Okay, first post, more than a week into my trip. Where, where, where to begin?
So far I’ve made friends, been oriented, received a cell phone, and moved in with my host family. I have a few key phrases in Marathi in my toolbox, have successfully crossed the street (alone and in groups) on multiple occassions, and eaten the scarily spicy green chili pepper. I guess that means that slowly but surely I’m getting acclimated to my new home. How weird is that. Hi, my name is Dani (Maaza nav Dani aahe), and I live in Pune, India, in the state of Maharastra. Ridiculousness.
Okay, so highlights thus far:
-The weather really isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. When I heard monsoon, I was afraid that it would rain all the time, and it would be awful. But the weather is actually really great. The rain is never storming, more often mist than real rain, and it just makes everything clean and cool and green. Actually, driving through the countryside from our orientation site to Pune, I’ve never seen such beautiful scenery. Ev erything is so lush and happy, with mountains and rolling fog and rivers and valleys. Right out of a book.
-The people on our program have been pretty much universally great. My roommate and I get along, the rest of the kids are great and excited and supportive, the head of our program is this truly lovely woman named Utaara who is like a mom to us all out here and reminds me a bit of Mrs. Mazer (for those of you from my Jewy youth), and the rest of the staff are uniformly sweet and helpful.
-I’m really white. I don’t think I ever actually felt that before, but in Pune, it’s really a very unusual thing. I get stared at all the time, little kids just come up yelling “Auntie, Auntie!” at me and laugh, and rickshaw guys sometimes don’t want to bother with me. I just wish I could understand what people are saying.
-I held a baby goat. It got mad at me.
-I think I’m going to be very, very busy here. Five classes, extra Marathi lessons, “expressive culture” classes (I think I want to take tabla, but we’ll see how that goes), yoga. And then my host family has decided that my roommate Anna and I, along with the other American students who are being hosted by friends of theirs, will be learning an Indian dance (Kathak?) and performing it at the end of the semester. THERE WILL BE NO VIDEOS.
-Indians never stop eating. Food food food all the time, and second, third, fourth helpings. And you always have to clean your plate (and eat with your right hand only, which is lots of fun), and then you drink tea many times a day and eat biscuits. We can’t fight the system, so we’ll all come back huge. At least we’re prepared.
On that note, I need to go eat breakfast. It will probably be spicy, and there will be too much of it. Predictable, unpredictable India.
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