Going to INDIA

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Reed's Entry

Stop 4: New Delhi



Arriving in New Delhi was a terrifying experience for me. Sha and Eleni were perfectly composed, as they always are, but I was scared out of my mind. Whenever my Human Geo Teacher, the amazing Ms. Dodds, would talk about India, or my Environmental Science teacher for that matter, It would always be in reference to the Demographic Transition model which helped to display where a country was developing. We would hear things entirely directed to show us that India had a greater population that the U.S three times over but with several times less the size. We saw slums in India filled with families that couldn’t pay rent, much less the amenities we are used to as Americans. So, I was scared because our challenge in India was vague enough to scare me: survive in a country where none of you know the language. I mean, I get scared from bad horror films so the idea of a place so crowded with people who speak a language that I didn’t even know a word of really made me afraid of what would happen when we all landed. When we did, I realized that I had forgot that part of what makes a developing nation is the modernization of some parts of the country, and New Delhi happened to be one of them. Sha and Eleni were prepared for this already though, and so my realization was not as mind blowing as I would have liked it to be. We left the airport at 11, and hailed a cab in a land that we (I) had not expected (I blame my AP courses). We gestured oddly coherently at a map we had drawn and as luck would have it, we arrived at the museum at 11:30 and proceeded to be amazed by literally thousands of years worth of crafts, clothing, and paintings that helped to capture a history course I wasn’t able to take in school. We spent two hours at the museum and then realized we needed to race back to the airport and grab lunch. So we raced back to the airport, spent the equivalent of 10 dollars US for “Rajma-Chawal” which is red kidney beans with steamed rice, that was made fresh in 3 minutes. We ate as fast as we could, and got on the plane right before the doors shut. We were officially on our way to Indonesia!!

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