TA training and the Tour of Madison

I have finished a highly satisfying week long training for my job as a Teaching Assistant (TA). The work load was pretty light and I managed to learn a great deal. One of my teachers in College used to say that things change when you get to the 'other' side of the table, in class, and I am at the brink of discovering if that is true.

The training began with the advice of staying away from dating our students! We had a couple of sessions that showed us how we could present ourselves in class, deal with tough situations and keep everyone occupied. We also had a public speaking session that included a hilarious game of the whole class building a chain-story. I got to know that I would be TAing for an analytical chemistry course, so the rest of my training would occur separately from the rest of the class. We are five students and together with two senior TAs, Pam - the lab director, Gery - the undergrad chemistry advisor; and Prof Josh Coon - the instructor of the course, make up the ten-strong staff for CHEM 329 - the analytical labs.

We started with basic safety training and lab practices. Most of these were already outlined to me in College, but I thought they were emphasised upon strongly here. We also practised the first three experiments, I made a mistake and learnt that it was one that the undergrads are also know to make. The practises were followed by discussions and things went on pretty smoothly.

The Tour of Madison is organised by a group of organisations that work for International students in collaboration with a number of churches in Madison. A short welcome in the Red Gym, which was once a seat of armour, kickstarted the tour. We were made to choose drivers, based on their preferences, who would show us around the town. Someone asked for two European women, another wanted to take out three Indian guys while many called upon just about anyone. My guides Patrick (neuroscience grad) and Richard (IT guy) and fellow tourists Leo and Shaw (both law students) seemed to be a nice bunch. We drove around Madison for a couple of hours. The highlights were the walk around the Capitol, the stop at Lake Wingra (where one can rent boats and sails), the drive through the arboretum and the forest (that had two panthers prowling around) and the final stop at Tina and Bob's place. This stop at an American family's place was also part of the tour. I had the best vegetarian food outside home in Madison and met a lot of people - Americans, Germans, Chinese (one fourth of international students in Madison are Chinese). And that rounded up the day for me. I got back home and a nice meal. Sri made something that was supposed to be rasam and was about to throw it down the drain, but we decided to be nice to him instead.

The week that was...

I have the difficult task of putting the happenings of an entire week in a single post. I really want to get even with my schedule and I thought I should set things right immediately.

Monday morning saw me taking the twelve minute walk from Oak Tree to the Daniels Building of the Chemistry department. Neatly laid out pavements, little gardens dotted with flowers, pedestrian signals, overtaking bikers, cool breeze, sunshine kissing your skin... I enjoy my walk and hope to continue with it till the mercury comes calling (or falling, rather!).

I met Stephenie, the graduate program coordinator and Sue, the Analytical Chemistry coordinator. I was received warmly, spoken to patiently and made to feel at home. A single question was answered verbally and supplemented by a two page printout. Information is used and passed around at a fast pace here. Coordinators hold the key to the proper functioning of any program and, more often than not, do a pretty good job of making things easy for the faculty and students. I also registered for a course and got my students' identity card. Some formalities later, I walked back home for lunch.

All grad students were welcomed to a continental breakfast, photo session and introduction in the department on Wednesday. My class seems to have an interesting mix of people that includes the biggest basketball fan in the world, two dads, a guy who counted till 12,000 in ones in class five, a girl who was sure that no one in the class got her name, and others.

What followed on Wednesday and Thursday was a set of advisory exams. These were supposed to point out deficiencies in the learning of an entering grad student and the grades would help in course selection. Now that I have enrolled into the courses of my choice, I don't think my exams were that bad. We followed the exams with a pizza session (I have a feeling I will see many more pizza sessions - after talks, before talks, at picnics, at home and away). I met a few people, said hello, asked about their undergrad school, told them a little bit about India. A common remark was that my English was good. I didn't know what to say, so I must have mumbled a thank you, or something of that sort. But people were very polite and courteous, keeping the door ajar for the person behind them, offering to press the floor button, allowing others to steer their carts past theirs in supermarkets, etc.

Friday began with a meeting of the Analytical Chemistry division, for which I was late by five minutes. I felt horrible about it, even though the meeting had barely started, and have decided never to be late for an appointment ever in life. This was followed by a one-on-one with my advisor regarding course selection. Prof. John Wright has been in Madison for more than forty years and spoke with a mentor's assurance.

