scenery, it's getting boring by the sea

2010-06-18T01:42:00.000-07:00

This is Ladakh, a region of Jammu-Kashmir, situated up in the Himalayas. I traveled up there after graduation before flying back over here. It was stunning.

To get up to the northern-most state of India, we got a jeep, plane, train, bus and then another jeep. It took us quite a couple of hours, with the inevitable adventures and tribulations that come along with traveling in India as teenagers. It was however most definitely worth it.

I will soon tell the tales of our travels, however for the time being, these are the most interesting things I've done post-India:

i. sat on the beach outside a Bon Jovi concert with friends I hadn't seen in six months, and then we saw a, unexpected, better live performer in a small pub in town afterwards.

ii. met the Prince of the Netherlands and my first years, who got to wear the orange polos and sing the cheesy sponsor-thanking songs on stage this year.

iii. started to volunteer for a charity working with refugees in the Hague, for which I met a bunch of lovely mothers and children displaced in the Netherlands.

iv. unpacked and slept. a lot.

As for the near future, I'm off to see Salman Rushdie talking about peace now, and have a UWC barbeque tomorrow. Next week equals grandparents, dropping by Utrecht and most probably more sleeping and listening to a lot of music.

I'll talk about India more, soon!

it would be a documentary on radio four.

2010-05-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

Lists of numbers, lists of definitions, lists of formulae, lists of 'last times'.

Everything is starting to add, pile, stack up into a massive heap of things left to do, things never finished and things finite.

This is my 41st post here.

I'm a year down the road, I'm halfway through, I'd like to think I've grown somehow and my hair is longer.

(College meeting, sometime in December)

Having spent the past week drifting in and out of classrooms, studybooks, the cafeteria and the MPH (Multi-Purpose Hall, where the exams are held), I had to refer to the calender on my wall today to find the date and day we are currently living in.

Numbers, definitions, formulae, last times all come rushing in again.

It's been 361 days since my very first post, it's (again, a glance up at the calender is required) 4 days until Graduation, 5 days until we leave this place, a fortnight until I'm home and another two months before I come back out here.

Since we last spoke (or rather: I last monologued my way through a blogpost) UWC-day happened, American Cultural Evening occurred and we made our way through multiple student meetings, college meetings, deadlines and packing issues.

I'll be seeing most of you soon and will expand on this year when I've got more time!

a miniature recreation of the-north-pole-meets-my-mind

2010-04-20T05:20:00.001-07:00

Having spent hours taping styrofoam to the floor, I proceeded to spend another couple of hours unsticking the whole thing. I thought the deconstruction remnants of the installation were actually just as interesting as the constructed whole, so here they are.

unmade beds #54 (stitching time)

2010-04-20T05:03:00.000-07:00

This was my site specific installation for Art a couple of weeks back. The inspiration theme was 'Never', so I took it in the direction of never growing up or old. It evolved into a white room (white being symbolic for purity and clean slates) with skeleton flowers (these could also be seen as modern, futuristic ones, or as the remnants of a past).

The floor was half styrofoam and flour, half mattresses and scraps of (white) cloth. I wanted to create a space that stood outside of the space of time (this comes from the idea that arose from a discussion I had with a coyear here, about time being another form of space), that could be ageless, as it were. The mattresses and styrofoam were my attempts to landscape the floor, as I wanted the installation to be tactile and comfortable. The flour provided some element of movement in the room, as it changed when people walked over it. It also meant that people could not leave without taking some with them, tying in to the idea of memories and time forever interacting with the present and future.

The title comes from the idea of dreaming being a means through which one can escape what my English teacher calls 'the tyranny of time'. It also links to the saying 'a stitch in time saves nine', which is all about doing things well the first time around. Essentially, I was interested in creating a space through my art, rather than putting my art in a space, and about looking at the idea of time.

Any queries, comments or things in general? Email me or leave a comment :)

on a good day you can see the end from here

2010-04-05T02:47:00.000-07:00

(A Sunday tea party in honour of my long-since surpassed birthday. I like the blurriness of motion, it captures the warmth of the lighting best.)

So, procrastination seems to be the word of the day. It is the reason for the lack of more pictures (hello Belgian coyear with an elusive streak), the lack of free time (hello English assignment, Hindi test, Chemistry lab and just life in general) and the lack of any actual message beyond this lovely thing I found a while back:

"Okay so you’re out the gates and in the race and you get an education and a job and a wife and a kid and you drink and you eat and you make love when you can sometimes more than you can and you consume things like your lover and a cigarette and a drink and a bite to eat before you go to sleep and then wake up and do it again because you can and you will and that’s what’s expected of you just like they expected it of your father and his father before him and one day they’ll expect it from your kids too and then their kids will follow your over trodden footsteps into the office and get a cup of coffee and talk by the water cooler about what movies they saw last night."

You need to slow down. There is more than this.

(I Wrote This For You blogspot)

light squares and bodies are all you see.

2010-04-04T22:23:00.000-07:00

(Laura Marling, High Spirits Cafe, Pune, last November/December?)

Het is weer een tijdje geleden sinds ik in het nederlands heb geschreven. Dat komt waarschijnlijk door de lack of Dutch spoken on campus, en mijn incapability om de juiste lidwoorden te gebruiken (een duidelijke hint dat ik niet helemaal door en door nederlands ben, helaas). Thuis gebruikte ik altijd engelse woorden in mijn nederlands (and also the other way around, it must be said), en dat is alleen maar erger geworden.

Maar goed. Taalkundig fail aside, ik heb dit weekend niet veel uitgevoerd. Het was Pasen, the end of mocks for second years, and I hosted a tea party for a rather late celebration of my birthday.

My art exhibition has been up for about a week and a half now, and I really ought to get pictures of it. Work is starting to build up and pile around me (my room is now full of paper. I feel like I'm in the Science of Sleep.)

I saw the destruction the fire wrecked in the biodiversity on Saturday, it is incredible. The land goes from green to ash grey, and there is almost nothing left. It is strangely beautiful in its dead state.

En even terug naar nederlands. Lenn en ik hebben dit weekend gehoord dat we first years hebben! Tot nu toe nog maar een, maar hopelijk verandert dat deze week.

Het wordt hier een beetje vreemd, want we hebben nog maar veertig dagen met onze tweede jaars en huidige kamergenoten. The suspense of who is rooming with who is building up, en iedereen bereidt zich voor om naar universiteit te gaan, gedag te zeggen en naar huis te gaan.

I think this about captures the spirit:

(http://breaths.tumblr.com/)

and in five years time you might just prove me wrong

2010-04-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

PUSHKAR, MARCH 11TH

My birthday and the end of my photographic journaling of project week. We arrived at about four in the morning, after a very uncomfortable bus ride. Wandering around the streets, we managed to find a hotel, just about stumble in and collapse on some beds. The 'next' morning meant an attempt to find breakfast, which was quite an interesting thing.

We'd headed off down the road optimistically, but were soon hampered by the large bulk of traffic and noise. Slowly picking our way through it, we found a street with several rooftop restaurants. All we had to do was choose one.

Simple, you'd think, but no.

Pushkar is known for its drugs, and, in particular, a special little drink called bhang lassi. Lassi is a thick yoghurt drink, which one can find over most of India. It does not affect one to any great extent, unless you are very prone to sugar rushes.

Bhang, on the other hand, is a form of cannabis. Enough said on that, I guess.

The place was thus, understandably, filled with hippies.

Back to the breakfast issue, however.

Thinking we had too much choice, we decided to just pick the first rooftop place we saw. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be rather awful.

We made our way up the narrow grey concrete stairs, hemmed in by weirdly pastel pink walls. When we got to the top, it was completely deserted. Having already woken up the guy behind the counter by this point, we felt obliged to take a seat in the awkward-looking wicker chairs and admire the view. The little man stumbled over awkwardly and handed us the menus.

We chose, we ordered, we waited.

We continued to wait for about an hour, occasionally checking downstairs to see whether the cook was even still alive. We'd only ordered pancakes, and it wasn't rocket science.

Turns out the guy had had to go to the market, buy fruit, come back, walk upstairs, pick up plate, walk back down, turn on the gas, build a house, write a novel and serve us some food, all at the same time.

We tried to enjoy the view and each other's company, but what with my 'on my birthday' addition to the end of every sentence (admittedly, I was still feeling solidly sixteen), the fact that we'd spent a long time together already and it may have been wearing and our hunger, it was not the most fun hour.

When the food finally arrived, it was suspicious, substandard and not worth the build-up. I hope the novel and house building worked out better.

The rest of the day, after avoiding the fake priests and stomaching the disappointment that the lake in the centre of the city was drained, went a little better. The place was infused with some sort of happy, calm atmosphere, and we passed the time spotting the coolest hippies, shopping and enjoying the city.

