Currently, my semester runs from August 15th- November 26th. This means that I am wrapping up my finals this week, breaking ground on my independent study, and I’m about halfway through my program. I cannot believe it! There are a lot of reasons this feels exciting but also a little weird, the first being that it’s already October and still 100 degrees everyday in Madurai (I may often have a flair for the dramatic when it comes to temperature but this whole 100 degrees business is a true, hard fact).
So basically, the days are only getting hotter and I am living in an eternal August. Although I can’t complain too much about the heat when its very presence is the reason that coconuts and papayas are as plentiful and bodacious as ever. And if there’s one thing I know I love in this world it’s a ripe and tender coconut.
Every time I do something new (whether that be learning how to cross the street without getting hit by a cascade of city buses or pronouncing every fifth Tamil word with even the slightest bit of accuracy) I feel like I am learning more about myself which is really cool! It’s definitely not one jolly stroll along a flowery path to self discovery because with all this fun self discovery comes a little but of growing pain. The onslaught of well intentioned but ear piercing honking that seems to forever be echoing from the streets can be in a word, frustrating.
Something that has made some of these challenges all the more enjoyable has been the comradery among my fellow classmates. There are only ten of us, and for the most part we end up spending a lot of time together doing things that include but are not limited to comparing the number of mosquitos we have viciously thwarted with electronic mosquito bats, exchanging sighs of relief upon entering the gloriously air conditioned classroom at the study center, eating mass quantities of coconut sweets from the stand down the street, and lamenting the elusive beast that is speaking/writing/comprehending the Tamil language. You can learn a lot about a person from the victorious but slightly guilty look in their eyes when they smell the faint smoke that follows the sparkly zap of the mosquito bat. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t experienced the same sense of pure (and slightly morally questionable) euphoria of zapping some mosquitoes into oblivion.
Aside from giving you what may read as the very first draft of an epic poem about human/mosquito relations, it is precisely these small quirks in our everyday lives that make for some pretty good laughs and memorable experiences. While fighting the heat and warding off mosquitoes has been somewhat of a challenge, especially during the last few weeks of classes when stress is high and the finals mojo you have at school is suddenly out of whack, at the end of the day you learn about how adaptable you can be.
Even if it’s only in a small way you learn about the kind of person you can be when confronted with new and unfamiliar territory, and how you can meet those challenges while still learning how to laugh along the way. And sometimes you can be lucky enough to learn this while studying in a beautiful place that never ceases to surprise me, one that is full of history and palm trees and coconuts.