And...?

It’s been a long week here in Pune.  I've been here long enough that I’m beginning to adapt to my surroundings and the initial shock has worn off.  I have learned so much about this culture (at least the superficial differences) but now that these differences are becoming everyday occurrences for me, I find myself waiting for something to happen.  Despite my earlier blog posts and apparently hectic schedule, my days here have been quite idle and I have experienced very little other than driving around the city.  It is no one’s fault that inactivity has characterized this week, it is mainly due to the fact that the registration process for school and with the police are aggravatingly long and complex.  Also frustrating is the fact that the two processes are interdependent and I need to complete parts of one to finish a part of the other.  I am finally (nearly) done, and receiving a bona fide certificate from Symbiosis is the final step in registering for my residential permit (allowing me to stay here one whole year when my visa would give me two mini exchanges, each with a maximum stay of 180 days).  I look forward to starting school on Monday, as this will introduce some much-needed structure into my day and put me in a situation where I can hopefully make some friends.

The other side of this week has been mental frustration.  It is a weird feeling coming to terms with the fact that you are not at home and that you will not be back there for a whole year.  I awake every morning a little surprised to find I’m not in my own bed back in Northfield.  It’s not that I don’t want to be here (though I’d be lying if I said I am not a little homesick), it’s that I seem to have forgotten up until now that going to India means putting my other life on hold for a year.  This is made all the more difficult by the fact that there has been very little to fill my day other than waiting in lines for registration, so I have had nothing to take my mind off of home and no new friends to spend time with.  However, with the beginning of school next week I’m finally coming around and fully accepting this, which is making things look a lot better.

With most of my time spent lying around or registering for something, I have very little exciting news to share other than the fact that I will soon have a working phone here.  With this I hope to contact my friends here…once I make some.  I do have Aishwarya, so there is one number already!  Tomorrow she is taking me around town to show me some fun places and to find a wallet tall enough to hold rupee notes.  If I see or learn something cool, I’ll be sure to blog about it.  Namaste!