That evening, we got to Jaipur, where we spent the last day of travel week. It was stunning, and if I do eventually get the pictures my co-travellers took, I'll put them up. On the train back, we met a crazy American yoga-teaching hippie, but that's a tale for a rainy day.

to lengthen the wait, to stretch out the day longer

2010-03-29T02:45:00.000-07:00

TUESDAY MARCH 9TH - WEDNESDAY MARCH 10TH

Jodhpur chai break, Jaisalmer, almost to the border of Pakistan (well, 75km away from it) and back to Jaisalmer.

Arriving on a public bus, the landscape around was barren between the villages. At one point we spotted a group of army tents and tanks, which really put the Pakistan-India friction into a visual context.

An hour or so before Jaisalmer, on one of the frequent pitstops the bus provided us with, we were approached by a guy supposedly advising us on what to do and expect there. He then attempted to sell us his camel safari and promote his hotel, and he was not to be the only one. As a group of seven, of which five of us were clearly foreign, we attracted the attention of many hecklers, who swarmed around us as soon as the bus ground to a halt.

"Camel safari, camel safari!"

"Only eight hundred rupees!"

"Best price, best price sir!"

"Somewhere to stay?"

"My company will take you into town, no charge, come with me!"

No matter how many times we denied any offers of transport and safaris, they continued to stalk us down the street. Apparently there was no union here, and this escalated the competitiveness, to the extent that some people offered us camel safaris for only four hundred rupees (about €8).

We chose to head down to the Tourist Office we'd spotted on the way in, and got ourselves a camel safari with an overnight in the dunes. After lunch we were driven up to the fort (which looked like a massive sandcastle, the sort the five-year-old me would have dreamt of making) by an enthusiastic driver who kept offering us beer.

We dropped off our stuff and got back in with the chubby chauffeur, who was now asking us to sing him a song. He drove us out along a single road which seemed to go on forever (actually, it lead to the Pakistani border). We pulled up at a small village in the sweltering heat, plonked on hats and smeared on sunscreen, and then clambered on to camels (which were really dromedaries).

Off we went.

An hour or two later, we arrived in what could almost be described as a field of sand dunes. It was hemmed in by scrubby desert, but was sufficiently large for us to imagine the rolling hills stretching out into the horizon (and for us to take pictures to that effect).

We buried ourselves in the sand, had a campfire (including singalongs, which our guides asked us for) and slept under the stars. It was wondrous to be so far away from the 'usual' environment, and so comfortable to be lying on the cool sand after the heat of the day.

In the morning we munched on bananas and set off again on our camels. Mine was called Mrs India, and was apparently already, at the age of five, already a grandmother.

We rode for a couple of hours, managed not to tumble off whilst galloping (my camel guy even made motorbike noises while the camel ran, it really added to the experience) and got back into the city.

After spending the day wandering around the fort (naturally after having showered and washed all the lovely sand out of ears and hair and toes), shopping for leather bags and shawls (oh we do fulfill tourist expectations) we boarded a bus heading to Pushkar.

(I feel I am omitting something by not mentioning that of course, we did not simply board the bus. We hurriedly caught rickshaws down the hill, found that, unusually, the bus had been early, and left, without us, and we caught more rickshaws and attempted to still catch it. We didn't quite manage, but we got on another bus, pretended to have seats and sat very still whilst the ticket collector came by. Oh India.)

come head on, full circle, our arms filled with miracles

2010-03-28T06:02:00.001-07:00

MONDAY MARCH 8TH

Welcome to Mount Abu, the highest hillstation in Rajasthan. Considering that this state is one consisting mainly of the desert, this does not mean much, but then again, I am Dutch and our highest point nationally is only about 9m above sea level.

Height aside, this little place is rather cute. Much like Mahabaleshwar, minus the strawberries but plus a stunning Jain temple, it was a nice enough location for some walking around.

Having found a hotel of the same name as somebody on campus, we had to take a cheesy picture. He adored it and was tremendously pleased when we sent it to him upon getting back.

Generic cheesiness aside, we passed the time wandering around the lake, posing as though in Titanic along the way (inspired by the numerous couples having professional pictures taken of their 'romantic' weekend in Mount Abu) and then headed up to the Jain temple.

The Jain religion does not believe in killing anything or putting any being into unnecessary pain. Thus they eat a very limited diet, and live in a most peaceful way. It sounds like a lovely, albeit rather difficult, way of living.

The temples (there were five of them) were absolutely stunning. We arrived, were asked to remove our shoes, deposit our bags, and queue up. There was a tour guide who showed us the main sections, and after that we were free to wander around. It was midday and the sun was blazing down but it was cool, as the temples were constructed entirely out of white marble, intricately carved out into hundreds of different motifs.

It was one of the calmest, most soothing moments of project week, those minutes inside the temples. There was a peacefulness and feeling of completion about the place, with its stunning carvings all around. Everyone milled around slowly, padding around barefoot and paying respect to the various gods in the chambers. The lack of pretentiousness or tourists aside from us and the Indians (many of whom were on honeymoons) made it a welcoming spot, and we spent a while just sitting inside the area. Every ceiling, pillar and wall were decorated, and the subtlety of the white on white adornments was lovely.

There was no entrance fee - only donations, no photography allowed and the temples open at midday as the mornings are used for prayers. This seemed to me a nice way of showing the world the beauty they had constructed without making it into an exploited attraction.

After that lovely visit, we walked back and came across an injured horse along an empty road. Standing around and looking worried, we managed to catch the attention of a passerby who turned out to be a naval pilot and who began to make phone calls to help the animal out. We were told that our 'action' had 'inspired' him and hopefully others, to express concern about the horse, and that we had 'started something'. The horse had a neglecting owner who did not care for it properly, and had apparently been lying and limping around for three months prior to us spotting it. The problem was the cost and transport of the horse to a vet, but the pilot assured us that our concern had 'motivated' him to do something. It was a rather odd incident really, and was followed by Andres deciding to go on a hike and being scared off by two elderly women warning him (in Hindi) about 'baloo! baloo!' (bear! bear!) and growling at him as he tried to walk up the path.

We ended the day at Sunset Point, as did most of the tourist population, and then caught a train out to Jodpur, where we could connect to Jaisalmer (and the desert!).

if i told you things i did before, told you how i used to be.

2010-03-26T02:53:00.000-07:00

Back into the present, here's a brief update on the world as I know it right now.

Right now (What a strange word. My now is past as soon as I type or say it, and your interpretation of my now, done in your now, is even further removed from the moment. Thank you English A1 HL for that thought.) there is a big fire in the Biodiversity Reserve. The Fire Service team, which consists of a bunch of students who use it for the A component of CAS, are out there in the midday heat battling the flames with large, metal spade-like things with t-shirts over their heads. It is slightly worrying, but it has happened before and will only get worse as the season wears on. Already much of the surrounding hillside is brownish and dry, and the heat is set to up several notches too.

Tonight is the Dance Show, and the mocks start for the second years. We're really getting into our last term now, with the UWC-NL final interviews happening as I type and the exams looming around the corner. Some people have their 'zero' years already, and there is some excitement on campus. Yesterday the Danes got theirs and began to proudly point out on a map of Denmark where each was from. The Americans are receiving emails from nervous applicants and the INC (Indian National Committee) interviews are happening next weekend on campus.

It's odd to remember how I felt this time last year, especially as it simultaneously feels like no time and yet all the time in the world has passed since then. Something that is really throwing off my measure of the year is the lack of seasons. It feels like it has been summer since the August when I got here.

Returning to the thread of the tale, though:

SUNDAY MARCH 7TH

We woke up to the rattle of the train and the rush of wind. Sitting up, straightening out and clambering down from the blue-plastic, narrow bunks, we looked out of the barred window with amazement. Whilst the night before we'd been in a fairly standard, village-speckled landscape, we were now riding through a dune-like scrubby scene. There was not very much beyond the train, some temples, a bunch of cows and the sun as far as we could see, and it was stunning. I think it was one of the first times in India that I have truly seen space.

A couple of hours later we pulled into the station. Throwing ourselves into the crowd heading towards the exit, we began to spot a lot of tourists. There was some sort of conference going on, and Rajasthan, known for its vibrant colours, culture and camels, is quite a tourist trap. The exit of the station was 'guarded' by two men, dressed up in supposedly traditional garb, sitting on camels (or, as I remember from Dutch class, dromedaries, as they only had one hump) holding red flags. This was rather a change from Ahmedabad, which was low-key and mainly consisted of Indians.

We got into the city of Udaipur itself, and were stunned for the second time. It was a terribly cute city full of slightly narrow, curved paths flanked by hippie shops and buildings atop which were rooftop restaurants. Udaipur is next to a lake, in which there is a white palace. The centre of the city boasts a large palace as well, with lots of intricate designs and architectural features. It reminded me of Aladdin, what with all the slightly sloped streets and pure-white palaces. (Later on in this project week, Osnat and I began to practice our rendition of A Whole New World, partially inspired by this place. That's another story altogether though, and will appear in a couple of days I guess.)

