Delhi
All my roommates are jet lagged, so they woke up bright and early this morning. As a result, I couldn't stay in bed much past 6:30am. On the up side though, I was very prompt for our 7:30 Indian breakfast that featured lots of delicious dishes that I don’t yet know the names of (but I will!).
Using Hindi in everyday life as I’m learning it is going to be a challenge for me. For example, even though I know the word for tea in Hindi and can pronounce it correctly, I didn’t use it at breakfast today because I was worried about sounding stupid. I need to find a way to get over this if I’m going to be successful at learning Hindi in the next 10 weeks.
Because of a screw-up with her program, Jessie stayed the night at the AIIS guesthouse. I’m really glad we got a little extra time together. She took a cab to her homestay this afternoon. I hope she’s settling in well.
AIIS held orientation this morning. All the AIIS students going to Jaipur, Lucknow, and Punjab are here now. It’s nice to meet more people who will be studying in Jaipur too. I’m a little nervous though because I just realized that most the people I’ve clicked with so far are going to other language-learning sights, which means I won’t see them all summer. Hopefully I’ll find some friends in Jaipur.
Orientation today was much more relevant and enlightening than the orientation we had in DC. I learned a little about how India’s democracy is set up. Notably, the Indian constitution actually has affirmative action laws written directly in it. For example, a certain number of legislative seats on both the national and local levels are reserved for women and for untouchables. We also got some good health advice from an Indian doctor. Unfortunately, I had a really bad stomach ache all morning. Hopefully I do better the rest of the trip.
This afternoon I went to Qutab Minar. It was one of the first sites that I visited when I came to India the first time. I remembered a lot more about the site from my first visit than I expected. Looking back, I never expected to come back to India after my first visit, so being here is a little surreal. At the same time, this visit is nothing like my first because of all the travel experiences I've had since that first scary & shocking visit. After living in China for 4+ months, India is a lot more comfortable.
Here's a picture from Qutab Minar. (There will be more once I figure out how to upload faster)
If you want to check out AIIS their website is http://www.indiastudies.org/. I'm in the Hindi Language Program.
Lots of Love
No comments:
Post a Comment