We had our first day of orientation today at our academic center and they put red paint on our foreheads (I think it's called kumkum) and gave us flower necklaces. A psychotherapist talked to us about culture shock, alternatively called an adaptation curve by this woman, and how to cope with not having privacy and being groped on the streets (solution: scream and yell to embarrass the man or hit him with your shoe). The center is really nice but we're in a kind of strangely deserted part of Delhi. Once we join our homestays, we'll be in different parts of Delhi and will have to transport ourselves here every day. I'm so excited to start exploring! We walked to a mall and I bought shampoo. It's hot right now and I'm just trying not to fall asleep so I can adapt to the time difference. Here's more information about the program I'm doing if anyone is interested: http://www.sit.edu/studyabroad/ssa_inh.cfm Goodbye for now!

I made it here! I'm sitting in my room in the Karina Hotel in New Delhi, where we are all staying until our homestays start on September 2. I (surprisingly) have internet access already, so clearly the first thing I did was go on Facebook.

The flights were largely uneventful and I thankfully was able to sleep for most of them. I sat next to a very kind woman on the flight from Newark to Delhi who was returning to India for a month because her mother had just died. I think her name was Radha, but that could be wrong. She told me while she helped me practice my Hindi pronunciation, which is still pretty awful. Theoretically I'm supposed to know the alphabet (called the Devanagari script) but somehow I let that fall to the back burner in all my spare time the last few weeks. On a related note, is sarcasm apparent in blog posts? Right now I'm writing a response paper about two books I haven't read, but another girl in the program lent me them so at least I can pull some quotes out of nowhere!

Fun fact about Radha: She now lives in Penfield in Rochester, NY, where my dad grew up and a lot of my relatives still live. My uncle Jim, in fact, is not only my dad's twin (so much useless information in this post!) but also the man in charge of the roads in Penfield, whatever that means exactly. As Radha was telling me where she lived, the girl in the seat behind me — I was in 41E because this was one of those massive planes that looks like it should be physically unable to leave the ground— said she was also from Rochester and is doing the same program as me. Obviously it makes sense that she was on my flight, but this is just one of many, many times that everyone around me has some strong connection to Rochester, the randomest of places.

Just in general, being here and talking to the people on my flights has reminded me of both how massive and how small a world we live in, as cliche as that sounds. Everyone on this program goes to different colleges and universities, but we all know people at each other's schools and have a whole lot of other connections too. A girl who was in South Africa with me lives in Mumbai and we chatted today about possibly meeting up, and a ton of people from Garfield are scattered all over India right now.  It's crazy, but also reassuring that although India is ridiculously foreign to me right now, I still have these connections and somewhat of a support network should I need it.

I have to write my paper now, but I will try to update as regularly as possible!

After an all-nighter of packing, scrapping together a questionable final film paper about sheep, and a lovely breakfast with some randos who just happened to show up in Collis, I'm successfully at Logan Airport! I've somehow fallen into an involuntary habit of letting parents foist their children into the seat next to me on the Dartmouth Coach, so I bonded (aka tried to avoid slumping onto while I slept) little Morgan today on my way down here. I have no idea how these things happen when there are literally 25 other open seats, but at least I wasn't watching American Psycho on my computer like last time!

Humongous thank you to everyone who came to breakfast and lavished hugs and kind words and coffee and cupcakes and fly swatters on me as I was leaving! This week has been the least sleep I've ever gotten by far, but all of my friends and housemates made it infinitely easier (and thank you for putting up with me when I was monstrously cantankerous).

So here is my itinerary to Delhi: Hanover → Boston → Newark → Delhi. Luckily I have a window seat on the 14-hour flight to Delhi so I plan to sleep aggressively (so clutch, thanks Daddy!).


Apparently I will be mid-flight while apocalyptic Hurricane Irene hits the East Coast tonight/tomorrow/Sunday. CNN is saying that NYC is shutting down its transit system tomorrow — I don't know a whole lot about the city or hurricanes but that sounds like a big deal. The newsrooms of all major news organizations must be so high-energy right now!

That's all for now! I will try to come up with some kind of catchy sign-off. Perhaps.