We started with a very relaxing and scenic breakfast on a rooftop. After that, we visited the palace in the city, which was beautiful. There were so many buildings and centuries of art, and even the gangs of elderly tourists in their holiday clothing did nothing to detract from the amazing atmosphere there. Our plan was to head out to the palace in the lake, but being the tourist attraction the place was, the prices were hiked up beyond our student-budget means. Instead we found out about a garden just outside the city, which was rather pretty with its fountains and white stone elephants.

By the end of the afternoon we caught a bus out to Mount Abu, the highest hill station in Rajasthan. The bus took us along a rural route, which was enjoyable due to the lovely semi-barren desert-ness of the area. We got there around eleven, so the ride up to the town on the mountain felt mystical and exciting. This was to some extent counteracted by the first thing we saw when we got there, as this was a replica of the Eiffel Tower (around 5m in height) which was rather odd.

(all of the pictures are of Udaipur)

sleepless long nights that is what my youth was for

2010-03-24T05:11:00.000-07:00

(unknown source, captures the attitude towards our travel week)

SATURDAY 6TH MARCH

In the end, it wasn't our train, although it was going to the right place. We plonked ourselves down and stuck around feigning ignorance until the true seat owners came along, and then drifted down the carriages in search of empty beds. We found some, and tried our luck a little more.
The ticket collector eventually did come around, and told us we should move to General Compartment. This is the lowest rank of carriage, and is mostly filled with people who have not seen 'whites' before. Being so determined to get to Ahmedabad (which is in Gujarat), we moved down there at twelve at night, and actually found seats. It wasn't the most comfortable of journeys, and the following five hours consisted of light napping on each other's shoulders and moving feet around so that the children sleeping on the floor would have enough space, but we got there in the end.
Cue Saturday morning, used to catch up on sleep in some hotel somewhere near the station.
When we eventually got and cleaned up, we set off to see the city.
Starting with a thali, which is a collection of curries, dahl and other bits and pieces, we saw a mosque and wandered around for a while. Walking into an old fort which was due to be fixed, it was interesting to see the British influence on the architecture, espescially as it was right next ot a Hindu temple.
We stumbled upon an art showroom, filled with watercolour and collage pieces commenting on the expansion and modernisation of the city over the past twenty years. Vibrant colours and stylised figures made the paintings rather hopeful in their semi-criticism, and the artist was pleased to see us 'youth' interested in his depictions of our peers.
We headed off to the Law Gardens, which turned out to be a park. It was calm and a nice way to end the day.
By evening we made our way to the train station, where we caught our train to Udaipur, our first stop in Rajasthan.

and everything that i want to know is on a local train outside tokyo

2010-03-18T04:41:00.000-07:00

(the Rajasthani desert, on our camel safari)

Having returned from Project/Travel week last week, I'm finally getting around to my attempt to paint my experiences up in words for all of you out there.

It's a strange thing. I'm sitting facing the pool playing music loudly to the night, in a restful moment away from the hubbub of school-life here. Yet, I've stationed myself and my packet of juice slapbang inbetween the Social Centre and Gossip, our tuck shop here. It should be bustling, but I guess the mocks and tests coming up have tied the hands of a lot of second years right now.

The week of my birthday, the desert and a 24 hour train journey across three states was busy, so I'm going to (hopefully) bring you the stories day by day (I'm feeling very CNN-ish, and was going to write 'as they happen' but I restrained myself) over the course of the next eight days.
This will prevent potential RSI for me and overwhelming quantities of text for you to read :)

FRIDAY MARCH 5TH

After spending the previous evening on a moonlight picnic in the biodiversity reserve, and having slept on a roof (it felt like camping out in the summertime, if you managed to ignore the mosquitoes) I got up and packed for the week.
(this sounds so simple written down, but I'm sure as most of you know, I'm not the world's best/speediest/most effective packer. In hindsight, I did pretty well though, as I wore almost everything, had space for souveniers and only forgot my pajamas (: )

I was going to travel with Yanna (German/French, grew up in Japan, our organised one), Aradhya (Indian and our only second year in the group), Andres (Spanish and an amazing violin player), Bartek (our Polish sarcasm dose), Osnat (our Israeli CliniClown game-instigator) and Emilio (the patriotic American who pretended to be Indian for the week). We didn't really know each other too well, so the week would at the very least contain some getting-to-know-people-ness, which I always think is fun.

So it got to three and we were all excitedly standing around in the heat of the day with our backpacks and travelling clothes on. We'd booked a bus with a bunch of others who needed to get to Bombay to catch trains, and were waiting for everyone to arrive (we work on Indian/MUWCI time here, which means that things happen anywhere between ten minutes and two days after they were supposed to).
By half past we'd all dribbled in, and the bags were being tied to the roof. Our ringleader (the second year at this point in time) was getting slightly stressed, as our train was due to leave at 20:30 and getting into Bombay would take us four hours at least around this time of day.
The bus driver took his time though, and eventually we (already too hot in the bus, tearfully and cheerfully waving goodbye to other friends) were on our way.

Naturally we had a couple more obstacles to get past before we could get out of the state and into our chosen travel week region. The first was a flat tire, which landed us at some unknown pitstop area, with a ringleader who was getting more agitated as the time wore on. We considered hitch-hiking the remaining two hours into Bombay, but settled for getting our backpacks down in advance to allow us to jump off and race for a train if neccessary.
We got to Bombay by 19:30, but with the evening traffic and sheer scale of the city it was unlikely that we would make our train. We were advised to get off and catch a train from a nearby station, which might still get us there in time.

We grabbed our backpacks and jumped out.
We ran along roads and pavements, hauling each other up and pulling everyone along.
We got to the station and found a line a mile long for tickets.

Luckily we had charm and (I'm sad to say) foreign blood on our side, and we got our tickets.

We continued to run through the station.
We linked hands and jumped on a random carriage.

It turned out to be a women's only carriage, which made for an amusing/slightly uncomfortable twenty minutes for some of our group. The women all watched us, alien as we were with massive bags, braids over our heads like Heidi (that would be me) and franctic looks on our faces. We were told to get off at a station, we did, and it turned out to be the wrong one.

The rush continued.
We ran out of the station.
We shouted for taxis.
We piled into two and kept our fingers crossed we'd end up at the same station.
We did.

It was 21:15.

Thinking that the Indian time scale we'd had such problems with earlier might work to our advantage, we checked the platform.
There was a train there.
Hoping for the best, but suspecting it wasn't ours, we got on.

we could be walking around the zoo, with the sun shining down over me and you

2010-03-02T04:18:00.000-08:00

(Rory and I pretending to be local in Mahabaleshwar)

I just had my final Active English session.

It's odd to think that the seven children I taught together with Rory will go on into the big bad world with a vague memory of two girls trying to teach them the verb 'to be', playing silly colour games and singing the hokey pokey too loudly and clearly for them to do anything but laugh at the sight of it.

We tried to teach them about our countries of origin, but ended up focusing on the difference between continents and countries and dancing whilst they looked on, bemused. It was worrying to see them look so lost with the map of the world, and I hope our little diagrams of clogs, hamburgers and the first man on the moon will one day help them in life.

From this point on, we'll be spending our Tuesdays workshopping about teaching English as a foreign language, which sounds considerably less exciting than attempting to captivate the imaginations of Sonali, Sandeep, Sanjeevni, Priyanka, Tiranbul and the various others that occasionally attended.

I think that every time I ride or walk by Paud School, I will see the playground filled with small circles of MUWCI and Paud students, trying to communicate ideas and grammar for an hour. Here's to next year and a new batch of first years and fifth graders.

it won't last forever, and that's exactly why.

2010-02-27T21:12:00.001-08:00

(a nice, calm, irrelevant picture of a tree-house, because I still love them.)

A jam-packed weekend filled with parties, culture and sunshine would make this moment sound too idyllic yet a three-day-stretch of business obligations would make this time sound too exhausting.

Sometimes the limitations of language do loom over my shoulder when I type, assigning associations and interpretations to words and paragraphs I try to leave 'pure'.

The writing of essays, blogposts, emails, stories.

The communication of ideas, thoughts, feelings, experiences.

How well does one achieve the aim of expressing one's mind?

(Thank you, TOK classes, for making me sound introspective and possibly even deep.)

So, a weekend this is.

Friday called in with an European Cultural Evening, which required baking and dancing on most of our parts. We started with an European Cafe, where all non-Europeans could come and enjoy cakes and drinks made by us. It worked out terribly well, with almost one hundred or so people sitting out on the lawn whilst the night drew in, chatting and munching away.

