Wednesday, February 13, 2013

February 13, 2013 – Adrenaline Deterioration


You know when something scary or exciting happens to you and you get a surge of adrenaline? Can that run out? I’m pretty sure that by the end of my time in India, all of my adrenaline is going to be gone.

Today was insane. We started class at 9am with our neighborhood day presentations. Each group got 15 minutes with time for questions at the end, and the presentations took a while. Then we had a tea break followed by a lecture about the Delhi metro system. Then we had lunch at the same place that we always go to, and then we had our politics and development class. Typical day…except then it changed. We had an impromptu learning community with our faculty because many people are frustrated and upset at the lack of organization that we have encountered so far. We are upset that we aren’t in homestays for that long, and many people expected to go to one neighborhood yesterday but were taken to another and were not prepared for it at all. That session was supposed to take only a half an hour, but it took about two hours. We love to talk.

After, my roommate had to get pictures for her passport because apparently one of the consulates gave a year long Indian visa instead of a 6 month long visa, so everyone from that consulate has to go register at some complicated agency and take more passport photos and fill out a ton of paperwork. So Jill had to leave to do that right after our learning community, and I needed someone to come home with me. No one was going home: some were going to find a church for ash Wednesday, and others were going to a market. I went to the market with them, we wondered around for a while, and then it got to be around 6:45 and I know that I needed to be home by 8 for our host sister’s birthday. So 3 of us found an auto that charged us triple the amount we should have paid to go for what should have been a 20 minute ride home. In reality, this driver had no idea where we were going, so it took us about 2 hours to get home, and then he tried to charge us even more than we agreed upon. Not happening on my watch. So by the time I got home I was beyond angry and tired and hungry. I had about ten minutes to get ready for the birthday dinner.

My host sister, brother, sister-in-law, their two kids, two of their cousins, Jill, and I all went to the mall for dinner. There are three malls, one of which is very very very fancy and expensive. It has stores like Dior and Armani. It also has a really fancy restaurant on the top floor. We took an elevator to the top (with someone pushing the buttons for us…obviously) and then walked into the restaurant. It was probably the nicest restaurant I have ever been to in my life. We sat outside and ordered a lot of appetizers and food to share, didn’t eat until around 10:30pm, and got home around 12. It was a ton of fun. We were all laughing the whole time.

Overall, my day was absolutely insane. Major downs and major ups.  

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