Wednesday's class was very interesting and I felt like I learned a lot. It was hard to get all the small details of the dancing right, and I know I messed up a lot in transitions between different steps etc. but it was still a fun class and gave a sense of accomplishment (in the end). I know I will probably have forgotten most of the steps by the time we next practice them, but hopefully the review will be helpful in remembering. I also enjoyed the singing/chanting we did on Wednesday. It was different from the dancing, but more relaxing. The only bad thing about the singing and chanting (and I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing) was that the words/sounds kept going through my head the rest of the day.

Thoughts on movie of the Ramayana

I know the movie of the Ramayana play we watched in class was meant as an inspiration. For me it seemed to have more of the opposite effect. It was a good performance, and I was very impressed by the details and skills of the actors and actresses. I did, however, find it a little confusing since I do not yet know the whole story. Also, I did not understand why some of the few lines spoken in the play were in different languages. I guess my expectations were different than the experience. I expected there to be more dialog or a narrative to explain what was going on on stage. It took me a while to understand who was who, but once I understood who the basic characters were it was easier to follow the story. It also scared me a little that the students in the performance were so good. Somehow I can't imagine learning nearly as much as they demonstrated in the performance in one semester. What I probably enjoyed the most of the performance was the costumes they wore. I especially liked that they were so colorful.

Blog 1 - Septenber 2, 2008

To start off, I would like to say that I am so far enjoying this class a lot! It is nothing like any of the other classes I am taking or have ever taken. For me it's been a great way to disconnect from other academic classes and the stresses of school.

At first, I had a hard time getting into the Ramayana. It was hard to grasp the names of characters and to constantly have to look up words in the index. Now that I've read more I am enjoying the book. In fact I find it very amusing sometimes! My roommate and I are both in this class and the other night we were both reading the Ramayana in bed. We were right around the same page, so were discussing some of the details of the book. We found ourselves laughing about the stories and seemingly impossible happenings. We also had a lot of fun looking through the index. If you take the time to look through the index, I'm sure you'll find many interesting words and expressions! Some of our favorites were; a word for being pregnant with the golden egg and a word for a holy lake of milk (or something like that). One of my favorite parts so far was also the part when Siva catches Ganga in his dreadlock!

We laughed at how far-fetched these stories were to us, but thinking back I realized that this is part of Asian culture and that to the people of that culture this may actually not seem so outlandish. Every country has many cultures and often folk tales and myths of their own. Being Norwegian, and having lived there my entire life I have often been told Norwegian folklore about trolls, talking animals, gnomes and other creatures that I cannot even identify using the English language. I realized that to any other country of culture the stories I have grown up hearing must seem just as foreign and strange as the Ramayana does to me. I am enjoying the process of learning about a new culture, especially one so foreign to my own!