Arrival

6.14.2010

Dear friends,

It's hard to believe that I'm already here! After the 40+ hrs of traveling and having one bag lost by the airline, I was really looking forward to getting to the house in Kadod and being able to relax and maybe curl up to a good book. But stepping out of our air-conditioned van, I felt like I was walking through a wall of heat and humidity. After unloading our belongings and unpacking what I had, I laid down face-up on my bed, hoping that remaining inactive would be enough to cool down. Unfortunately, I was wrong. But my exhaustion from the long trip eventually won over, and I was able to sleep for a couple hours.

Waking up, it was time to eat our first meal in Kadod! Walking out of our house these are some of the views we have:






It was about a five-minute walk from our house to where we were going to have lunch. I guess I was expecting some sort of a sit-down restaurant, perhaps air-conditioned. Instead, we walked into the house of an old couple who had prepared us a meal and was eagerly waiting for us to arrive. We sat down along the wall of a room near the back of the house with our dishes laid out in front of us. I wish I'd been given even a quick crash course on proper Indian eating etiquette, but without this prior knowledge, I semi-pretended to know what I was doing while frequently glancing over to my friends' plates to see what they were doing. This is what a typical meal looked like:







After dinner, we gave the old couple our warmest thanks and goodbye and decided to stroll through the town on our way back to our house. We couldn't spend too much time outside because of the heat, but here's a little bit of what we saw:







Well, I'll be stepping into my first classroom in less than 3 hours! Chatting with a friend, he asked "How do you feel?! Scared? Excited??" I said both. I heard the students are really excited to meet us, but at the same, there are going to be so many of them! Wish me luck!! Next episode: The House.