Anthropology listening exercise

     I was in Noyer right outside of the door where people exit out of the dining hall and a door down to my right and left to where people exit the building.  What I found out about doing this observation is that listening and trying to write down everything that you hear is harder than just writing down what you observe, especially if you are in a kind of crowded place.  It was all kind of overwhelming to write down what you heard, because when you would be focusing on what your writing you would sometimes miss a sound that was happening or there was a constant rumbling or a loud noise that distracts you from what you where writing.  It also felt a little weird doing the field notes, even though I know that it was for a class and that it would help me learn something from it, it just was a little odd, it makes me wonder how the other cultures feel about Anthropologist’s taking field notes about them.  Do they feel as weird as I did? Or do the Anthropologist’s feel as out of place as I did?  Or maybe to Anthropologist’s it is just learning their culture and remembering what they wrote.  I mean I know it is all out of curiosity that the Anthropologist goes and studies a culture, and I know that they want to make sure that they document everything so that they are representing the culture correctly, but I wonder if any Anthropologist has been studied the way that they study other cultures so that they know how the people will react or how they feel to being put under a microscope for viewing.
    What I mostly heard was the constant humming of the air conditioning, if no body was around, and the quiet songs of the radio that play throughout the hall.  I also heard the squeaky foot steps of people walking down the hall way since it was raining and the clicking of when the wheel chairs would turn and the humming of the electric wheel chairs and squeaky tires as the people turned a corner.  The one thing that was hard for me to do was to try and get the conversations, because it all just sounded like babbling when people would go down the hallway in groups, and there were quite a bit of people going in and out of the dining all and walking around Noyer because it was dinner time.  People where whistling and girls with flip flops would squeak their shoes and let the material bang against their foot making a loud noise.  Also, there was a ton of jangling keys banging against lanyards, people just let them bang against each other.  When people would exit the dining center, you could always hear the sound of metal on metal when they would push the door open to exit and you could hear the rustling of the bags that people held in their hands with the food in them.    

I tried to upload my pictures, but you could not read what was on them, so I tried to type them out there may have been a few things missing.

Field Notes:
Time: 6:15 PM
Date: 9/14/2011
Place: Noyer

“Give it all, hey try.”
“Hey. Whas up. Hello?”
Constant feet walking different speeds, high heels, softer when it’s tennis shoes, squeaky because its rainy.  6:17ish, guy: “hey you 2 whats up?”
Bags rustling; chains jingling, power chair stopping going, clicking
Automatic doors opening and closing.
Hearing mostly “Goodbyes” and “ see you later!”
Keys flipping around
6:20 squeaky shoes walking back and forth and back, “ I thought you didn’t do that anymore.”
Laughing.
“You use body language I use abrasiveness”
Bags rustling
Tapping of shoes, swooshing of jeans
Door slam and more squeaky shoes.
Constant humming of air conditioning
Squeaky automatic door opening and closing
Squeaky flip flops against the floor and banging against the person’s feet.
Chinese or Japanese, I can not understand.
More laughing
Door pushed in and slammed shut along with a ton of mindless babbling that I can not understand too many people
Swooshing of fabric
2 wheelchairs humming along at the same time and clicking.
Radio softly playing cant make out song but hear beats
Whistling