blog post 4

Last week was pretty uneventful in terms of volunteering.  I met with my conversation partner, Jinmin, but this week I unfortunately did not go to global café at the international center.  I made the mistake of thinking there would be no global café since spring break was starting on Monday.  And boy did I miss out.  Apparently every year someone different comes to present on Taras Shevchenko who was a Ukrainian poet.  I was extremely disappointed with myself that I did not get to watch this presentation because I enjoy learning about history a lot.  Later in the week when I checked my email I saw a letter sent to me by the global café coordinator that said there was indeed going to be an event that Friday.  In any event, I enjoyed my time with Jinmin.  We talked about our lives as usual and went to go play pool.  This week however she did something she had never done before.  I let my guard down and she beat me.  I was in shock when it occurred because, over the past few weeks, I had basically taught her everything she knew about how to play.  And she beat me!  Of course, after that game I destroyed her and then we left the pool hall to go for a walk since it was nice outside. 

On an unrelated note, during this week I went to go interview someone from the humane shelter for our group research project.  I however missed the bus that would take me there on time and then I got on the right bus; unfortunately it was going in the wrong direction.  So I essentially missed two busses.  By the time I finally got to the humane center I was an hour and a half late.  They told me my interviewee had left but was coming back.  However, he never came.  So, I left after about fifty minutes of waiting.  Needless to say I was not a happy camper.

blog post 3

Last week was pretty quiet.  I did not get the chance to meet with my conversation partner because she was off studying for her exams.  I did however, return once more to the international center to help out with global café.  This past week students from the Kazakhstan student association came to present about the arts of their country.  For those of you who don’t know where Kazakhstan is…look at a map!  I admittedly learned a great deal about their country and the people that live there.  Immediately I noticed that a few of the students looked, to me at least, as though they, if not their parents, could have been from China or Japan or one of those countries.  Looking back if you had asked me to predict what they looked like I would probably have said like Russians or simply I don’t know.  From the images they showed us I was fascinated by the landscape of the steppes and mountains which were contrasted by cities and modern buildings.  I thought to myself, it looks like someone put a city in the middle of nowhere.  Aside from the beautiful landscape their country has many horses that roam its terrain although supposedly none of them are wild.  They are all owned by someone.  Another interesting fact they told us that blew my mind was that their government gives scholarships to about 3,000 students each year to go and study abroad.  All expenses are paid for and the only catch is that you must come back home and work for 5 years.  I instantly thought this was amazing.  Out of the 62 students at Purdue from Kazakhstan 60 of them are on scholarships.  For a country with a population just over that of New York City, this seems like a great way to promote education and growth.  Hearing this almost made me wish I was from Kazakhstan.  After the presentation the very talented students whipped out their cool two stringed guitars, called Dombyras, and played us a few songs which I can honestly say I enjoyed.  In any event global café is a wonderful event.  Some weeks are better than others, but if you are interested in coming its every Friday at 5:30 (it usually starts later like around six I think) at the international center which is right next to Delta Chi on Russell street.

blog post 2

This past Wednesday I met with Jinmin again.  For about the first few minutes we caught up on the past week’s activities and then we started talking about spring break.  She said that her and her husband were planning on staying in Indiana for spring break and they were going to visit caves or something.  My heart wept because I don’t know why anyone would want to stay in Indiana for spring break.  But putting that aside, I told her I hoped that she had a good time. 

Later that week I went to my other weekly activity which was global café.  This time the Nepali student association of Purdue came to do a presentation on the music and art of their country.  I arrived at 5 o’clock as usual and helped set up as normal expecting it to be a normal global café.  But no.  This particular night things started out slow.  Yet by the end of the presentation, as I turned around, I saw tons of new faces some of which were standing.  I learned more than I could have ever wanted to know about Nepal.  For example I think there are about some 200 languages spoken in their country.  The main one is spoken by about 49% of the population.  Also about 89% of the population practices Hinduism.  What surprised me the most was how much a part of everyday life music is in their country.  Apparently you can’t walk down the street without hearing some type of music.  Moreover there is a certain type of music associated with many things.  Weddings and numerous festivals for example all have certain music associated with them.  And the festivals never seem to end.  Since the country is so diverse in terms of beliefs much of the Buddhist and Hindu culture mix and often you will find Buddhists going to the Hindu temples and vice versa.  Music is even incorporated into their movies.  And by this I mean they film people dancing and singing.  There are no plots like in our movies where we have music but it is in the background.  After the presentation the students feed the congregation with traditional Nepali food they had prepared and they played us a song.  It was an enriching experience.

blog post 1

This past Friday I undertook another activity in order to help speed up the process of obtaining thirty hours of community service.  After a few weeks of calling, waiting, following-up, emailing and then more waiting, I finally got paired up with a conversation partner.  I expected that she would be similar to me in that she was a student at Purdue and she was around my age.  But I was wrong.  Her name was Jinmin Chung.  And Jinmin turned out to be a thirty year old woman, who is seven months pregnant, married, is shorter than me (and I am only 18), but is in fact a student here at Purdue working to get her master’s degree.  Now this is not to say that I couldn’t relate to her, I was just extremely surprised by the person I was paired with.  She was a very nice lady who really seemed interested in getting a more firm grasp of the English language.  We meet in the Union near Starbucks and after introducing ourselves we talked for what seemed like forever.  I then told her about how I grew up in Hawaii until the age of 7 and then about how I moved around a couple more times since living there.  I told her about how ridiculously small my room is on campus.  I told her about how I was majoring in physics.  I told her lots of things.  And then, just as you would expect, she told me about herself.  It was a really great opportunity because I got to learn about someone else’s life and I got to make a new friend.  Then at one point, when we got bored of conversation, we went into the basement to play some pool.  I ended up having such a good time that I lost track of time and was late to global café (my weekly service activity).  I am looking forward to Wednesday which will be the next time we meet.