Name time

So today was my first day meeting with my peer tutor. The program I'm with, CIEE, provides a peer tutor service where they get Indian students to help the SIP students with their language skills. I met my peer tutor, Zareena, today. While we were talking, she asked me a question that I've been asked more than once already: What does your name mean? Here, every name has a meaning, victory, love, success, something of the sort. When I told her my name didn't have a meaning, she couldn't quite grasp that concept of a name not having a meaning. When I told Becca about this, we decided to make our own meanings for our names. I'm considering a few approaches. First, I could just tell everyone something I make up, like we already sat down and decided I could definitely say Kinsey means "free-spirit" in Cherokee and Rebecca means "great warrior" in Viking. But at the same time, if anyone has seen the show Psych, Sean always manages to come up with a new name for Gus on the spot. I've been pulling this stunt with my major so far, I don't particularly want to re-explain my story of why I'm here every time I tell someone that I'm a Spanish major, so I've claimed psychology, anthropology, linguistics and cultural studies so far. For names, I could definitely try out some fun things, so if you have any good ideas for name-meanings and origins, email them to me: kbice@wisc.edu. I may start to throw out different meanings each time.

Last night I went to my first hindu wedding! We got all dressed up in saris and some of the nicest jewelry I've ever worn and went to the wedding hall. Weddings here are absolutely nothing like weddings I've been to in the past. Everyone is invited, there are no official "invitations", so Becca and I were perfectly welcome. When we got there, there was a ceremony going on up front, but everyone was talking and standing and walking around. Even though it was the actual wedding, there wasn't a single point at which they called the attention of everyone in the room to stop talking and watch forward, everyone just did what they wanted to and the ceremony was kind of on in the background. There was a dining hall that you could go eat in whenever, including during the ceremony. It was buffet style, and everyone ate with their hands, of course. We were there for maybe an hour and a half.

Tomorrow our host sister is taking us to a dam outside of the city with floodgates. Apparently we'll have a picnic and maybe go swimming, it's about a 4-5 hour drive and it'll be a day trip. Hopefully I'll have my charger by then, too, and will be able to spend more time talking about events on my blog.