Post Number 1

Greeeetings to you all! I begin my blog on my third day in Delhi. It took a 13 hour flight to Taipei and a 7 hour flight to Delhi to get here, and now I find myself a 12 1/2 hours into the future.

I've already begun to have so much fun here, and my sensory perceptions have been amplified to an unprecedented intensity. I'm sweating more and getting dirtier than I ever have, and even at nights it doesn't cool down more than ten degrees in relief of the 110-degree heat. (I wonder what that is in celsius...?) This is certainly no ordinary vacation, but rather everything is much more confusing and exhausting. But at any rate, its just so rewarding to really feel so much, theres no buffer zone of ease and comfort to alienate me from my truest experiences...

OK, so a brief recap of everything I've done since my arrival, since time is limited and the internet costs money...
-We arrived in Delhi at 12:20 pm Sunday, and I was mostly exhausted and jet lagged after lunch, so i slept until 9, when i was awoken by the party in the room next door. When I get back to my laptop i will post photos from the end of a night of drinking large bottles of warm beer, "COX 10000," which tasted like a warm, bubbly meal.
-Yesterday after breakfast all of us in the Hyderabad program were taken to the police office to have our visas registered, which actually meant sitting in an un-airconditioned hallway for no joke 5 hours, watching birds fly in and out of the window. (when we were walking down the stairs to leave, a TODDLER spit on one of the girls in my group!)
-Tedious paperwork followed, after which we were FINALLY free to roam about, and we learned QUICKLY that any group larger than 4 is completely and utterly impractical.
-We went to Main Bazar, where I bought a saree and some aladding paants, which I refuse to ever take off seeing as how they are the single most comfortable article of clothing imaginable.
-That evening we checked out a bar called Castle 9, which was more of a nicer restaurant than a bar... and considering that all they had to offer was foster's, i will withold judgment until i can compare it to other bars.
-The best thing thus far though, was waking up at 5 am to go to a Sikh temple down the road from the YWCA Int'l Guest House where we're staying this week. it was sooo beautiful and i was thrilled to participate in all of the little rituals such as removing my shoes, wearing a loner head covering and sitting listening to the tabla and whatever the other instrument is called. i walked around the big pool and dipped my feet in at the end. i tried my best to just be present in the moment and set the tone for other such experiences to come.
-The rest of the day was most stressful indeed, I got jipped on a phone which still isnt working, and the shopping experience is one i have yet to get used to ( more on that later). We did however, meet 2 really nice Indian guys, Viki and Vijay, who showed us around and took us to all the places we wanted to go to get the things we needed. And all they asked in return was something American for them to remember us by! I wanted to ask Viki for his shirt, which read "If being sexy is a crime...ARREST ME!"
Until then I had no clue how difficult it would be to find things, all the stores are hidden and you dont know from the outside if its acutally somewhere you should go into. I'll have to post pictures of that too, but everything is in crumbling buildings and away from the road behind other crumbling buildings and construction zones, which probably always have and always will be there. The smells go in and out of my nose so quickly that it actually achieves quite a nice harmony between the incense and disgusting piss and shit and rotten trash. Needless to say I have yet to drink the water...

So hopefully I will stay on top of my posts so that I can go into more detail, oh theres so much to tell! but for now i really need to take a nap, getting four hours of sleep and wandering in the heat all day can really tire one out, so that is all for now.

XXX