Good mood? What?

I was in a great mood today and I haven’t much of a clue why. The day wasn’t itself wonderful. I just felt lovely. Maybe it was the sweats.

I spent lots of last night giving massages to Wendy, Dannie, and Andrea. By the end, my hands were killing me, but I loved it. For some reason, giving massages always makes me feel happy. They’re lovely people to massage, too. Wendy professed her love, Andrea proposed marriage, and Dannie, I think, is to bear my children. Aww… I just remembered Szotak and how much he dug my massages. Good ol’ Bri-Bri.

Three things to report before I crash:

Thing one: Dean Mike is gaining tons of Maria respect lately. He’s been doing a great job of keeping it real during class and interport lectures. I hope the kids listen, because he’s certainly highlighting important aspects of both India and travel as a Westerner. He spent all of Global Studies class the other day bashing the notions that population increase leads to poverty and that people in developing countries would be better off if they stopped having kids. Rock on, Dean Mike.

Dan Christie, on the other hand, needs to stop referring to Chennai as “India.” He pointed out that there were rich parts and poor parts of every other port we’ve been to, but this time, he’s all about just saying “India” when speaking of abject poverty and dirty lepers peeing in the street. Agh.

Thing two: Rumors are that Gloria Rudolph is a hard grader, so I was quite pleased with the A I had earned on our first paper. I didn’t receive full credit though. It was a low A, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t slowly slip into B land, so I asked her if we could meet and we did, today. She complimented me on my paper; called it thoughtful and very well written. She said she even made a note of how thoughtful and well written it was for herself. Aww. She explained why I didn’t get full credit and I’m nearly certain I’ll do better next time.

Speaking of my excellence, I had my African drumming midterm yesterday with Julie Strand. We had to play two of the percussion parts while she kept time. I’m used to playing the togo drum, which comes in after the kidi drums, which comes in after her lead in. She told me to try to come in on time regardless of the absence of the my cue from the kidi. She played her lead and I actually got it! And. AND she said I was the only person in the class who could do that.

I don’t really speak to anyone else in the class, but I have been asked by a bunch of the students, “you play drums, right?”

It felt grand to do well, especially since I find Julie to be quite intimidating. I mean… she’s an ethnomusicologist who studied with real players in west Africa and I was touching a drum for the first time.

Thing three: Our interport lecturers keep rocking! Prujval is so badass. We watched a video on the threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan during the Clinton era. Afterwards, she got up and killed the video. Making points about how underlying message of the video, that India shouldn’t be messing around with nuclear technology, ran parallel with the British colonial attitudes that India and its military can’t hold the big guns, and about how the US was “portrayed as this mother figure looking out for her two naughty boys” when really the US is/was selfish and hypocritical and has no right to talk at all seeing as how they’re the only country in history to have actually planned to and used nuclear weapons against an enemy. Agh. Awesome.

Thing four: I talked to Bill today! Though it was only for 13 minutes. :( I couldn’t take it and bought a $20 phone card from the Purser’s Office. I think I called him around 7:15 AM Florida time, which is about 18:45 India time. It was great to hear his voice. Wonderful. Hard not to get sad, actually. What was horrible, though, was that I didn’t get to say “I love you”. We cut off before that. Anna and Jennifer told me they can dial out from their phones in India. Ah man… if that’s true for me as well, I shall be a very happy girl.

I think that’s all for now, and they’re all in chronological order. I just calmed down from my workout, so it’s bedtime now. Toodles.