1 Feb 2008 - Traditional Market Visit

I simply love visiting traditional places and learning about how people typically live in a place. I was therefore very excited to be able to visit a traditional market. Everyone on the program was divided into groups and we were given a list of items to purchase at the market. The list of items was interestingly in Hindi to make it more difficult for us. On the bus ride to the market, we solicited the help of a fellow passenger to help us translate all the items on the list into English before we began our adventure. It was quite a cultural experience. Some of the items that we had to purchase included traditional Indian spices, a lungi (a garment for men that resembles a skirt that is often worn during work, such as in the fields), dye used for Vindi (I'm not sure if I am spelling this right but I'm referring the dye used in the middle of Hindu women's foreheads), as well as interestingly, a condom. We had one of our travelling faculty with us who spoke Hindi and we assigned him the task of getting the condom. It was simply hilarious when he played along with us and to the embarassment of the shopkeeper, asked the shopkeeper what flavors of condoms he sold. A very memorable experience indeed both for our group and for the entire class when we retold the story during our traditional market visit debriefing.