Then came our Cultural Show, which covered everything from the world's history in five minutes to the waltz to a skit on Shetland and, Holland's contribution, jumpstyle.

We closed with an European party, which just meant loud music and dancing. Good fun :)

Saturday and film class and being too tired after watching 2001: Space Odyssey to go to the drag party that evening. Oh, and wandering down to Paud with two guys, drinking lots of sugarcane juice and buying kilos of grapes.

Now it's Sunday morning, I'm off to brunch and film class, and tonight is the carnival party.

Monday means Holi (the festival of colours) and is a day off school. We're all planning to chuck coloured powder at eachother, which sounds like it might be a laugh :)

And then it's only four days until Rajastan for Project Week!

but frozen things they all unfreeze and now i taste like all those frozen strawberries i used to chill your bruising knees

2010-02-21T22:46:00.000-08:00

I would love to say that this was the hill station where I spent my weekend, but it wasn't. A clue would be the snowy tops, the clouds and the lack of strawberries.

In actual fact, I was in Mahabaleshwar, a hill station about 140 km away from Pune.

After a schoolbus, rickshaw, jeep, volvo bus (like a coach), two public buses and five hours, we arrived at the strawberry laden spot on Saturday morning.

We (this is a rather ambiguous usage of the plural, as I spent the day with about four different groups of people) ate strawberries with cream, strawberry ice-cream, strawberry milkshakes, strawberry juice and wandered around the lovely hillside area.

As evening began to draw in, some groups went camping, some went paragliding (and then the wind dropped and they had to be driven back up the hillside) and we headed back to campus with a stop in Pune for some late-night dining.

Sunday rang in with a 'Sophie, we don't have a jeep! We'll need to be ready in ten minutes so we can hitch a ride with some teachers!' and a surprisingly successful ten minute shower/dress/wake-up session.

My family (as in, Christine, Mark and Henk) were in Pune, so I met up with them and 'showed them round'. Unfortunately, we ended up going somewhere completely different when the two rickshaw drivers misunderstood our destination, but we managed to regroup and saw my art teacher's exhibition as well.

I headed back to campus laden down with stuff for the CIs and Dutch cheese, where I found a bunch of people making kilos of strawberry jam.

Now it's Monday and only a fortnight to go until Project Week!

Sitting in restaurants, thought we were so grown up.

2010-01-30T21:52:00.001-08:00

A couple more November Exeat rehashes, as the next Exeat and Travel Week begin to approach.

(mosque in the Muslin area, the ghats - washing area of Bombay where millions of items get washed every day, I think, and Marine Drive at eight in the morning)

After visiting an art gallery, we fished out our guide book and looked at what we could do for the afternoon. The Muslim Area, described as full of junk and flea markets, sounded quite obscure and interesting, so down we headed.

Unfortunately, it was Ede. That in itself wasn't a bad thing, however the fact that dead goats were being dragged out of taxi boots was slightly less pleasant. Also, the markets were non-existant due to this festival, and the streets were bustling with Muslim men.

We left the area and began to explore the streets. Stumbling upon a temple, we chatted with the priest about what the temple for for and so on (it was a Hindu temple) as it was intricately decorated with white carved pillars and ceilings, all of which was apparently more than a hundred years old. From time to time old people would come in and kneel before the statue of the gods, praying, we were told, for strength. He would then give them some sort of sweet paste in a leaf and perform some sort of prayer. Definitely an interesting and unexpected cultural interaction. After hearing our age and purpose in India, he sent us off with bananas and good wishes.

this is small town music, this is big town music.

2010-01-23T02:19:00.000-08:00

(chapati making)
(oh the people you meet at train stations)

So here's a dosage of culture for you.
These are all from a Friday in November, when I was on my way to Mumbai/Bombay for Exeat (a long weekend away, we get two a term).

Deciding at the spur of the moment to go to Bombay, we went to the train station. There, we bought our tickets, discovered we had three hours to kill, and wandered around the area trying local food. We walked into a small, one-meal restaurant filled with Indian men eating thalis (not sure how to spell that. It is a round metal tray on which one gets chapati/rice/some sort of starch and several bowls of dip-like things. I suppose it is the Indian version of tapas, and the contents differs per place and region.) and tried that. It was really nice, although us being there may have bowled them over a bit (being 'white'). We also saw men making chapatis around th back of a hotel, which was interesting. Two point five hours and stomachs filled with chai, Indian sweets and thalis, we went back to the station.

The platform was covered in sleeping people, either waiting for trains or simply sleeping there as it was covered. We met a man dressed in white with some sort of massive horn instrument on his back. He looked holy in a way, so we decided to practice our limited Hindi on him. Unfortunately, he spoke almost no Hindi himself, as he spoke Marathi, but we managed to chat to some extent about where he was from, where he was going and got him to play the horn thing for us. This gathered a crowd, and we decided it was about time to move on and find our train.
Once on, we spotted two other religious looking men, dressed all in orange. We tried to take pictures of them discreetly, but I'm not sure how well that worked. After all that, we fell asleep clutching on to our belongings, and woke up in Bombay five hours later.

I see a mansard roof through the trees

2010-01-18T04:30:00.000-08:00

(A snowy Holland on my flight out)

3 things I've done since last week:

1. I have been reunited with my luggage. After a week of phoning BA, the Triveni office (Triveni is the umbrella term for CAS and Community Interactions here) sorted out the delivery of it. I was whisked off into a jeep and driven down the hill to the bus station in Paud, where an Indian guy (who was in no apparent way associated with BA) came around the corner lugging my bag wrapped in two layers of plastic. Euphoric about the arrival of my luggage, I set about unpacking immediatly, and it became apparent that my cupboard was too small. A long clean-up and reorganisation on Saturday later, and I had managed to fit everything in. Since then, I have been enjoying using my very own cooking implements (utilised for a girlie dinner that very night) and not having to deal with BA customer services anymore (I lost my luggage twice in a row now).

2. I saw a Kathakali performance on Thursday. This traditional dance involves several Indian men, who make their faces up in incredible colours (all made with natural dyes) to resemble masks. They also pull themselves into massive, brightly-coloured, almost Victorian (but livelier) costumes, and proceed to 'dance' using hand and leg actions (all of which symbolise something).

(a short break and some attempted mosquito murder later)

The performance the group did for us on campus was an altered version of Julius Caesar. Initially it was interesting to watch them communicate/dance in their absurd, expressive costumes (they even dye their eye whites red for performances) and to listen to the odd, tribal-esque music (which was live and had haunting, chanting vocals), but after two hours (it ended up lasting three) I felt I had seen enough. I think if I had understood the symbolisms each movement conveyed, it may have been more fascinating, but a two hour watch just about filled my culture quota for that day.

3. Rosie's Adventurous Life Change: One of my second years (Year 13s) decided to live on the edge/go on adventures more frequently. Having volunteered to participate, a whole bunch of us instigated a bonfire in one of the wadas on Friday night, complete with literal stokbrood (bread dough on a stick that one bakes on the fire) and live guitar music. Our most recent 'adventure' was a picnic on Sunday, which consisted of three of us + a quiche (I finally made one here!) + salad and parathas (Indian savoury pancakes) + grapes + sunshine + ants. Lovely.

ps. Having forgotten to upload a stack of pictures from my camera until now (going as far back as November), I'll be posting them up intermittedly with anecdotes on the context of them. Some of them are pretty cultural, so keep checking :)

with lips and teeth to ask how my day went, boots and fists to pound on the pavement

2010-01-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

(bikes, our garden, the first day back)

Having spent a lovely 21 days in the land of bikes, snow and familiar faces (although, strictly speaking, I spent 10 of these 21 days in a country of baguettes, snow and family faces), I am now back and in the process of re-tanning over here in India.

After a disastrous journey due to ‘severe weather conditions’ (according to BA’s phone line, which also told me ‘we are experiencing a large mass of phone calls from angry luggage-less customers much like yourself, therefore we shall keep you on hold for another half an hour’ or something to that effect) Lenn and I arrived at MUWCI a lay-over in London and a day richer. Upon arrival, everyone was throwing themselves at one another, excitedly gabbling on about how much fun they had parting/shopping/eating/travelling/sleeping. It was really nice to see them all again, although admittedly the prospect of the drab rooms (although mine is cheered up with sky blue paint and pretty pictures) and hard beds slightly dampened the spirit.

School started on Monday, and it was business as usual. Sure, people looked refreshed, neater and more awake after their haircuts, shopping sprees and sleep, but by about Wednesday it was all same old, same old. Having spent the last term getting to know everyone and everything, I feel (at least up to now) to be slightly more in control of things (sleep/school/timewise). It is a shame that my luggage (not the metaphorical, but the actual physical sort) had a longer delay in London than I, but rumour has it that it will be arriving today, which would be brilliant.

