Week of 7/8/2012- Ups and Downs

This past week has been a crazy roller coaster ride of emotion. The main thing is, that I think I’ve beat the “Delhi belly” at least for now. I am feeling much better!

This didn’t hurt much either… a little taste of home:

Yep, that’s a cold chicken salad sandwich (double decker!!) with French fries 

and vegetables. 

Add olives on top and we were set! :)

I got out of the room finally on Tuesday and made some friends. 

Wednesday, classes officially started. Correction; class for me, started. I had one class that first-years take which didn’t start until the following Monday, so that left one that I actually went to: Development Economics. My afternoon was free, and I got to sit around the room, as well as get out and talk to people and make new friends, you know... the life. What a day of school, class for one hour... 

And to top it off, it was the first Fresher's Night in the hall. This first night was Talent Show night, and we watched all the freshers get up and show off. We got some good exposure to Indian songs and nostalgic American songs sung by Indians, Indian dancing, poem reading, and even keyboard playing (the Titanic, of course). Two hours later, we were all ready to leave. Not so fast! The girl with the microphone found us and told the three of us that we needed to do something too, because we were also "freshers", or at least new to Martin Hall. 

Oh Boy... We had nothing planned. And we were next.

So, we did what any normal, clear-thinking group of female college students would think of. We pulled out our inner Spice Girls and sang- kind of. Remember, we had never practiced before. That was certainly clear. Basically, we had a general idea of how the song goes, but we were so flustered, that the "lead girl" Becca, forgot the right order for the lyrics, and I really didn't know them, so we were a mess. But, the girls loved it and hollered anyway.

Thursday came and went. 

Friday, Anu met us for lunch and brought our BCA director from Bridgewater, VA with her, Robert. He had to come over to help with another program and decided to meet with us while he stayed in Chennai. In the evening, the president of MCC invited us to dinner. There we met with a large group of students from the University of Florida who are on a traveling study abroad program around India. They were staying on campus as well, but in their own guest house.

Dinner was outside, where we were served from a buffet featuring both Indian and American dishes. Literally, dosa (a flat, crispy Indian pancake) and French fries were side by side.

However, we got chased out by the rain, which was much needed! 

Chennai and the surrounding areas were experiencing some extreme water level issues, and people were beginning to be concerned of having enough; so the rains came at a good time.

The next day was the first trip out- weekend at Malmallapuram!