So here i am at 5.07 Am starting to write this blog post ..jotting down the memories of the days gone by ever so quickly.
Weekends in this place are pretty laid back ,you rarely see anyone on the roads and in the buildings. Weekends means two days of no work. Me being a workaholic that is am ,I was a little disappointed to see that. To me it really seems like waste of many hours of productivity especially when you are busy doing household chores like cleaning cooking washing etc. Unfortunately or fortunately i myself have to indulge in this unproductive activity myself daily now that i am living independently away from the comforts of my 4BHK palace back in my homeland(not that i miss it ).
I would not completely disregard the capacity of these household works to make you a better person though. To my surprise i know now how to make an amazing Cheese Egg Bhurji, Starbucks Coffee, and yes eating amazing packaged food( yes i did not make and pack this one)
I tried with all my strength to finish these trivial tasks ASAP and shift on to more important matters at hand. We made a good hands-on schedule for our short stay. To do this i had to log on to the university website , browse the "important" courses for me from a list of at least a 100 mentioned in the course catalog and then go through each of them to choose the few lectures i would like to attend from a list of 12 on an average mentioned in each course.
So that's like choosing a few things to fill your week up effectively out of a list of 1200 items...Not to forget each one had its own timings so i had to effectively keep in mind the timing of each lecture as well and adjust it in the time table so as to fill up my day.....And yes as i thought it would lead to i ended up over packing my day with 8 lectures daily with a gap of 10 minutes each ( NOTE this included the travelling , and the eating time as well).
That's not all ...since we do not have an Internet pack in our mobiles here ( university Wifi can only be accessed inside the campus buildings not on the streets) we had to literally map the bus routes from one place to another , keep check of the time and also calculate the fair accordingly . But in the end to simplify our life we ended up getting ourselves a 15 $ all month bus pass.
Then came the big boom as soon as the weekday's started.Suddenly all the birdies came out of their nests into the wild open snow clogged streets packed with clothes running towards their respective lectures.It was quite a rush and i felt a little comfortable to see that after all , universities are not so different in India and the "almighty" USA.
Side by side my dance classes were going really well. I was taking my friend along with me to the classes and he was obviously having the time of his life looking at the cute "firangs" (not that i wasn't..:P)
My first dance class was quite a shock for me as this was the first time i ever danced on live instruments , like modern dance on a piano, drums and yes my favourite the bongo instrument.
The contact improvisation classes were without music and after a long time i had this feeling that i was floating in air after the class ( and yes i was not drunk ..:P). Scientifically speaking its a form of meditation or yoga, it causes an excess secretion of endorphins from your head which gives you the immense feeling of pleasure in silence.
In my next blog post i would definitely describe how interactive each and every class here is. How the teacher takes the extra effort to make it interesting for the students and how technology is deeply embedded inside each and every stream of knowledge.
Ps: Here are some of the snapshots of the experience in UIUC .
Weekends in this place are pretty laid back ,you rarely see anyone on the roads and in the buildings. Weekends means two days of no work. Me being a workaholic that is am ,I was a little disappointed to see that. To me it really seems like waste of many hours of productivity especially when you are busy doing household chores like cleaning cooking washing etc. Unfortunately or fortunately i myself have to indulge in this unproductive activity myself daily now that i am living independently away from the comforts of my 4BHK palace back in my homeland(not that i miss it ).
I would not completely disregard the capacity of these household works to make you a better person though. To my surprise i know now how to make an amazing Cheese Egg Bhurji, Starbucks Coffee, and yes eating amazing packaged food( yes i did not make and pack this one)
I tried with all my strength to finish these trivial tasks ASAP and shift on to more important matters at hand. We made a good hands-on schedule for our short stay. To do this i had to log on to the university website , browse the "important" courses for me from a list of at least a 100 mentioned in the course catalog and then go through each of them to choose the few lectures i would like to attend from a list of 12 on an average mentioned in each course.
So that's like choosing a few things to fill your week up effectively out of a list of 1200 items...Not to forget each one had its own timings so i had to effectively keep in mind the timing of each lecture as well and adjust it in the time table so as to fill up my day.....And yes as i thought it would lead to i ended up over packing my day with 8 lectures daily with a gap of 10 minutes each ( NOTE this included the travelling , and the eating time as well).
That's not all ...since we do not have an Internet pack in our mobiles here ( university Wifi can only be accessed inside the campus buildings not on the streets) we had to literally map the bus routes from one place to another , keep check of the time and also calculate the fair accordingly . But in the end to simplify our life we ended up getting ourselves a 15 $ all month bus pass.
Then came the big boom as soon as the weekday's started.Suddenly all the birdies came out of their nests into the wild open snow clogged streets packed with clothes running towards their respective lectures.It was quite a rush and i felt a little comfortable to see that after all , universities are not so different in India and the "almighty" USA.
Side by side my dance classes were going really well. I was taking my friend along with me to the classes and he was obviously having the time of his life looking at the cute "firangs" (not that i wasn't..:P)
My first dance class was quite a shock for me as this was the first time i ever danced on live instruments , like modern dance on a piano, drums and yes my favourite the bongo instrument.
The contact improvisation classes were without music and after a long time i had this feeling that i was floating in air after the class ( and yes i was not drunk ..:P). Scientifically speaking its a form of meditation or yoga, it causes an excess secretion of endorphins from your head which gives you the immense feeling of pleasure in silence.
In my next blog post i would definitely describe how interactive each and every class here is. How the teacher takes the extra effort to make it interesting for the students and how technology is deeply embedded inside each and every stream of knowledge.
Ps: Here are some of the snapshots of the experience in UIUC .
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