Famous Last Words for Week 9

Spring break is almost over :( NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  I just find it cruel that all of my professor's have BIG assignments due the week after spring break, so on my last day to enjoy break I'm forced to work ceaselessly on homework.

Get this on the Tuesday after spring break I have: an 18 page paper due, a 20 minute presentation in Spanish with a group and then a big assignment due in my design class where I have to design a direct mailer on behalf of the OU Recruitment Services.

So if I can just make it Wednesday at 12:00 p.m., I'll have survived one of the toughest weeks of my semester.

Spring break was fun while it last though.  I visited Las Vegas with my parents.  This was the first time I had ever been and the trip was filled with so much excitement and adventure.  I have a friend from high school that moved to Las Vegas for college, so I got to see her and she was basically my guide around the city.  We had not seen each other in almost two years!  So I consider myself lucky to have been able to see her this past week and catch up.

The standalone craziest thing that happened to me in Las Vegas was getting pulled on stage with a standup comedian at the Laugh Factory.  Harry Basil pulled me out of the audience to reenact famous scenes from classic movies like Titanic, Dirty Dancing, Gravity and Ghostbusters.  It cemented this spring break as one of the craziest vacations in my life.  Below is a picture my mom snapped of the moment.  What happens in Vegas… may be too unbelievable for people to take you seriously without pictures.

(Personal photo taken of me on stage at the Laugh Factory in Las Vegas, Nevada in March 2015)

Storytelling for Week 9: And So It Began

King Shantanu let out a sigh of frustration.  He was exhausted from hunting all day and he had nothing to show for it.  Normally King Shantanu is a great shot when it comes to hunting deer but today something was different…

He was walking to a river to cool off when he noticed something.  It was a woman.  She had long dark hair that was tinted blue in the sun.  The beautiful woman sat up on the bank with her legs in the water and was humming a sweet melody to herself.  

“Maybe my luck is beginning to turn around,”  King Shantanu thought to himself.  From that moment the King knew that he would never encounter a more beautiful creature no matter where he ventured.  Before she finished humming the last stanza in her melody the King had fallen in love.  After professing his love to the beautiful woman with her legs still adrift in the river she had agreed to marry him on one condition.  

“It would be an honor to marry you and I will do so full heartedly, however I can only be wed to you if you promise me one thing,” said the beautiful woman whose name was Ganga.  

“Anything you ask you shall have,” replied the King. 

 

(Image of Shantanu and Ganga meeting from Wikipedia.)

“If you promise to never question me on any of my actions, I will be your bride,” she told him and The King quickly complied.  

A small part of King Shantanu’s mind told him this was a bit odd and that this could perhaps be a bad omen.  He shook the thought away and reasoned that he now had his whole life to get to know Ganga.  “Why should I ever question her about her actions when she will be spend an eternity living and confiding with me.  I shall soon know her beautiful mind and will never have to question her because I will understand her completely.”  

Their wedding was one that would rival Rama and Sita’s.  The kingdom embraced their new Queen and applauded the King on choosing a woman who encompassed such a benevolent presence.   It was not long until the Queen announced that she was pregnant with their first child.  

After nine short months Queen Ganga gave birth to a baby boy.  The King was overjoyed.   His mind went back to the first time he gazed upon his beloved wife at the river.  He could never imagine his life without her.  And to think that when he went to cool down from the water he thought he was having an unlucky day…

Author’s Note:  I chose this story because I thought what Ganga what was doing to her sons was a completely reasonable thing for the King to question.  I wanted to show that Ganga was one with the water and decided to portray her very mermaid esque.  This part of the story is not very detailed in our reading, so I wanted to show what King Shantanu might be thinking.  Him not having a good day out hunting could even be a bad omen.  I decided to title this story "And So It Began" because I feel that these events catapult the rest of the stories in The Mahabharata.

Bibliography -

Narayan, R.K. (1978). The Mahabharata.

Week 9 Reading Diary B: The Pandavas Live

This is a Reading Diary that details my thoughts from pages 41-83 of The Mahabharata retold by R.K. Narayan.  

• I guess Karna is not very karmic since he wants war!
• So the Pandavas got the Gandiva bow as a reward for trapping animals and burning a forest?! WHAT?
• Dhritarashtra built an entire assembly hall just to play a game of dice...
• Um what happened at this game of dice.  Thank goodness for Krishna.  
• The second game of dice results in an exile.  Rama's exile is 14 years while the Pandavas is 13.  
• Surya gives them an endless supply of food while in exile!?!
• So living with women is a blessing in disguise?
• This has been a very interesting section.  So much has happened and there' a lot of potential for the storytelling assignment.  

(The Disrobing of Draupadi from the Reading Guide)

Week 9 Reading Diary A: Starting The Mahabharata

This is a Reading Diary that details my thoughts from pages 1-39 of The Mahabharata retold by R.K. Narayan.  

• I'm especially glad that there are reading guides to go along with this book because I just started it and I'm already getting all of the names mixed up!
• This is a harsh punishment for stealing a cow…
• Stealing the cow did not work out to well for Bhishma.  I don't know why he things stealing daughters from a swayamvara is a good idea.
• They have a very strange solution to the problem of not having an heir...
• First time that I've heard of a mantra for obtaining sons from gods…
• Karna is one letter off from Karma.  I'm suspicious.    
• Karna has a similar upbringing to Moses.
• So now Pandu basically has the children of gods.  
• Madri most be irresistible.  
• Wow the sister of a dangerous rakshasa falls in love with the hero.  Influenced by the Ramayana?  
• Draupadi gets 5 husbands!!!! Wow normally it's the men in this time who can have multiple spouses and not the wives!

(Pandu goes hunting)