For the rest, I’m still alive, still enjoying the sun (although I’m worried about the prospects of the temperatures hitting the forties and fifties), marvelling at the monkeys (there was one by the cafeteria today) and attempting to teach children from the neighbouring villages about concave and convex mirrors.

x

Got no reason for coming to me and the rain running down.

2010-01-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

(Burning Man community, Nevada, which looks amazing.)

Happy new year.
Only a couple more days before I'm off again back to India now.
I've been back (and notably blog-silent, even for my doings) for around three weeks now, one of which I spent in a little house in the snowy countryside of France.
Everyone at ISH has been back since Tuesday, and it was very (very very very) nice to see them all again (:
For the rest, I've been enjoying the cold, meat (sad but true. Indians don't really do meat), space and familiarity of it all. The trip over was a bit of a culmination of disasters (sickness, missing papers, cancelled flights, lost luggage) for the original Dutch/Norwegian crowd who flew back together, but it was all sorted and hopefully this Friday's flight will be easier.
It is going to be strange returning to the tiny insular community that is MUWCI, and it probably won't be simple. Then again, it will be nice to see everyone over at that end of the world too, and I'll be back by the summer (:

x

Hoe huppelt zijn paardje het dek op en neer

2009-12-07T22:13:00.000-08:00

by Laura Callaghan, seems to capture what I've been up to (minus the bear, plus some mosquitoes)

Nog maar negen daagjes!
Het wordt steeds vreemder om hier te zijn, omdat ik in minder dan twee weken thuis zal zijn.
Hier wordt het nu superdruk, met veel toetsen/assignments/dinners/festivities, dus hopelijk zullen jullie mijn lack of emails begrijpen. Aan het begin werd mij verteld dat MUWCI uit drie 's'en bestond ; slapen, studeren en socialisen. Daarvan lukt het nooit om meer dan twee te doen, waardoor de meesten met een ernstig slaapgebrek rondlopen (je herkent het aan de kleine, rode oogjes, grumpy expression, slumped shoulders en rommelige kleding).

This weekend was MUWCIfest, as well as Christmas Cookie baking, Sinterklaas and the continuous Secret Santa thing we've got going on campus. As one of only four active Dutch members of the community, it meant that we had quite a few poems to write and traditions to explain. It worked out quite well, with the National Committee sending us massive sacks of pepernoten, taai taai, schuimpjes, banketstaven and chocolade letters (amazing. really.) which just about fed the 200+ community, of which most left out their shoes on Sunday night (Sinterklaas shifted his celebration to Sunday here, due to MUWCIfest and the fact that he had a nine hour flight from Holland to India to get).
We also got the Caf(eteria) to cook a 'Dutch' dinner, which was interesting, considering that India doesn't really have much in the way of bacon, or meat at all really. They made mashed potato and carrot with pork sauce (the Indian variation on hutspot) as well as pancakes with watery applemousse and chocolate sauce, pasta (we couldn't think of much Dutch food they'd be able to make), brown bread and veg biriyani (not quite so Dutch but alright). Everyone seemed to like it, though, which is good (:
With a small group of people we also did surprises, which actually worked out quite well. That afternoon, I'd also taught a couple of people how to make speculaas, so although there was no:
snow
cold
very few Dutch
real Pieten
etc
there was some sense of Sinterklaas.
Acting as Pieten, we ran around very early on Monday morning, filling shoes (or not, in the case of one greedy house that had left all their shoes out with a rather rude note informing us to 'FILL EM UP') and picking up nice notes to Sinterklaas (or Sinta Claus, or Sintaklast).
Anyhows, I've got another lesson to go to, so hopefully I'll get round to more updates about Exeat and campus soon!
x

little darling, it feels like years since it's been here

2009-11-16T09:44:00.000-08:00

Found this somewhere, thought it was rather nice (:

For the past week, I've been sleeping/eating/reading/working/socialising.
It's stopped raining now, and the pool is looking rather yellow, and in just about a month I'll be back in still raining but rather pool-less (at least, free pool atop a mountain style) Holland (:

I was thinking I should perhaps run a couple of bits on general stuff like the food, weather, people and any other things that are now part of my routine but may seem novel to anyone outside of MUWCI/India.
Any suggestions?

Today was a fairly run-of-the-mill day, with school (which starts at 07:30), football (in which we ran up and down Internet Hill and through the Biodiversity Reserve, I felt a bit like I was in the jungle, which was fun) and college meeting (in which we all sit around and discuss important issues every week).

For the rest, I'm hoping it will dry but not warm up pretty soon, and that mosquitoes will become extinct before I return here in the spring. I should get some sleep.
Night!

worried about our little world falling apart

2009-11-11T03:26:00.000-08:00

Vandaag heb ik besloten om alles even anders te doen.

Ik zit hier in mijn kamer gember koekjes te eten en naar het geluid van de (of is het nou het?) regen te luisteren.

Naast me zit m'n kamergenootje, die uit Kerala in India komt. Ze zit te studeren.
Voor de verandering is ons kamer niet met schreeuwerige koreans gevuld, die meestal de linkerhoek in beslag nemen. Het is nu even lekker rustig.

I've been back from Project Week since Monday evening.
Thus I've unpacked, done my laundry, rebonded and caught up with everyone here and started school again today.

It is most likely a nice idea to describe Project Week and what I got up to, so here goes:

Project Week started last Friday, when most of the groups left campus to catch trains and buses to get to all sorts of places. Our group only left on Saturday morning, giving us a little time to worry about an empty campus (it was rather lonely) and pack our stuff.

The train took twenty-one hours to get to Bangalore, which is in the south, in the state of Karnataka. As they speak mainly Karnada there, I wasn't going to get much chance to practice my Hindi, but I took along my Dutch-Hindi book, just in case.
We travelled in Second Class, which means something else in India than in Europe, but I'm not quite sure what. We were in the non-AC section, which was not as bad as one might imagine. There were two square windows for every group of six bunks, with glass sheets and metal bars to pull down if you wanted to. Across the narrow aisle were two more bunks, and every couple of minutes some man with a very nasal voice would come down this aisle, shouting out the name of whtever he was selling (biscuits/chrisps/dinner/chai/scarves) in an irksome singson-ey tone.

I finally started recording thing in a diary (not sure how long that will last) so here are some extracts that sum up my week:

Saturday 31/10/09

Earlier today the scenery from the train was incredible. There were dry auburn hills and green fields, small clusters of earthern houses and a real sense of calmth. There is an elderly couple opposite usm who were initially sitting cross-legged and reading the newspaper. She was wearing a lilac sari, which looked stunning against the blue window frame and seat and the red metal bars on the window. Monday 02/11/09 Wij zaten op een soort dakterra met een uitzicht op een heleboel pastel-kleurige gebouwen. Het was niet te warm omdat we onder een sort pakoda zateb, met chai en koekjes. De man [die ons een presentatie over APSA aan het geven was] zag er een beetje Sesame-Straat-achtig uit, met een very-oversized pale lilac shirt die in zijn hoogopgetrokken-netjes-gestreken broek zat gepropt...Hij vertelde ons over APSA, en hoe ze eerst altijd de 'baseline' vinden (alle basisinformatie, zoals hoe ver de school is, hoe het sanitair is, of ze water hebben, hoe veel enz) waarna ze een 'actionplan' ontwikkelen samen met de community-in-question... [about the vocational training centre]

There was a printing area, with five Indian guys standing around the equipment. In the adjoining room, seperated only by a partial wall on the right, was six sewing machines. These were white, plastic, modern. To the left was a large grey table with beige cotton that three women were cutting into strips...Straight down the hall was a small classroom, with half of it consisting of desks and girls, the other half of old, foot-controlled sewing machines. They were 3 or 5 months into their year of training, and were already making simple children's frocks.

Up a flight of stairs around the outside of the building was the elctronics department, with cute handdrawn images of the tools and their names on the walls. A handful of boys were sitting in a row behind a transparent wall, fiddling with bits of hardware. Another flight up was the computer training section. 30 pupils sat in plastic chirs, copying the text about CDs from the powerpoint slide being beamed up.

