Thanks Ex-pats!

7/24/10- 5:30pm

Another Saturday in India, another day of shopping and beauty treatments! My new favorite thing is called a head massage. You get oil (this time it was olive, I'm not sure what they used last time) rubbed all over your hair and scalp and then get a scalp, face, shoulder, arm, neck, and upper back massage. It is completely heavenly! Afterwards, you get a nice shampoo and a second scalp massage to go along with it. During my massage I was wondering if this sort of thing is available in the states, and then I realized that even if it was, I probably wouldn't be able to afford it. Better "stock up" on head massages while I'm here!

But, perhaps more interesting, last night, our group was invited to the Fulbright director's house for some nice ex-pat hospitality. Adam Grotsky lives in an absolutely gorgeous apartment on the top floor of the Fulbright House, which (from what I recall from what Adam told us) was built in the 1920s or 1930s by the British to house the contractors who were building what we know as New Delhi: the wide tree-lined avenues, roundabouts, bungalows, etc. Anyway, it turns out Adam is originally from Harrisburg and went to Penn for undergrad- it was really nice to chat with somebody who's familiar with where I'm from! Well, we were over at Adam's for a few hours, and by the time we got back to the hotel I was pretty exhausted. Was it ever nice to go to sleep.

We sat around and had delicious food and Kingfisher beer, and there were a couple other Fulbrighters who happened to be in town too, so we had a great time talking to them and hearing about their work and their impressions of India. It was also a welcome change to spend time with other Americans- other than the people in our group, we have been dealing exclusively with Indian citizens, and sometimes the language difficulty (it's not quite a barrier) can get a little tedious. They have a hard time understanding our accents, and we have a hard time understanding theirs, and my Hindi is pretty much nonexistent. In my normal daily life I take for granted that I can readily understand people and they can readily understand me, so it has been a change to have to put in extra effort towards making sure the person I am speaking to can understand me. I would hate for them to have an idea about Americans that we speak quickly and unintelligibly! It really gives me a lot of empathy to people who are learning new languages or living in completely foreign lands- I don't think I could handle the frustration that would come along with being in a place where I don't speak the language at all- but Indian English, I can handle reasonably well.

Which brings us to today. After all the running around of the past 2+ weeks, I just wanted to sit around for a while and do nothing- so that's what I did for the first half of the day. Then Beth and I went over to Khan Market for a couple hours. In addition to the aforementioned beauty treatments and shopping, we also had some really delicious kebabs there from a little Afghan stand that usually has a long line of customers- I had some kind of spinach and onion thingy wrapped in some extremely thin bread. It sure was tasty! In a little while we're going out with one of her friend's friends (something like that) for cocktails and snacks.

What's on my mind the most lately (when I'm not thinking about how I can make the most of my experience here) is how excited I am to be getting back home on August 14. The fact that I am having a blast here, enjoying new experiences, learning a lot, having adventures, and all that, doesn't take away from the fact that at heart I love being home. It's kind of a complicated set of conflicting feelings to sort out. For me, missing home doesn't mean that I'm regretting my decision to come on this trip or that I would hop on the next plane home if I could. I am happy to have three more weeks here to experience and learn all I can, because I know my work here has barely begun. But I know with 100% certainty that by the time August 14 rolls around, I'm going to be beside myself with excitement because I'll get to go home!