Painting the Cannon: The Epic Saga

So I just had what is potentially one of the most simultaneously ridiculous and hilarious experiences at Tufts so far: Tonight, some of the cast of The Vagina Monologues painted the cannon. And what an experience it was!

First, Angel and I spent a good three hours total trying to find a place that was open on Sunday so we could actually buy paint. We walked to three different places and missed one just five minutes after it closed. My friend generously lent us her car and we drove to Porter Square, where we found a hardware store and finally got the paint.

At 10 PM, we painted a layer of red paint over while loudly singing every song you could imagine- from Journey to Backstreet Boys to Lil Wayne. People walking by stared and either laughed or ran away.

At 11 PM, to take a break while waiting for the paint to dry, we walked into the library to warm up and discuss what we wanted to actually write on the cannon. While there, I ran into my friend Lauren, who asked what group I was painting the cannon with.

“The Vagina Monologues,” I said, waving my hand at the girls around me.

She cringed and looked around, then leaned in and whispered, “You have some competition. The Roosevelt Institute.”

And so, while I gathered up the girls to warn them, we saw out of the corner of our eye someone from The Roosevelt Institute race out the door of the Tower Cafe. Next thing I knew, five others and I were chasing after him shouting his name and telling him to stop. We raced through the library, sped up the steps to the cannon, and came face to face with three members of The Roosevelt Institute. Negotiations were tough, but in the end we got to keep our cannon despite not having correctly guarded it according to “the rules”. We finished up the night by singing some more and finally went our ways to go and finally get some work done (though clearly, I am failing on this front).

Pictures will be posted soon- it’s a pretty simple design but should arouse the curiosity of anyone who walks past it

(A special thanks to The Roosevelt Institute, who graciously allowed us to keep our cannon and agreed not to paint over it. It’s really too cold out to guard or fight over a cannon. They’re having a great event on Wednesday- check out the details here.)

Live Blogging, Part 2!

With my play coming up, life has been a little crazy. Rehearsals started today at 12 PM and went until 4 PM, but I stayed in the women’s center after until 10 PM creating and copying the program for the play. All day tomorrow will be spent at the women’s center again studying and having a program folding party with my cast. Night time will be spent painting the cannon for the first time ever (so excited!!).

Oh & for those of you who don’t know yet, I’m producing The Vagina Monologues this year. It’ll be held for one night on Saturday, February 13th and has two showings- 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM. Tickets are $10 at Cohen Box Office (or if you only have a credit card, call 617-627-3493).

All proceeds are going to an incredible organization called Girls’ LEAP- and I genuinely have never been prouder to support an organization before! Girls’ LEAP focuses on awareness and prevention, and targets girls between the age of 8-18. As an activity for my cast, Angel (the director) and I had Girls’ LEAP come and do a workshop. We discussed conflict resolution and how our actions affect those around us. I have never met high school girls so mature and with such well developed leadership skills in my life, and I was absolutely blown away when I found out the oldest girl in the group was 17. As someone who has always focused on community organizations abroad, I think Girls’ LEAP really serves as a reminder to me that there’s still a lot to be done and a lot of efforts worth supporting right here in Boston.

With that said, I’m thrilled to announce that another live blogging entry will be coming up soon! This time I will be featuring a guest blogger, my friend Arjun Verma.

Arjun, an incredibly thoughtful and intelligent friend of mine, will actually be live blogging The Vagina Monologues. Cohen Auditorium doesn’t actually have wireless internet so the entry will be posted after February 13th, but will feature Arjun’s thoughts as the play commences. As a male, I think he’ll provide a very unique and interesting perspective to a play that is often polarizing and off-putting for not only men, but even females- I’m really looking forward to what he has to say. So stay tuned, and I’ll be posting Arjun’s reactions on the Sunday following my play!

Vagina Monologues Performance Fundraiser!

… am I allowed to use my blog to publicize my own events? (Dan?). Oh well, I’m doing it anyway!

Outside of EPIIC, I think one of my most formative experiences since coming to Tufts has been in producing The Vagina Monologues. When my friend Angel, the director, asked me to be her producer I quickly said yes without even completely understanding what it would entail. The immediate aftermath was spent Googling terms like “How to produce a play”- as if I could learn about everything it takes from a simple Google search!

