One Week Out

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Hello friends and family! This is my first post on my trip to India! I will be updating this blog as frequently as necessary. This way if you are interested in how my trip is going you can come here, read the latest blog, and I don't have to explain it to everyone multiple times! As I am writing this it is June 7th, 1 week before I head home to Fort Wayne. I will be beginning my program in Chicago on the 16th, where I will take classes at Northwestern University for a week. Then I will board my flight to New Dehli, bus out to a city called Udaipur, and then begin my work doing............something.



I will be an intern for an NGO called Jagra Jan Vikas Samiti. This either translates into "Developing Life Abroad" or "Never try to sit through 13 straight episodes of Orange is the New Black without adequate stretching, hydration, and proper footwear." Hindi is a tough language.



What is basically going to happen is myself and my team (Victoria and Zoya) will work at JJVS and develop our own project. This project will broadly be about helping rural members of the community to gain better access to medicine. For now we do not know what the project is and we will not know until we have been in India for about a week.



During all of this I will be living with a host family. I know nothing about them yet. I am told these families range in size from one older woman who lives alone, to a large extended family with 6 kids. I should find out about them in the next couple of weeks and am very excited to experience living with them! (I hope they won't mind my blaring gangster rap)



As of right now I am working on packing. Apparently it is much harder to pack for an international trip than I planned. My usual method of packing for trips looked something like this







Apparently when you are living in a rural part of a country that averages over 100 degrees everyday, hands out malaria as a free sampler, and allows for no beef consumption, there is a bit of planning involved. As of right now I have packed socks, 1 shirt, and 1 pants. My"suggested packing" list provided by Northwestern is about 1 full page long. The one hard part is that many of my summer-wear clothes are not allowed. All of my tank tops are bar shirts, and apparently it is not good for men to wear shorts in India. I am told only children wear shorts. But based on my current funds and ability to wear pants in the heat, I am going to go ahead and accept that I am a child. If someone comes up to me and tells me to go find some pants to wear in the 110 degree weather I'll just respond





One area of concern that is both funny and not funny is food. I don't eat spicy or hot food. I just don't. When the waiter/waitress asks me what level of spiciness I want (1 being not spicy, 5 being extremely spicy) I respond "ZERO PLEASE AND THANK YOU!" When my friends try to get my to eat hot cheetos I cower in fear and run. When I begin to feel a tingly sensation in my mouth from unknowingly consuming a food that is spicy I run to the nearest Baskin Robins, jump inside the cooler, and wait until the ordeal rolls over. Basically the idea of a traditional Indian meal was my worst enemy. Now I will consume that. Every day. For 8 weeks.





Wish my bowels luck.



There is another aspect to this trip that I didn't expect to be so hard: being sad about leaving. I love to travel and go places. I often take trips on weekends around the state to go hiking or just to drive somewhere new. I have always wanted to travel abroad, and I have always wanted to move away eventually. But as my departure date rolls closer I can't help but want to stay. It's the summer between my junior and senior year. Many of my friends are graduating and will be gone once I return to the US. I am currently in the midst of applying to Physician Assistant programs. I am fully enjoying my time here in Bloomington. More so than any summer prior to this. And now I am leaving it behind.





In the grand scheme of things I know that 8 weeks is not a long time, I know that all this will wash away once I get to India, and I know that I will likely not want to come back once I have been in India for a while. But for now I will just try to relish every moment I have, whether it's here or there or anywhere. After all, I'M GOING TO FLIPPING INDIA!





I am going to attempt to get at least 5 things packed. I am going to go on a hike. Maybe go buy some pants. Then I will go out and enjoy this beautiful summer day!

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Comments

[Father]

What an adventure!
Wow this will be interesting!