I was off pretty early on Friday and spent some time walking around the place. Saturday and Sunday flew away at home, apart from a nice long walk with Sri. The highlight was probably the pulao I cooked on Sunday afternoon. It tastes really well with the Sambhar masala mom made for me.

TA orientation started on Monday morning. I guess I will write about that in a separate post. We went for groceries this evening inaugurating our bus passes. Copps supermarket offers fresh fruits and vegetables, plus the very best of muffins, brownies and cakes. We also met an Indian couple on our way out, had a long chat and ended up with an open invitation to their place. We seem to have bought enough stuff for two weeks and had an awesome dinner of dal, aaloo, rice and buttermilk, topping it up with some chocolate cake. Our friend Raja particularly enjoyed the homemade touch to his food, quite different from the 'cornflakes and milk' dinner that he would make do with otherwise.

Sri is busy taking Vinod's case as Raja and Sankar watch on. I have to crash now, planning to get up early and burn out all that chocolate in the morning. My day starts at ten and I am looking forward.

Moving into Oak Tree

It has been quite a while since I sat down to write about all that has been happening around me. After a pleasant stay at Pradeep's place, I moved into my apartment at Oak Tree a week ago.

The Friday before the last one was my first day out. Puja took me around the place, helped me open a bank account and also showed me into the department. I got started with filling some tax and payroll forms and understanding the health insurance schemes, which is a highly debated issue in the US Senate these days. We had a nice East African lunch of lentils, rice and aaloo gravy at State street. The lakeside in Madison is beautiful and typical weekdays see families and students in the town come over to the Memorial Union and hang out over food and drinks. I met one of my roommates, Sankar, and had a nice time walking around the place. We also went to our present apartment and checked it out. It looked pretty comfortable and, apart from a few niggles, a good place to spend the first year.

I shifted to Oak tree at noon on Sunday and met my apartment mates Sriram and Vinod as well. Sri is a grad student in Mathematics and is in love with his subject. He works on an area that a lot of people fear to venture into and has us in splits with his tales of a certain Indian friend, whom I shall not name here. Vinod is getting thinner by the hour and I am certain he will vanish into thin air on the way to his workplace. Currently, he is trying to scale up his evening meal from two rotis to three.

We shopped for groceries in the evening. In this place, people shop at a huge scale and in a manner completely different from what we are used to in India. Almost everyone shops in huge malls that are far away from the city centre. The neighbourhood shops are expensive and do not stock up a lot`of stuff. So, the system encourages you to spend a lot and stock up things in the refrigerator. Also, most locals and some international students have cars and very few people take the bus, which, I am told, is one of the best services in all of the United States. So, you see, the system encourages you to buy cars. The concept of fresh vegetables is nowhere to be seen. What is frozen is considered fresh. A huge contrast from the neighbourhood subzi-wallah that we have back home.

The supermarkets have an awesome variety of everything - pizzas, fruits, veggies, milk products (Wisconsin is the milk state of the US, btw), health foods, plastics, etc. I guess this is what impresses a newcomer about this country, though it can also be pretty bugging when you are asked to choose from a set of ten different colours for your debit card!

We hogged on an a delicious meal of aaloo-matar, roti and rajma-chaval.

Madison

My first day in Madison has gone off pretty well. A friend's friend agreed to host me for a couple of days till I move into my own apartment and so here I am, sitting in the confines of a carpeted but un-furnished, one-room apartment. My host has been nice to take me in, considering he just moved in a day back and has an important examination coming up in a couple of weeks.

So let me resume from where I left. The American airlines staff was middle-aged - the first thing that I noticed. Both the airlines I flew prior to this flight were based out of India and had very young crew. However, my friends tell me that this is not the case for Air India (of which I shall not speak much, considering it has come from once being among the five top airlines in the world to having had to be bailed out). Drinks and a sumptuous lunch followed. My American vegetarian meal consisted of fruits, vegetables, bread and pasta.

