Crazy days in India: Introduction to My India and the Tangore House

Blah, uninspired posts are just so not fun to write or read for that matter... but here goes (This is for you Dipesh!).

Tagore International House

So, having been living in Hyderabad over two months, I feel fully settled into "life in India". Life in India is in quotation marks because the life that I am experiencing here in India is really only one type of experience, and a very sheltered experience at that. India is quite large and has a fair number of people live here (to under-exaggerate it completely).

Actually that's one thing that never ceases to amaze me, the crowds. The traffic at rush hour, the number of people you can fit into a bus (or a rickshaw for that matter), a busy market, or a crowded festive. Sometime I stop and think to myself "I don't think I have ever seen so many people" and then I'll go out again and see an even bigger crowd.

There are a lot of things that amaze me about India though. While most of these things are amazing in the best possible way, there are plenty of other things that can be frustrating beyond belief. Everything is just a little more work here.

This blog should have been called "Series of Unattractive ID Photos"

Lets start with the campus life. For anyone who may not know, i'm studying at the University of Hyderabad. The University is beautiful but huge. It takes about 35 minutes walking at a brisk pace to make it from south campus to main campus. Tagore International House is located in south campus. This is only ever inconvenient if you're trying to get anywhere, including a class that is not in the SIP building.

SIP- Study In India Program (Why it's not SIIP I don't know (Maybe because that sounds ridiculous. Stop being silly!)). Although all of us came on different programs, SIP is the way that they can clump us foreigners who are only here for a semester or year together.

Semester for the most part. I am one of three people actually staying for a full year. Meaning for most of the SIP students here, their exchange in India is already halfway over...

For me however its still just beginning (That's why i can put such big gaps in my blog posting ;p).

My Name in Hindi

I finalized my schedule a while ago...

I'm taking
- Indo-U.S. Relations
-Intro to Kuchipudi (I am not skilled...)
- Hindi (again...)
- Advanced Studio Production

The teaching style is quite different here (I could write a full post on my Advanced Studio production class alone). While I enjoy some aspects of these classes quite a lot, I feel like i'm learning more outside of class than in them.

India has been amazing for teaching me how much I really don't know. I feel ignorant less often now than I did at the beginning of the semester (Yay improvement!). But the moments do still come.

Thanks to everyone who told me to bring sunscreen to India.
I didn't bring a rain jacket...

One of the main things I have come to accept though is looking and feeling silly. There is really very little chance for me to not stand out as a foreigner, so it takes a lot of the pressure off. When I don't understand something or don't know how to do something, with (often without) a little prodding I always get help. Nearly everyone I have meet here in India has been extremely friendly and helpful. Even when I know I am being laughed at, I just choose to laugh right along with them because often I feel so silly that i'm sure I must look absolutely ridiculous to everyone around me, and what do we do when we encounter something foreign or a little strange.