Tuesday : Dream School teaching (APSA's school for the children they rescue from child labour and the like)

Wednesday : ChildLine, viewing presentations given on this to government schools (a children's help line APSA is associated with)
Also: meeting with a government official to talk/learn about the health care and education systems in Karnataka
And: staying over at APSA's Girls' Hostel, where girls from APSA can stay for a while until they find jobs and their feet in the world

Thursday : Constituency work (where we viewed a children's meeting in a migratory slum, about what they thought needed improvement)
And: Fabindia presentation (Fabindia is a chain of stores where 60% of the moeny goes to the artisan, thus allowing traditional methods of craft to be preserved. This wasn't really part of our Project Week)

Friday : Inchara (means birdsong, the art and culture side of APSA)
Monday 09/11/09 In ongeveer vier uur komen we in Pune aan. Ik ben net op de middelste bunkk wakker geworden met een gezwollen oog na rond twaalf uren slaap in Rosie's slaapzak (die ze per ongeluk heeft achtergelaten toen ze donderdag avond met andere tweedjaars verder reisde), met als kussen Lenn en Victor's tailored, expensive suits, omdat Lenn dacht dat er twee creepy guys zijn spullen wouden stelen. We hebben net egg biriyani [boiled eggs, curry sauce and rice with bits in] en lassi [sweet yoghurt drink] binnengewerkt als lunch, en zitting nu allemaal rustig te lezen. Gelukkig is het niet zo warm buiten.

So that was pretty much that. It was interesting to learn about how the NGO functioned, and to try out several of their projects.

Some cute, surprising things I'll leave you with:
I found a whole bunch of Suske en Wiske's in a small secondhand bookshop in Bangalore. It really made my day.
I found HEMA stuff in a basement shop in Pune.
I showered with only cold water and ate with my hands all week.
I got my package today!

x

one of these days

2009-10-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

A little nostalgia trip (already): this picture is our first time in Pune, I believe.
From l-r, Mette, Sophie, Gesa (:

Now the swine flu panic has subsided a little, and I'm just about halfway through my first term.
Since Bombay, I've mainly stayed on campus and celebrated a lot of birthdays.

Just a brief, overdue summary of Bombay, it was insane to imagine that the city had more inhabitants, 28 million allegedly, than the whole of the lovely flat country I came from.
We went to see the Gateway of India, the Taj hotel, the shopping district and drove past the largest slum in India that weekend. It was definitely an experience.

Sometimes it hits me here that I'm at a UWC, in India, really. We get compulsory Global Affairs, where we discuss all sorts of issues, we have This is India sessions and we go down for overnights in the small villages. It is amazing.
This week was Environment Week, so there were a couple of activities running. The most pleasant was the lunch in the Butterfly Garden, by the Amphitheatre, today. The Garden is situated in the Biodiversity Reserve, that I plan on visiting much more often now that the rains have stopped. We all sat around on the soft but itchy green grassy slope, eating off plates made of leaves and listening to the choir and people playing plastic pipes and glass bottles.

This weekend I've got Film Studies, which is really interesting but means I'll be staying on campus most of this weekend. Next week is Project Week, so I'll be off to Bangalore to work with APSA, but first I'll need to learn jumpstyle, the waltz (I think...) and some Karnataka language.

For the time being, I have learnt some Hindi;
Namaste!
Ap kaise hai?
Me thik hu (:
(Hey, how are you? I'm good!)

and we're currently learning the script, which is rather hard as the alphabet consists of sounds like "t, tte, the, je, jhe, jher, cher, char" etc. Maybe I'll have grasped it by December!

358 Roadways

2009-10-07T01:39:00.000-07:00

Some shots of my corner (W3H9R) (:

Happy birthday mr Gandhi

2009-10-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

We've finally arrived at Devika's place in Bombay, after a rather interesting trip.

Initially, the jeep somebody had booked was cancelled, so we had to reorganise a jeep to get from campus to Pune.

From there, we had to find some other sort of transport to get us to Bombay/Mumbai. Our original plan- getting public transport- was crushed when we found out that we were an hour away from the station. We picked up another jeep, and were on the road again.

Upon our arrival in Bombay, indicated by the bumper to bumper traffic, we went out to dinner with a bunch of MUWCI folk. Then our attempt to find our accommodation started.

We got into a cab with a MUWCI Hindi speaker, and asked him for the address. He shrugged his bony shoulders, and began to drive, his head barely reaching over the top of the wheel.

The Hindi speaker asked people on the street for directions, but there were several places with similar names which caused us much confusion and many u-turns. Eventually, a man in a white string vest, surrounded by beggars sleeping on the street, managed to point us in the right direction.

It was a rather surreal journey. The cabs here have floor to ceiling carpeting, the group we were with was an eclectic mix of Korean/Nepali/Thai/Indian/Norwegian/Dutch, and Bombay is bright and vibrant, even on a dry (no alcohol) day.

Right now, we're waiting for two fellow students, who were planning on booking into a hotel but haven't brought their passports. Genius.

I'll update on what this night and weekend turned out like soon :)

Don't you wanna get out of Cape Cod, out of Cape Cod tonight?

2009-09-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a common room in a wada in MUWCI, feeling slightly out of whack.
It's now been a month (yes, I still seem to be counting) and I've just spent the past two days in the med centre with a cold. Time seemed to warp there, as all I did was sleep, watch films and eat.
Now I'm healthier again, so I suppose, whilst the internet is still up, I should probably update this blog (:

Since the third of September (woah, that's a while ago), I've been to Pune a couple more times, started school, performed a semi-improv piece on the flute with Benjamin the German on the piano for the First Year Show, dressed up as a Flamboyant Tellytubbie Zombie for the Second Year Show, tried a whole range of Commuity Interactions (known as CIs, where we work with the neighbouring villages) and Trivenis (known as CAS for all you lot) and painted my room.

Last weekend I had Film Studies, which is taught by a documentary maker from Mumbai. We have classes on Friday afternoon, a screening Friday evening, Saturday morning, another screening Saturday evening and a class Sunday morning, every fortnight. The classes are about everything to do with film, from shooting to analysing the film-maker's intentions. I'm still not sure whether I want to take it as my seventh subject, but for now I'm enjoying the classes.

I also went on an overnight, which means going off campus for, as the word suggests, a night. I went to Pune with a bunch of first and second years, tried the Indian clubbing scene (let's put it this way: it was an experience.) and stayed over at Khushi (an Indian who lives in Pune)'s.
It was slightly hard to find her place, as the rickshaw driver didn't know the appartment block, but Mika the Mauritian managed to ask directions in broken Hindi, which got us there in the end.

Things I've learnt in a month here:

- the pool is the best place to be
- on festival days, everything (nightlife stuff) closes at 1am
- compared to Indians, I have massive wrists (I have bought myself bangles)
- the internet actually dies here when it rains
- 'mai tumse pyar kurti hu' means 'I love you' in Hindi (:
- Busted actually made it to India (I have found an Indian-Rahul, who wants himself namechecked here- who can sing along to Crashed the Wedding (: )
- the postal service here is incredibly slow (I'd love to receive packages though (: )

Furthermore, I've seen some amazing views, a standout one being when the girls football team went on a jog up the nearby mountain. We did suicides at the top, on the slippery ground just after the rain, and could see almost the whole of the Mulshi Valley, where MUWCI is situated.

I'm off for Exeat this weekend, which means that I can go off campus from Friday till Sunday. I'm going to be heading for the beach, and I'll try and keep this blog more updated on events after that (:

love x

I smelt your scent on the seatbelt and kept my shortcut to myself.

2009-09-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

(Mumbai, on the way out of the city on the first day)

It's been almost a week since I arrived in India now. It doesn't feel like that at all.
Everything is so new still but yet so familiar, and I feel like I've been here for weeks already!
Earlier this week, there was a musical Spotlight evening, in which we listened to some amazing music, such as a cello piece, one of Beethoven's final movements on the piano and a traditional song. I've also been down to a nearby village for a tutor-group dinner, where we tasted some good Indian food.
On Wednesday I went to Paud. It's a small village around 8km from campus, so we walked down and had a look around.
Yesterday I went to Pune, which was downright amazing. It is the nearest city from here, and we are going again on Saturday. It was so vibrant, colourful, alive and busy. Although there is visible poverty, the place seems bustling and I really enjoyed it. We did have to wear masks as a preventative measure for swine flu, but nobody else seemed to be worried. I had my first rickshaw ride, which was terrifying (there were four of us in a three seater) and exhilarating in equal measures. I managed to buy paint for my room here together with Mette and Gesa, so it will be fun to decorate the place here. We also picked up some fresh vegetables from the market, and cooked dinner with a bunch of people.
Today I was supposed to go on a hike, but I woke up with a massive ant bite on my eye, so I'm sitting here recuperating. Tonight I think there is a retro party in one of the wadas (previous ones this week have been the jumpstyle party and other general ones) and tomorrow evening is the First Year Show, in which we are required to entertain the other students. I'll be playing the flute with other musicians, probably a Bob Dylan or Beatles song.
Other activities I've been busy with are the interwada games we had (we played football and basketball against each other) and the biodiversity reserve tour. The reserve is fantastic! It has edible plants as well as local ones, and is peaceful and pleasant.
The photos are taking way too long to upload now, so I'll do that later.
x

Honk Ok Please

2009-08-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

Gisteren verlieten Lennart en ik Nederland. Ik kwam met overgewicht, een te-grote rugzak voor handbaggage en drie truien om me heen gewikkeld in Londen aan. Daar ontmoetten we Marte, Mette en Marius uit Noorwegen, Karen en Lasse uit Denemarken, Victor uit Duitsland, Sofia uit Portugal en Isis uit Engeland. Het was even moeilijk om iedereen in het echt te herkennen, aangezien we elkaar alleen maar door Facebook hadden gesproken, maar het lukte wel :)
De vlucht zelf was wel makkelijk, nadat ik even stoelen had gewisseld om naast Lenn te zitten. We praatten met een man die in de buurt woondde, en werden door een oud-MUWCI-student herkend. We kwamen rond de middag in Mumbai aan, waar we door Nicolai (Noorwegen), Bethany (Scotland) en Heske (Nederland!) werden opgehaald.
Het was supersuperdruk toen we rond zes uur op school aankwamen, en eerst heel verwarrend.
Ik deel een kamer met een Indiaanse first year, die heel lief is (she encouraged me to pack, got me up in the morning etc (: ) en twee second years uit Korea en Japan.
Het is hier warm en regent veel, en het is ontzettend leuk om de namen te leren en te proberen te herinneren (het lukt me nog niet helemaal maar ja).