All this while I was searching for a pair of headphones to connect to the in flight entertainment system. It wasn't there in the back pocket of the seat in front, or the handrest, or on my seat. But many around me were tuned in to their systems. It turned out that American airlines 'welcomes all its passengers to use their own earphones and headphones. the airlines also offers its own earphones for two dollars and allows us to keep them for future use'. Hmph! How mean. But I guess it is common out here and I felt slightly wierd as it was my first flight to the US. I couldn't sleep very well but I did manage to doze off for a while. An hour before landing, we were served a light afternoon meal that included some cereal and fruit.

The customs check at Chicago airport reminded me of my visa interview. Everything went well and I was through to my luggage. The security officer did ask me if I was carrying any eatables like sweets (probably to make sure that no Indian germs were moving to Madison). Half an hour later, I boarded the Van Galder bus to Madison. The approach roads leading to and from Chicago airport are well laid. The airport is also connected by a railway system. As we moved out from the city and on the freeways, the drive became smoother. There were a lot of trucks hauling everything from cars and boats to logs of wood. Wherever there was a pilup, vehicles stayed at least two metres from each other and there was simply no honking. I also read a board that said hitting a worker would lead to a fine of $ 10,000 and upto 14 years in jail (prison, sorry!).

Madison seems to be a pretty place, located between laked Mendota and Monona. My friend Jayashree picked me up from what is known as Memorial Union, a centrally located place in the University. I met some other Indian students at her place and had a wonderful dinner (I am still licking the rajma off my lips, thanks to Puja for that). I then walked to my host's apartment. We chatted for some time and then crashed for the night. I had a sound sleep and woke up at quarter past ten. I stayed indoors for the day and caught up with some more sleep after lunch. One of my friends had advised me to keep walking, so I thought of strolling down to the nearest supermarket. Like many things here, it was huge and offered a wide variety of food stuff to buy. I ended up buying some fruits.

Getting back home, I had dinner and sit here typing all this out. I don't know if it sounded mundane and boring. I just wanted to write in as its all so new to me and I wanted to put it down somewhere.

Planning to go to the University tomorrow morning. Puja has agreed to take me around. I also hope to start off with some of the formalities tomorrow. More later.

A Page from Brussels

I am writing this from Brussels airport. Its quarter to nine on Wednesday, 12th Aug'09 and I have just started what seems to be one long picnic. Picnic for now, I am sure things will change as time flies. I guess I would be posting this online sometime later as the internet hotspot required a credit card and I am not carrying one. But I am tempted to write about all the I have in between the ears so that I do not end up missing much.

As I left New Delhi, people called, wished and asked if I was feeling excited or nervous. Contrary to popular expectations, I was feeling neither. Being emotionless is not exactly how I would introduce myself, but quite strangely, I did not realise the fact that I would be leaving home for a long long time. The drive to the airport was typically Delhi-ish. My young driver hailed from Allahabad and gave me good company throughout. The New Delhi airport has had a huge makeover, replete with glistening roofs, round-the-clock maintenance, smoking bars et al. But the huge rush that the airport has to manage is something God knows which makeover would manage. Baggage check-in and immigration didn't take long and I found it amusing sitting well within New Delhi and still being outside Indian shores, so to speak.

The Jet Airways crew was friendly and the flight took off smoothly. What followed was what I was waiting for. Fresh lime, pav bhaji, , movies, a sound sleep, idly and upma, more drinks and Brussels. It funny... people always complain about delays in Indian airports, but it took me more time to get through a single security check here. The airport is beautiful and the waiting lounges provide a wonderful view of all the flights and the runway. My brother managed to track me down somehow and surprised me by calling me at the counter where I checked in. I thought it was some prank that the crew was playing on me when it said that there was someone who wanted to speak to me. I was secretly expecting some security officer to ask a few questions and vague images of me standing behind bars suddenly vanished on hearing my brother's voice. Every now and then, he manages to come up with something like this.

It still doesn't feel like I have left India. I guess it never will, at least not the way I thought it would. One just has to turn round a corner to bump into an Indian. A group of Indian students just crossed over, buzzing about 'Love Aaj Kal'. Delhi doesn't seem to be very far.

I have to go now, don't want to miss my flight in all this writing. I guess I will continue this as soon as I get time. Next up in an American Airlines flight to Chicago, followed by a three hour bus journey to Madison.