Tuesday June 27th:

A.M.

Well the students seem to have a great lot of questions for me every minute of the day! Unlike teaching back home, here the students demand a great deal more attention on such a wide variety of things/issues. They are all learning to live in Mumbai, slowly, slowly they are starting to see some of the things going on around them. I expect next week this will change and they will see, smell, and hear even more of the hustle and bustle of Mumbai! Today was an interesting day for the students (who still seem to be somewhat sleepy, jet lagged and generally drained during the afternoon time from the extreme humidity). The Vice-Consul General of the Canadian Consulate, Ms. Annie Dube, started off class today with a talk to the students about living in Mumbai, traveling in Mumbai and somehow we managed to question her about Canadaís immigration policy concerning South Asians coming to Canada. As always, she got caught in traffic and was quite late coming to Bandra from south Mumbai this morning, but what to do? Class always seems to start late around here and goes overtime!!! I think Annie made an impression on the students in terms of the dangers and wonders of India! Apparently the number one killer of foreigners in India are road accidents. Something to think about as they go out and about in traffic here. Later on we had a local documentary filmmaker, Mamta Murthy, come into class to discuss her work. In the end we viwed three very different films, one called Made in India which was fabulous for the studentís to see as it showed all types of arts and artistic processes in motion! Right now they are only seeing so much, it is like they have blinkers on and canít really take in what is going on around them. Anyway Mamta was a hit and the students really liked having someone to talk to about film in the global Mumbai village. It is hard to find artists like Mamta here in the land of Bollywood!

P.M.

After lunch I took the students to a local cafÈ here on Hill Road called Mocha. The idea for our afternoon discussions at the cafes revolve around my wanting them to rely on each other to get around together and stay safe, to learn from each and to cover the many complex readings on postcoloniality, the arts, globalization and India aesthetics. When we got there