First Days in Bangalore

I finally made it here! It's really cool, everything is so different. I landed at the airport at 4am and took a cab (BY MYSELF!) to the campus. I was so scared, but the cab driver was nice and even waited with me until I was let into my room. The traffic is NUTS here. No one stays in thier lane, they just do as they please, and honk the entire time. When you are walking, there are hardly any intersections to cross the street, the cars don't stop and you have to run FAST in order to not get hit by someone. I doubt they would actually hit you, but they get very close!

My roommates are awesome and have really helped when it comes to me being homesick. We are all going to Goa this weekend (there are beautiful beaches there), its a 12 hours bus ride!! ahhh..... oh well, I'm only going to be here once.

We start class on monday and I am taking "Womens Issues in Indian Soceity," "Yoga," and "Service Learning." The service learning class is like community service and we are going to go to a very rural village in a few weeks to help there. It should be very very interesting. Im looking forward to the next month and hope that I climb out of this homesickness soon :)

Getting Ready to Head to India!

1st, a short history lesson:

The city name, "Bangalore" comes from the native name "Bengaluru," which is an adaptation of the earlier name (in the language Kannada [sounds like Canada to me]), "Benda Kaale Uru".... which in English means "The Town of the Boiled Beans."

There are 5 days left until I leave for "The Town of the Boiled Beans" and I have yet to hear that they serve boiled beans there... would this be a form of curry? I guess I'll be finding out soon enough.

During this last week I have been running around (with the assistance of MOM, of course) buying various things that I will need to take with me on this trip, such as; immodium, band-aids, heavy duty bug spray, and tampons (they don't sell tampons in India!). I'm a little stressed out and it's making me a bit nervous for the trip... I'm not sure what to expect when I get there. However, I was taught by my old boss, Pamella, that you can always turn nerves into positive excitement! So that's what I will be trying to do over the next few days.

I have talked with some of the girls who are also on the program via facebook! They all seem really nice and it sounds like they are just as nervous and/or excited as I am. I will be meeting up with a few of them at the San Francisco Airport and we will be traveling the rest of the way together, which helps to ease a lot of my worries.

I will write again once I get to Bangalore and have the internet set up! :)