Our cast is an amazing group of girls with such chemistry and everyone gets along perfectly. I’m absolutely thrilled with it. Everyone brings their own to the play and things really shine through with their personalities. I’ve met up with a cast member in Bombay, and we have people who are always bringing so much more than we ask to their parts. While there are some frustrating things about producing a play, I’ve found that overall most of the girls have done so much more than was asked of them- and it’s incredibly uplifting to see! At the risk of gushing a little too much about the amazing women I’ve met through this play, I’ll just say that they give me warm fuzzy feelings of happiness

With that said, we’re having a performance fundraiser night tonight! 8:00-10:00 PM at Hotung! There are going to be some amazing performances and we’ll be selling chocolate lollipops and handing out J.P. Licks prizes. All the money we’re making from this and the play goes to an amazing organization called Girls’ LEAP (http://www.girlsleap.org). Come check it out!

Back to School!

Sorry for having been so MIA on this blog over the past month or two! I landed in the States last Wednesday at around 5 AM, spent a few hours at home repacking, then drove to Boston the same day. Being back has been a flurry of jetlag, meeting up with friends again, starting classes, and planning for Vagina Monologues. Because I’m running out to meet friends for dinner in five minutes, here are two quick lists for your browsing pleasure!

Classes I’m Taking

• Medical Anthropology
• Locating Sovereignty (an anthropology seminar, very theory based- a big test for me!)
• 3rd year Chinese
• EPIIC
• Marketing for Social Change

Activities This Semester

• The Vagina Monologues (See it Saturday, February 13th!)
• Discourse
• Travel for Change work
• Tufts Student Ambassador Program
• Potential internship (?)
• Tufts Business Plan Competition

More to come about all of these! But for now, it’s time for me to go feed myself and pour some tea into my poor, jetlagged self

Mumbai Madness

Yesterday, I went and met a fellow Jumbo at a coffee/tea/hookah shop in Bombay. As we were talking, I started to realize how well I’ve come to know the city and how much it’s come to feel like home over the past three weeks. I can take a cab comfortably from place to place and know when the drivers are trying to cheat me, I know a lot of great places to eat and dance, and most importantly- I know how to order dishes like bhelpuri (or any other puri for that matter!).

What’s even cooler is the number of Jumbos in Bombay alone. At this count, I’ve met up with/lived with six other Jumbos over the past three weeks- and might add another two to that number today! Some are doing research, some are traveling, and others are simply Mumbaikers who have returned to Bombay to soak up this amazing city .

So, what am I doing for my last full day in the city? I’ll be meeting a friend from the University of Iowa for lunch, wandering the city, and then spending my evening at my favorite place in Bombay- a shelter for female street children. Research in Dharavi has been an amazing experience overall but my heart has been in this one particular shelter in Dharavi since I set foot in there. Then, the rest of the night will be spent sitting with friends and chatting.

A nice way to end what has really been an amazing time in an amazing city, I think

Dharavi

So I have been shamefully abandoning this blog as of late, but for good reason- I’m in Bombay! I’ve been spending the past two weeks doing research in Dharavi on the redevelopment project, eating a lot, and all around admittedly bumbling around somewhat confusedly

Dharavi is an amazing and completely fascinating place. I’ve been visiting businesses there, seeing the places where leather belts, toys, and clothing are made and then go on to the city, the USA, and the rest of the world. Being here has really opened up my eyes; when I touch the leather menus in the restaurants here, I wonder if they came from Dharavi. I know which big companies in the United States have factories or shops there. I see the final products, all new and wrapped in their shiny packaging, by the truckload.

Dharavi captures the idea of globalization completely. Its leather industry produces products that reach the US, Italy, and more. In a world where we assume everything is made in a factory by machines, I’ve seen clothing brands being sewn by hand, watched women roll out dough for the snacks that Bombay eats, and held the boxes of toys that I would have bought as a child. Once you’ve seen that, you can’t really go back. Everything is too interconnected.

I’m still finding my research style- this is only the second time I’ve done any field research (the first being in Kibera)- but I’ve already learned so much. Though I was hesitant about giving up my winter break, I don’t regret the decision at all. It’s completely changed the way I look at things.

The Semester, In Retrospect

Having just finally finished a 20 page paper and making up a midterm, I’ve decided to write an end-of-the-semester-post!

This semester was, in a lot of ways, one of the most difficult semesters I’ve had in college. I made the mistake of thinking that I would get the experiences of freshman year with the knowledge that comes only from being a junior. What it really was, was that I got the workload and experiences of junior year with the knowledge that comes from being a junior… but with the confusion of being overwhelmed like a freshman.

