Well I survived the weekend. Like some of my classmates who are abroad, I too wrestled this past weekend with my tv-viewing options. Spiderman or Titanic in Tamil. Its pretty neat what you can pick up just be reading lips...Then of course, there are the Bollywood movies. While there is certainly the "artsy" film scene (indie movies in the US), Bollywood movies are pure pulp and enormously cheesy. And still you can't look away. It's "guilty pleasure" personified. Imagine some song-and-dance soap opera.

As for work today was day two of an ActionAid partner meeting. It was very interesting and I'm realizing that aspects of PM II and Program Eval. actually seeped through and I could apply them in settings other than the Evans School. That's heartening :)

The 2-daymeeting concerned the rights (or lack thereof) of the fisherpeople living along the coasts of India. The tsunami has prompted organizations like ActionAid to mobilize and connect "unorganized workers" to each other so that they can speak to and address policies that impact their lives. This meeting was the first inter-state meeting and it seemed to me to go pretty well. I made some contacts with local NGOs (whom ActionAid funds to do the implementation work) so that I can make some field visits.

The meetings themselves were interesting because there were people who spoke either English, Tamil, Oriya, or Telugu, or some combination of the above! So there was A LOT I didn't get until it was paraphrased into English.

It was also interesting to see how women interacted in a largely male forum and how men reacted to them. Another interesting point and hard statistic; close to 90% of the men in the meeting (which we can take to be a mini-representative group of India- I am not speaking to matters of internal or external validity here) had mustaches. During one of the long lapses in which no English was spoken, I actually did the math. So there you go. Do what you will what that information.

Tomorrow I'll be going to a workshop on HIV/AIDS awareness that an ActionAid partner conducts. That should be interesting...