Friday, October 26, 2012

Indian Schooling

I must say, Indian schooling is pretty tough! My host brother would be at school all day and after he got home, he would have to go to tuition, where he would attend five more classes and get even more homework there. I would not be able to survive that much class in one day, not to include the massive amounts of homework.
Adjusting to the Indian way of teaching was a huge challenge for me. Everything is based on memorization there-- in essence, whoever has the best memory gets the highest scores on the tests. Whereas, in America, I have noticed that there is a lot more focus on applying the knowledge. I feel like in the real world, memorization gets you to a point, but after that, it's about innovation and creating something new to contribute to the world.If your brain is tuned to just repeating word for word what someone else said, it will be really difficult to invent something new. That being said, don't actually take my word for it because I'm just basing my opinion on a mere six week observance.

Anyway, my Hindi teachers were incredibly awesome and truly loved us. They did everything possible to make our experience amazing, even on the weekends, they would come on our excursions with us. Their dedication and commitment to us was something I hope I will have to my job someday. However, it took a while for me to get adjusted to their teaching style. I was used to having everything explained and given to me in the form of handouts. In my Spanish class in America, we get a list of prepositions that we are supposed to memorize. In India, our teachers expected us to take the initiative to look for the prepositions while we read, define them, and memorize them ourselves, purely out of the interest of learning, not even as an assignment. In order to learn in India, we were required to put a lot more effort into it. So much vocabulary was thrown at us everyday, as our teachers would only speak to us in Hindi-- it really was an immersion experience. It was frustrating at first but now looking back, I learned so much as a result of this immersion technique. 
 Dr. Kalmadi Shamarao High School School Bus

Our Classroom!

Summary of First Few Days

Sorry that I never kept up with my blog. I didn't really have internet access that frequently in India which made it difficult to post. And after I got back, I had to throw myself straight into senior year and college apps. I wanted to take a few minutes right now to summarize my experience in India.

In the weeks before I left for India, I was so excited to go and experience life with a host family. I was excited for junior year to be over and my summer to begin. Now, I am a pretty reserved person so I was a little nervous about how I was going to adapt, but I tried to put those feelings aside as I prepared for my journey.
When I got to New York for my pre-departure orientation, it finally hit me that I would be gone for seven whole weeks. This is when the fear and apprehension started to kick in. I have never been away from home for that long; the longest prior to the India trip was last summer when I went to a summer camp for four weeks. Even then, I had a break in the middle of the four weeks, so I was really only gone for two weeks at a time. I realized how much I would miss my parents, my brother, and my friends. As I got on the airplane, I kept on telling myself that it was only for seven weeks and that it would be over before I knew it. Ironically, I would later come to hate the fact that my trip was ONLY SEVEN WEEKS. I know I sound pretty lame being frightened before a fully paid trip to India, but these truly were the thoughts going through my head before I left.

Surprisingly, as soon as I arrived in India, I got over my homesickness. I was filled with love for India and the awesome food, haha. At the PYC Club where we had our orientation, I felt very isolated from the actual Indian culture. I think most of the time at the PYC was dedicated to sleeping as we were very jetlagged. Fortunately, we were only there for a few days.

I was nervous about meeting my host family, but it ended up not being THAT nerve racking. There were times when I was really bored though, in which case I would begin reading. My host sister even said, "The reason you got glasses in Kindergarten is because you read so much." This made me laugh especially because my real mom spends most of her time telling me to study more.

 Bryce and I on Meet the Host Family Day
PYC 


Thank you for taking the time to read this!
Pranavi Sanka

Friday, June 22, 2012

First Day

So my trip did not get off to a great start. My flight from Raleigh to Newark was cancelled due to an engine problem and rescheduled for tomorrow morning at 5:45 AM. I am not a morning person, but at least I am getting to Newark on a plane without a broken engine. Basically, I spent the entire day at the airport and came back home completely exhausted. Hopefully, tomorrow will turn out to be a happier, more exciting day!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, which I will be using primarily to talk about my adventures in Pune, India! NSLI-Y stands for National Security Language Initiative for Youth, and they give out scholarships for high school students to study a language and have an immersion experience in another country's culture for a summer or a year. I will be studying Hindi in Pune for the summer! I will be staying with a host family for the six week period, and I recently found out that I have a sister one year older than me and an brother two years younger than me. I am very excited, and I hope you guys will follow me on my journeys!