It’s been a recurring theme in my conversations with people about what it’s like being a junior transfer (and perhaps in this blog too)- that feeling of wanting to take in as much as possible without pacing myself. This happened my freshman year too, as I began working up to 30 hours a week for the Obama campaign while taking six classes (needless to say, my grades really suffered). While the reasons are different this time, I think I made the mistake of falling into old patterns.

A lot of it centered around feeling like I was behind in The Game of networking & making connections, getting actively involved in clubs & organizations, making friends, and the classes and opportunities I wanted to be involved in.  Seriously, though. Freshmen are lucky. The opportunities to go abroad during winters, summer breaks, and semesters with groups like BUILD, ALLIES, researching with EPIIC, and all the super cool study abroad opportunities… sometimes I think even four years isn’t nearly enough to take advantage of everything Tufts has to offer.

So I did it all. I took EPIIC, joined the business team of Discourse, decided to produce The Vagina Monologues, and tried juggling several other activities. I can’t even keep track of them all now because somewhere along the line, I decided I needed to drop a few things. I did, slowly. I’m still trying to.

This semester was the most stressful one I’ve ever had. I felt so constantly short on time that I would look for shortcuts while walking and even while showering- anything to save a few minutes. I feel like I could have taken care of myself better, slept more regularly, continued running. I certainly intend to do everything in my power to not have a semester like this- after all, most of it was my own fault.

While this semester was the most stressful one I’ve ever had, it was also one of the best ones. I met my best friends at school (and strengthened friendships with one of my best ones, hi Eileen!), learned a lot, met a lot of amazing people, got to know a new city, am going to Mumbai to do research thanks to EPIIC, and just learned so much more about what I care about and how to manage my time through trial and error. If I could go back and redo my semester I don’t think I’d do anything differently, with the exception of getting swine flu

The Wonderful Thing About Tufts Admissions

As I think is incredibly obvious from the Admissions blog and Twitter account that the Tufts Admissions team keeps, Tufts is in general a super fun and friendly place to be.

I’ve always been of the philosophy that the personalities of an admissions team at any given school is very indicative of the personality of the school overall- which in my opinion, is only logical. After all, it’s the admissions team that decides which students are accepted! Dan Grayson, one of the admissions officers, totally agrees with me on this, FYI.

In this way, I’m always proud to say that I go to Tufts and know admissions officers like Dan (who treated me to Thai food the other day- thank you, Dan! And all you single ladies, I think Dan is total marriage material. If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it! Just saying. I hope he doesn’t read this part cause then he’d just get embarrassed and trip on his own feet or something ). Really though. I’m thrilled with these faces of our university and I think potential students can learn a lot about Tufts through reading all the blogs that are kept through the admissions website.

I do think it’s a little harder to really get a feel for what it’s like when applying as a transfer, though. There’s no transfer admissions team blog, and I’m the only blogger currently writing about the transfer experience.

Well, I’m happy to inform all concerned transfer potentials that the transfer admissions team is really really awesome! After lunch with Dan on Tuesday, he took me back to the admissions office to meet Denny, the man who basically oversees the transfer decision process. I had tried to meet him earlier this year, only to discover to my greatest dismay that he was out of the office at the time

Denny, who is busy all the time, was only excited to see me. He not only knew who I was right away, but he remembered my application and the names of other transfer students I told him about. Plus, Denny has a little table covered with delicious snacks that he told me to come and eat anytime I want. Transfer students, if you’ve never gone to see Denny, the macadamia nuts and chocolates he keeps in his office should be reason enough! Though he’s just really great in general

I have a bit of a history with Denny. Denny, in some crazy moment, somehow decided to admit me to Tufts- and the great part is, he really helped me out by giving me my decision early. There are plenty of reasons why, but in short I was still in Kenya, my spot for another school would only be held until the end of April (while other decisions were to come out in May), and I was panicking all around. My friends in the States scurried to help make phone calls for me while I e-mailed admissions offices, and not a single school was helpful. Except for Tufts and Denny!