I could stay forever leave right now it's your call either way

2009-08-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

(one of our hippie-campfire-esque nights of the summer)

Nog maar twee dagen tot lift-off!
Ik heb ondertussen twee Noorse mede-MUWCI-studenten ontmoet, die allebei heel aardig waren, en mijn tas geprobeerd in te pakken. Het lukte niet zo goed, en ik ontdekte twee dingen:
1. ik heb wel heel veel nodig om te overleven
2. kleding is wel erg zwaar in bulk
Maar goed. Vandaag ging ik naar Amsterdam met Veerle, waar we een hele dag gewoon door de Negen Straatjes rond dwaalden, en naar Haarlem gingen om ijs te eten. Daarna hebben we nog een stel vrienden ontmoet in de stad, maar aangezien mijn inpakken niet zo uber-fantastisch is moest ik naar huis om dat te doen...
Ik heb ook ontdekt wie mijn kamergenootjes zijn, wanneer mijn vlucht vertrekt en andere handige dingen :)
Er was wel een eng moment, toen we in Noorwegen na een week televisie en internetloos te hebben geleefd, een televisie aanzette. De BBC News had als een feature de situatie in Mumbai/Bombay, waar swine flu (mexicaanse griep) was uitgebroken. Ze lieten beelden van quarantaines en verlaten alley ways zien, which was pretty worrying...
Maar we zien wel!

Yellow icing, just a mirror for the sun

2009-08-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

After a brief visit home, I'm off again :)
I'm going to be in Norway for the next fortnight, where I will hopefully meet up with some of my Norwegian co-years-to-be.
For the last couple of days, I've unpacked from my previous trip to rainy old (but still lovely) England, and repacked for India and Norway, been for a vaccination-check-up-thingie, met up with some friends, read and sat in a forest with ice-cream :)
I must add here that English radio is amazing.
I'm also looking forward to more exposure to Norwegian style, so I guess this is my next excuse for posting so very little (not like any of you read this right now anyway. I haven't even gotten to India yet!)
Anyhows. I'll leave you with some really cute/nice/awesome images of treehouses. Have fun :)

Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

2009-07-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

(Cliffs of Les Petites Dalles - Monet)

Aujourd h'ui est mon dernier jour dans Les Petites Dalles.
Demain, tres tot, nous allions en Angleterre.
Oui. Mon francais n'est pas tres bien mais ce ca :)
For the last week, I've been in France. Apparently, this is where Monet and his pals used to come, to paint the seaside. The light is lovely.
We've been spending mornings driving to and looking around small French towns, afternoons on a cute pebbly beach and evenings by a fire watching films.
Nous avons visite un nuclear power station aussi. C'etait tres interessant :)
Aside from that, I've been starting to worry about packing for India.
20 kg max for baggage!
How I will do that, I don't know.
I've also started my (probably futile) attempt at learning Hindi. Very difficult. I'll keep at it though :)

En nu weer in het nederlands. Ik ben de laatste week in Frankrijk geweest, en morgen ga ik naar Engeland.
We verblijven in een schattig dorpje, Les Petites Dalles, dicht bij het strand. Monet kwam hier vroeger om te schilderen :)
Dit week heb ik niet veel uitgevoerd; slapen, strand, een nuclear power station bezocht, films gekeken.
Ik ben wel begonnen met Hindi. Tot nu toe heb ik een beetje grammatica geleerd, wat veel ingewikkelder is dan engels. Maar goed, ik blijf het leren :)

tot gauw x.

Powder milk at a dairy farm.

2009-06-17T13:34:00.001-07:00

(The UWC-NL yeargroup 2009-2011 Swaziland, Hong Kong and India students introducing themselves at the scholarship ceremony. From left to right: Anneloes, Oceane (Swaziland), Bas, Marlies (Hong Kong), me and Lennart (India) in our charming orange polos.)

and procrastination seems to be a fully-fledged skill of mine?
hereby a very late post about things that happened over a month ago :)
I've been 'busy', had my last day of school at ISH ever, and am now on holiday in France.Off to England next week, then home, Norway, home, India!
But back to the past and the post that should have been completed ages ago:

Het is weer eens een tijdje geleden sinds mijn vorige post. Ik ben hier niet zo goed in, geloof ik, Maar goed. Sinds 2 juni ben ik bezig geweest met:

- de UWC beurzenuitreiking (!)
- Duke of Edinburgh Award Adventurous Journey
- Sportsday
- andere minder interessante, maar nodige dingen (huiswerk. nog steeds.)

Nou, de beursuitreiking eerst dan maar :)
Na een erg stressvolle morgen (neemt Sander de drumkit mee? krijg ik mijn visa wel? antwoord een: ja, antwoord twee: nee) kwam ik aan bij het Vredespaleis. Na veel geoefen kwamen allerlei belangrijke mensen, onder wie de prins en de staatsecretaresse van onderwijs, binnen om ons te zien. Nou, verder zongen we allemaal een lied, speelde ik mijn fluit en spraken we met onze sponsoren. Daarna gingen we met alle UWC-Nederland eerste en tweedejaars uit eten, wat heel gezellig was :)

Alright. Basically, the day was lovely. Not much else to say, oh, except this one anecdote:
Simon (Bosnia) and I had had enough of the orange t-shirt UWC networking thing that was going on after the ceremony, so we went outside. We were sitting on the grass, me sans my orange UWC-Nederland t-shirt (but I was wearing a dress underneath...) when this guy comes by. He started to chat to us, so we chatted back. Turned out he was the vice-president of hte International Board of UWC, ie. pretty important :o
Hahaha, and I was sitting there without my proper UWC attire, and Simon didn't realise who the guy was and we were both just lounging in the grass. Amazing. Our social networking skills are just ace :)

Vorig weekend (ja, ik ga weer in het nederlands verder) ging ik naar Aachen om een wandel/camping/ultimate test of friendship te doen. Anders bekend als de Duke of Edinburgh Adventurous Journey. Het begon al vrijdag avond, toen Dieuwke, David en Ariadna (hoi allemaal!) bij mij kwamen slapen zodat we samen konden voorbereiden (alvast sorry als ik stomme nederlandse fouten maak, my grammar/spelling is best in English (: ).
We begonnen onze grote avontuur (hahaha.) in Aachen, waar we met grote 15kg rugzakken de/het (lidwoorden...) station en het bewoonde wereld verlieten. Na een 15 km loop door Duitsland/Belgie (ja, ik weet dat er daar een trema hoort. alleen, hoe ik dat moet flikken op een keyboard, tsja)/Nederland, kwamen we aan bij een mooie boederij camping. Ja, 15km klinkt niet veel, maar met warme weer, grote rugzakken en een bos is het wel een eind :)
We kwamen bij de camping aan en vielen gewoon in slaap :) haha, ja, we stonden wel om 04:30 uur 's ochtends op, dus...
Toen we ietwat bijgekomen waren, begonnen we met het avondeten. Twee uurtjes, veel pasta en gerommel later hadden we een salade en een soort pasta mix met vega balletjes (Ari is vegatarisch) en saus gemaakt. Die pasta was zo stevig dat de lepel er gewoon rechtop erin stond. Eet smakelijk dan maar, he.
We besloten dat we de volgende ochtend vroeg op zouden staan, zodat we eerder thuis zouden komen. Helaas lukte dat niet echt. Toen we na een nachtje slapen (lees: ongemakkelijk in slaapzakken met te weinig ruimte in een warme tent liggen) bezweet wakker werden, bleek het al acht uur te zijn. Na een kwartiertje stressen verlieten we de camping.
10km later kwamen we bij een bushalte aan, en rond half twee zaten we al in de trein naar huis. Achteraf lijkt en klinkt het niet zo moeilijk, maar we waren wel erg blij toen we weer bij Centraal aankwamen.

