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!
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!
Melissa Gordon | August 28, 2011 at 2:39 AM
i love you!
hah i figured out how to comment!
NoHo | September 5, 2011 at 9:38 PM
PENFIELD WOO HOOO!!!!