My plane got in around 1pm, and it was extremely nice to get out of that flying metal tube and stretch my legs. My first stop: the water fountain to refill my water bottle and begin the reconstitution process that must come after long international flights. I was happy to see a special spout for water bottles on the water fountain - so nice! Second stop: the currency exchange to get some New Zealand moolah. Traveling protip: using google to translate currency will lead you down a sad path when you exchange your money for real. When I looked at the exchange rate online, a New Zealand dollar was worth about 0.80 US dollars. But my 200 American dollars only got me 217 NZD from the exchangers. Ouch. Looks like peanut butter and saltines is on ... read more

Aha...I'm a bit delayed in writing these next couple of posts. As the program progresses I'm getting less and less motivation, as it often goes with experiencing new things. At first it's really exciting and everything you do is new! and wonderful! and you want to use exclamation points to end all your sentences! But eventually you start to get used to things and don't try to learn as much. I think part of it, too, is that I haven't been able to get much exercise here so I'm losing my eternal endorphine high. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Anyway, back to actually reporting on the fun stuff. On Sunday we got the day off from hours and hours of lectures and got to go visit some sweet temples in Belur and Halebidu, Karnataka. Just as in our trip to ... read more

I can tell we're all getting tired of this break-neck pace, here in India. It's getting harder to convince myself to blog every day, which is why I've gone and missed one yesterday. Sorry everyone! But not really much happened yesterday, so there's not a whol lot to report. I convinced Bala to order me a "cheese burst" pizza from Domino's, non-veg. It was delivered to my room in less than 30 minutes just like they promised (I was really surprised) and was pretty tasty. The sauce is more BBQ than tomato, and the toppings are similar to a supreme pizza. The difference is the "cheese burst" part--they put a bunch of melty cheese between layers of crust on the bottom. It's pretty darn tasty, though ridiculously rich. I should not have eaten as much of ... read more

Some of you may ask, "Why Jenni, how could you possibly have seen lions and tigers and bears at the ANCRiSST workshop you were supposed to attend today?" Well, my dear readers, there are two likely possibilities. The first is that the workshop hosts decided to bring a menagerie at lunch to entertain us guests--not an unlikely scenario considering the immense hospitality I've seen here--and the second is that I skipped out on the conference. As you may have already guessed, I did indeed play hooky today! After talking late into the night with Bala, Hussain, et al. I heard their plans to skip out on the conference and go see some tigers at Bannerghatta National Park. Naturally I was thrilled at the opportunity to a) get some extra sleep, b) have another adventure in India, ... read more

I am very tired today; staying up so late blogging is not good for me! After lectures us girls and Gift (pronounced "jift") and Duan went to pick up our saris from the tailor and buy some accessories. I got earrings and bangles, and will be wearing my dress sandals that I bought. Apparently it's going to take 2 hours for us to fully get ready so we're going to ditch the entire afternoon workshop session to have time to prepare. Don't tell on us, 'kay? I'm going to go to bed now--it may only be 9:45 but I need my sleep and the bus leaves at 7am tomorrow morning (ugh). 'Night.... read more