Realizations

And the first week of school is over! It was a long week I have to say. Maybe because I am at the school all day, which is not how it is back at Bucknell. Usually I go to class a couple of hours then go back to my room or the library. It is too far to go back to my apartment/hostel during my breaks, so I stay on campus. Right now I am taking four classes and may be adding a fifth next week. I am taking political economy and development, contemporary India, a research methods class, Hindi, and may add public health. All of my classes are interesting so far but I know that research methods and Hindi are going to be a lot of work. Research methods has a few papers during the time that we are in school which is fine, then a 5000 word paper for our internship. Anyone who knows me knows I am shaking in my boots right now about that 5000 word paper. I don’t write, I don’t like to write, and the shorter the paper the better. I will let you know in April how that paper is coming along!

Now to Hindi… man is it hard. I took Italian in the fall, which wasn’t that bad, mainly because it uses the same alphabet as English. Hindi does not. It has about 53 characters, half of which are the same letter but have different sounds most of which we don’t even use in English. Then there are the consonant vowel combinations, which have a combined script, and we haven’t even gotten to the consonant consonant combinations! I have to say though it is a beautiful script, and sometimes I will just sit in class and write the alphabet out.

This week and weekend we used just to settle in more. We have been shopping a lot, and I bought three saris, and I know there will be many more that clutter my closet! We have been acclimating ourselves more to the city, and we are not letting the rickshaw drivers over charge us anymore! We actually got into a fight with one of the rickshaw drivers because he was trying to charge us 20 rupees more than the meter. Not that 20 rupees is a lot of money (its actually about 50 cents) but it’s the principle of the matter!

I have also recently found out that Hulu and any other video streaming sites do not work outside of the U.S.! Again anyone who knows me knows I love my TV shows…. It has been a little bit sad that I can’t watch my shows, but I have gotten over it. Honestly there is too much to do around the city, and I am too tired to stay up and watch TV. I am planning on catching up with my shows when I am back in Lewisburg and everyone is studying for exams in the spring!

Tuesday is republic day so no school yay! I have been looking through my schedule and we actually have quite a few days off of school, which is a nice surprise seeing as we don’t even get labor day off back at home. The Indian girls in the hostel are planning on taking us to a fort nearby so I will have plenty of pictures to share! That’s all for now I am tired and going to bed!

Peace