So, a summary of the above in English now:
I spent a weekend backpacking/walking from Aachen (Germany) to Maastricht (the Netherlands) with Dieuwke, Ariadna and David. We did this for the Duke of Edinburgh Award at Bronze level, spent a slightly uncomfortable night together in a cramped, humid tent at a dairy farm and ate pasta with a sauce made out of powdered packet sauce and powdered milk. Hm.
But we survived this, as well as surviving school.
David has now moved back to Denmark, and I'm currently in France in a cute white house very close to a pebble beach. I spent the first night of my holiday in hospital after falling off the back of Ned's bike ('watch out for the poles!' ... 'ouch'). As it soon transpired, it was merely a sprained wrist, but it meant no Tropicana swimming in Rotterdam (shameeee :) haha.) the following day.
After that eventful night, I passed the time out around bonfires (burning schoolbooks :) haha.) and in parks or in town with friends, CD shopping in Delft with Ned and Ned's friend Greg, visiting my Dutch grandparents and other such things. Right now, I'm just reading, tanning, beaching, eating, sleeping, film-watching, and planning on shopping :)
Oh, and today is also the birthday of one of my UWC buddies :) So gefeliciteerd on that :)
In just over a month I will be flying off into the unknown, but for now I've gotten my vaccinations, visa and flight booked, and will be meeting some of my Norwegian co-years in a couple of weeks :)

And then we walked and walked and left the crowd behind.

2009-06-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

(Pinkpop, maandag 1 juni 2009,'borrowed' off Flickr :) so thanks to the photographer etc)

It's been a while since I posted?

I went to Pinkpop (a music festival) yesterday. It was really really really good :)

Basically, I stood on my tip toes for ages and ages to peer over the shoulders of the tall Dutch people, but it was worth it :)

When I arrived with Dieuwke (hi!), Ari and Chris, we went off to see the Gaslight Anthem. Lovely. I got to 'meet-and-greet' them later on, and ended up with 'the gaslight anthem' written down the whole of my right arm :) whoot.

After that, we moved on to All-American Rejects, who, I must admit, I'm not overly fond of. We did hear Dirty Little Secret so it was alright :)

Then on to Amy Macdonald, who was amazing, and now blond! She covered the Killers- Mr Brightside and Bruce Springsteen-Dancing in the Dark (both acts had performed on Saturday), which was really good :) Only some idiots behind me did NOT know that Mr Brightside was by the Killers. Argh.

Some suntan/burn later, I'd managed to get a front row spot for Franz Ferdinand. They were definitely the best act. They were, quite simply, amazing.

I really wanted a t-shirt, but they were sold out :( However, after a long ponder I bought a yellow Kooks one, which is pretty lovely, and went off to see them :) I attempted to swap shirts with people wearing Franz Ferdinand ones, but to no avail.

The Kooks. I stood on my tip toes the WHOLE WAY THROUGH, it was great :) Hahaha, and we (Gael, Philipp, Alex and me- we'd found the friends who'd camped there by now) counted the number of All-Stars clad feet in the vicinity, we got like 15 in about one minute and 3m of radius. Seriously.

The last act we saw was Snow Patrol. People had lit fires and we danced like aeroplanes and native americans (political correctness here?) around them :) It was really really good. Veerle (hi!) also managed to be obnoxious to the pizza guy (who deserved it- the service was SO slow) and get tan lines (whoot!). For the rest, I collected cups to get coupons, danced like my limbs were falling off and refused to go watch Katy Perry. Yes indeed.

So now I'm sitting here in my Kooks t-shirt, having slept a grand total of max. 2.5 hours, as I watched The Holiday instead of sleeping on the bus, and pissed everyone off when we got off at Centraal and I skipped around and was generally way too happy for 3 in the morning.

And then school. I had a free, it turned out, so we lay out in the grass and wished we were hippies :)

Tomorrow I'm off to Utrecht for a UWC meeting thingie. I'm apparently playing my flute at some point, which will be interesting.

I WILL upload photos. Soon. After all those other things. Oh dear. :)

Thank goodness for autosave.

2009-05-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

Today I and some fellow-MUWCI-students-to-be decided that our 'mascot' would be a green gummy dog. Yes. We have created an in-joke before we have even properly met. Whoot :)

On Thursday I met up with all the Dutch UWCers of 2009-2011, to plan all sorts of stuff. It was all good fun, what with the murder attempt (on me by Jens) , crashing into the neighbour's garden for pictures (this does make sense, truly), the decision to all be 'sick' in order to practice our performance (shh.) and the evening out waiting for dinner for simply ages.

Ah well. Yesterday I went to the Efteling and tried (hopelessly) to get a tan. The rides were great fun :) And we got some amazing pictures of us 'flying' and cute little castles etc.

En nu in het nederlands! Vandaag hebben ik en een paar andere toekomstige MUWCI studenten besloten om een groene gummy hond als mascotte te hebben. Inderdaad. Geen gummy beer (hoewel die natuurlijk ook gewoon ontzettend cool zijn) maar een gummy hond. :)

Op donderdag gingen alle nederlandse UWCers van 2009-2011 naar Den Haag. Allemaal heel erg leuk :)

Alleen heb ik nu niet zo veel zin om alles te 'translate'n, dus je zou dit gewoon in Google Translate (bless it. SO useful. (: ) kunnen gooien als je dat wilt. Maar goed.

Gister ging ik met vriendinnen naar de Efteling. Het was erg leuk, alleen lukte het me niet om bruin te worden, maar ach ja :)

Oh and btw! Anthony has started his own blog, bless :) His awesome blogname was very much my idea as well :)

A Translation for Anthony

2009-05-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

Alright :)

So, I thought writing in Dutch was a good idea. Only, my very first follower doesn't understand, and has issued a complaint...Here's the Dutch bit in English then :)

I had a really really long day today. It's strange, as I know I only have 33 days of school left here, ever. Nice strange :) But still strange.

Okay, so it's not worth directly translating the text word for word. Shove it into Google Translate if you like :)

It's Ascension Day on Thursday, and I am looking forward to the extra sleep that will bring :)

Anyhows, I'll try and update with more useful stuff soon...Hopefully Thursday, after I've met up with all my new UWCers again :)

Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow

2009-05-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to get a nice voice-over of my presentation I did last Saturday at the Information/Introduction Dutch UWC day, so until then my wonderous video (thank you Veerle for the post it photography (: ) won't be up here. Sorry about that :)

So, last Saturday. I went over to Utrecht and met all my fellow Dutch UWCers, which was nice. We all had presentations, some of which were amazing. Now, we're busy organizing our act for the sponsorday thingie, and trying to come up with fundraising ideas.

En nu in het nederlands. Ik ga op deze blog al mijn UWC ervaringen proberen bij te houden, maar omdat ik nog niet in India zit, praat ik nu gewoon een beetje over wat er hier allemaal gebeurt. Vorige week zaterdag ontmoette ik al de andere geselecteerden, en we hielden allemaal korte presentaties over onszelf. Het was mijn bedoeling om die van mij te uploaden, maar daarvoor moet ik nog het een en ander doen, dus dat komt wel strakjes :)

Vandaag was een lange dag. Het is vreemd, want ik weet dat ik nog maar 33 dagen van school in nederland heb. Raar, aangezien ik hier nu al zeven jaar woon of zo. Maar wel leuk raar :)

Ik heb mijn huiswerk niet af maar dat geeft niet :) Momenteel ben ik gewoon even met andere dingen (lees: fashionsites en winkelen) bezig :)

Morgen is nog een dag, dus.

From a Dutch Interior

2009-05-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

Hey,

My very first posting on my very first blog (: Here goes...

I'm Sophie, and I'm Dutch/English/Chinese.

This year I was one of 23 lucky Dutch people selected by the Dutch National Comittee to go to a United World College for the next 2 years.

For those of you who haven't heard of United World Colleges, or UWCs, they are basically international schools who focus on service and international awareness as well as providing the IB (International Baccalaureate) education.

There are 12 UWCs in the world, and places at these schools are offered only to those selected by their national comittees or by the International Committee. Places are offered on merit only, and to students who the committees feel comply with the UWC aims and ideals.

For more information, you could check out the international website: http://www.uwc.org/

Alright, so now we've had the basics, I'll talk about myself a bit more (:

At the end of the summer I will be off to India, to the Mahindra College (or MUWCI) for 2 years of potentially life-changing adventure and experience.

I'll be going with another Dutch guy, Lennart, whom I met yesterday (:

So, I'll be using this blog to inform people of the goings-ons, and to show you all how I've been spending my time out on what is now for me the other side of the world.

So excited!

Soph x