Monday, January 18, 2010

Little India and stuff

Hi! Things have been going much better lately, but my workload this semester is large like a sperm whale. Like a sperm whale figurine that is sitting on my magazine holder. That Claire Fro got me for Christmas. Because she knows that I just love whales. What was I talking about?
Anyway, this is kind of olllld news, but the weekend before last I went to Little India with Rifqi and Kara. Here is a pretty bad picture of us:


We all look odd but it was the only one we got where all 3 of our heads were in the frame. Anyway Little India was really cool, it was basically 90% sari shops, 6% Indian restaurants, and 4% random little stores. Here is Rifqi lookin dumb in a sari shop:


Here's some badass icicles on an Indian convenience store:


HAHAHAHAHA:


We came across some kids sledding down this little hill. It looked like sooo much fun. You can see the CN Tower in the skyline!


We went into this little store with a ton of Indian books and statues of gods and bangles. I liked the books best. Especially this one:


Fried food is always fun. Definitely a recipe for happiness. Also this guy:


Badass.
My favorite sari store was this extremely colourful one:



We had dinner at an Indian buffet with really good butter chicken. It was AWESOME. We stayed there for a long time talking, then trekked back to the subway station to go home.

In other news, I don't think I will be doing a linguistics major anymore. I don't like the class or the subject and it's just kind of boring to me. As it turns out, I love studying other languages, but I don't like studying language itself. I think it's mostly because I like to find out about other cultures, and language is a huge part of any culture. So I like to study other languages, but mostly for the cultural value, and not because I'm particularly fascinated by the science of language, phonology, morphology, syntax and all that. Linguistics has been kind of helpful in learning Arabic, and it will be helpful in learning other languages too, so it's good that I have a better general understanding of language now. But I don't feel motivated to pursue it.
My plan before was to do a major in linguistics and a double minor in Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations (NMC) and East Asian Studies. Now I'm leaning more toward a double major in astronomy and literature. Perhaps the Minato haze has started to lift?

I'm already a few weeks into the new semester so I'm kind of late talking about this, but I mostly like my new professors. I have three full-year courses, but even for them I have new profs.

My new linguistics professor is much better than my last one. Instead of showing Powerpoint slides and reading them in a monotone with a heavy, hard-to-understand accent, she uses the blackboard and actually lectures. She doesn't make us print out stuff for homework, and she's obviously really, really into linguistics. She talks like Joan Cusack and when she smiles she looks like Meryl Streep.

I have a new Arabic professor too, her name is Suha and she's short and fiesty. Our class is down to 16 people now. I like her more than the last prof, but the last one was good too.

My new sociology professor is the guy who wrote our textbook. His lectures are a lot more interesting and informative, and it feels more like a real class now. He has a slight Australian accent.

My Women in Ukrainian Literature professor is named Maxim Tarnawsky. He got his BA from University of Pennsylvania and his PhD from Harvard. And his name is Maxim. TOTALLY BADASS

I have two professors for astronomy. The first week we had Dr. Reid, he is awesome. He reminds me of Bill Nye the Science guy! Plus he used to live in Hawaii. He seems really cool and totally not uptight but also not a pushover.
Dr. Mochnacki is kind of boring so far, apparently he does most of the more physics-y lectures. But I've had two lectures with him and so far it's just been going over stuff we read in the textbook already. Mehhh.

But yeah, mostly awesome professors this semester.

That's pretty much all I wanted to post about. I should probably go read some depressing Ukrainian anti-serf literature now. The book of stories we're reading out of is called For a Crust of Bread. I have to read "Artichokes" and "The Accursed Mill." We are also going to read "Marriage Contract." One of our other books is called On Sunday Morning She Gathered Herbs. It's going to be an exciting class. Baiiiiiiiii

9 comments:

Claire said...

I thought it said "statues of gods and bagels". Lawl.

I'm so touched that the whale made it t your desk. But I would be even more touched if my model-on-a-sanitary-napkin masterpiece made it to your wall.

It looks like you could never be bored in Toronto!
I'm glad you're having such an amazing semester and figuring out what you do/don't want to do.

I'm only a week into linguistics but I love it. Of course I have plenty of time to fall in hate with it, and its just a syntax class. Right now its pretty interesting because we're starting off with psycholinguistics and language acquisition. I met my professor in her office last semester bouncing on a yoga ball with her grey hair all over the place. She's really into linguistics and gets all excited in class. She just sits there and talks to us, it's awesome. But I totally understand the whole foreign language thing and its draw being the cultural aspect. I want to take more languages really badly. I'm trying out sign language through books during my free time

glad everything's splendid and that you aren't oversleeping!

Unknown said...

Awesome post, Erin!

I hope Rifqi doesn't know about your blog.

Sounds like Toronto is a pretty great place to be. Isn't a sunny day with snow on the ground the best?!

And I'm with Claire...glad you aren't oversleeping.

alv said...

I'm glad you have a short feisty prof - short and feisty women are the best!

I love the colourful suri pictures.

your brother, the muffin man, was in a bit of pain yesterday afternoon, but he looked ok this morning.

J. Miller said...

awesome
i love the clearing of the minato haze
i saw her over break, it was lame
i'm glad your life is less lame

Claire said...

such insight, erin.
you should have bought that yog book. it looked like a winner.
anyways, it pleases me immensely to know that your life is going much more smoothly now. and that you may be majoring in a science. [like a real science.] peace.

Erin said...

Claire Fro - Unfortunately I forgot your artwork in my room at home!! AAugh! If I had it here it would most certainly be front and center. Also, your linguistics class sounds infinitely cooler than mine. We don't get to psycholinguistics and language acquisition until the VERY end of the year! And it's cool that it's just syntax, we're doing that now and it's my favorite thing we've done in that class yet.

Mom - I'm pretty sure Rifqi knows about it, but he never reads it... that I know of.

Dad - Maybe Ian would feel better if he commented on my blog more often.

Jenna - If I visit CHS again, I will go to great lengths to make sure I don't run into her.

Claire - He had a whole series of them.

Erin said...

Oh wait Claire I found it!! I was looking for a folder and I found it in an envelope. Now it's on my bulletin board ready to weird out my roommate.

Claire said...

Victory fist!!!!

Claire said...
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