I very strongly feel that there is wisdom in knowing which rules to break under special instances, and I’ve never had much of a tolerance for those who always follow the rules no matter what. When Denny went and read my application early, he was doing something unusual, but it was the result of an informed decision and careful consideration of my situation. All other schools (which will certainly remain unnamed) were kind of, well, douchebags (Am I allowed to say this on an admissions blog? Sorry if not!). Though I knew plenty of people here before I even enrolled, I think that this was my first real impression of what the Tufts community is like and I liked what I saw.

But anyway, I think it sums Tufts up in general- we break the rules when we see they need to be broken and we care about you. Every single member of the Tufts community- whether it’s Denny the admissions officer or Larry Bacow, the president of our university- pays attention to the students and is here to help them out. Another reason I love Tufts

How To Feel Like A Young College Student Again

With finals coming up and a ton of work looming in the horizon, I did what any reasonable & responsible young college student would do this weekend- I got dressed up with a friend, took the T to Central, and spent almost three hours eating one of the most delicious, most beautiful, and most expensive meals I’ve ever had.

Wait, what?

To be fair, I was eating at the restaurant so I could write a paper for my food, nutrition, and culture class taught by Stephen Bailey. Of his many creative final paper assignment options, one of them was to eat at a restaurant considered “fine dining” or “high cuisine” and write a paper about it while applying some anthropological theory.

Read: Eat yummy food!

After stuffing our bellies and emptying our wallets (but gladly), my friend Angel and I were heading back to the T stop when we got sidetracked by music coming out of a place that looked like a lot of fun. Turns out, one of my (and her) favorite bands, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, was playing that night!

So of course we bought tickets, had our hands stamped, danced in our fancy clothes, missed the last subway, and then rushed home in the snow.

It was a Saturday night well spent

OneWorld: Live Blogging Style

9:57 AM: I’m not at the OneWorld Global Crafts Bazaar yet! Woke up this morning and realized I hadn’t yet printed brochures or attached tags to some of the bracelets. Whoops. Hopefully my perpetually late self will be there in half an hour… if I ever manage to take off the absurdly comfortably bath robe I’m wearing?

10:25 AM: Running down from Carmichael to the campus center. My rolling bag, which is stuffed with baskets, bracelets, kangas, and kitenges, is very unevenly distributed in weight. I continuously knock my bag over and trip as people stare.

10:32 AM: Yay! I’ve made it and am setting my table up.

11:19 AM: People are trickling in  and African music is playing over the speakers. Someone come and buy something from me! I’m on the upper floor of Hotung

11:47 AM: I get photographed by someone from the Tufts Daily, who coincidentally knows a girl I went to Kenya with. Tufts is such a small community, and I love it

12:00 PM: I’m hungry and the samosas smell amazing. I might sell my first born just to get someone to bring me some.

12:11 PM: I just made my first sale! I feel like a real fundraiser now. Oh, and someone gave me a cupcake. I love life right now.

12:29 PM: Currently running three tables on my own. FCS, Vagina Monologues, and Travel for Change.

1:42 PM: Sales are picking up, yay! My friend Amalia who I went to Kenya with is here keeping me company for a little bit. I’ve been meeting a lot of cool people who are interested in doing something with Travel for Change- yay for Tufts networking

1:51 Performances have begun in Hotung! First up: poetry readings. There are more throughout the day!

My friend Angel and I at our Vagina Monologues table

2:13 PM: Super super super cool dance performance going on right now. I miss Africa!

3:07 PM: Laptop has died! Hence, unfortunate lack of updates. The last amazing performance of the day is wrapping up soon here in Hotung.

3:23 PM: I love how many people I meet here who have been to Africa or are interested in it! I want to hug everyone who buys something.

Some more pictures of the performances.

3:36 PM: The last performance just ended. Wow, five hours really go by fast… after I clean up, I’ll be heading to an event by 85 Broads at Danish Pastry House- fondue and food! And of course, I’m just obsessed with Danish Pastry House in general

4:14 PM: Everyone is wrapping up here. I’m still at my table hoping that some last minute stragglers will decide to come by, maybe donate a few thousand dollars make a purchase.

4:30 PM: People walk around with their wallets out, taunting me. A man went up to me and asked if credit card is accepted, then quickly said he was asking about other tables in general when I answered that I couldn’t accept credit cards. Boooo!

4:32 PM: Tired and I want to head out- packing up now. Next stop: Danish Pastry House and then watching Star Trek on IMAX (I am a proud Trekkie, believe it or not!). A man just walked by who reminds me of Colonel Sanders from KFC. I giggled.