Sterility

Travel should be challenging. You should be slapped in the face by culture (literally and physically). When traveling you should be surrounded by the locals, and you should eat at the restaurants where no one can speak your native tongue. I know that this type of...

Pongal (பொங்கல்)

Back in November, which seems like an eternity ago, I taught my students about the American Festival of Thanksgiving. I compared Thanksgiving to the Hindu festival of Pongal, which is celebrated in January. Pongal is a festival to celebrate the harvest. Pongal...

Galle and Unawatuna

This weekend I traveled south to Galle and Unawatuna with a few fellow Fulbrighters. We left Colombo via train and headed south, only to realize that the train we were on was the wrong one; we were able to transfer a few miles outside of Colombo onto a train headed to...