I'll add words later :-)

 

 
 

New Years Eve Festivities

Day 1: Greetings from Chennai!

After a mind numbing 14 hour flight to New Delhi and an additional three hour flight to Chennai I have finally made it to my destination! Arriving around 10:00 pm last night, I met up with part of my class and headed to our "budget" Hotel where I will be staying for the majority of my time in India.  The hotel is sort of grungy, but I didn't come to India to be pampered anyways; so It's no big deal.

This morning I woke up early at 6 am after receiving only three and a half hours of sleep. I'm not sure where my energy came from, but it lasted a good part of the day. Following my wake up,I read the news paper to find that Nirabhaya, the girl who has made world wide headlines after being brutally gang raped on a bus in India, has died following a pulmonary edema. Her story is absolutely tragic and a lot of the country is in shock and outrage. Around 7:30am I headed down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.

The breakfast I had today was likely the most bizarre breakfast I've ever had. Everything on my plate, including a piece of bread that looked identical to a doughnut, was spicy (Major disappointment!)  Every meal to follow would just continue to up the level of spiciness. I'm praying that  I can gain more tolerant of spices. With every meal I have been popping a tums because the food is so acidic. At this rate I am set to run out of tums in a week and a half...

Following breakfast, I joined a bunch of the students in my class and headed to the markets.  My main objective was to find bug spray... Ultimately after hours of searching I came across a bug cream. I thought it was close enough and bought 2 bottles. While the street markets and stores are colorful and full of neat looking items- I really became aware of how much I take for granted the connivence of shopping in the US. 




After enjoying the hustle and bustle of the markets I grabbed a quick lunch and headed off with the group to a group, The groups aim is to help people adjust and understand the cultural customs of india. So we all had a good time learning all about social customs, dance, food, language, clothing, religion, etc. 
The rest of the night was spent trying to stay awake as I am extremely jet lagged. I'm hoping that tomorrow I wake up relaxed, refreshed, and ready to see more of Chennai! Sadly there is nothing on the schedule that has anything to do with the class yet. We were told that we would start doing our thing starting the day after tomorrow