Saturday, May 24, 2008

31 hours of travel and several time zones later...

Well, I made it...
I arrived in Kolkata at around 5:30am local time yesterday morning, having slept approx. 3 of the 31 hours I spent travelling. Even now my body has absolutely no idea what time it is. I woke up at 2:30am this morning and was unable to get back to sleep. At around 5:00 I gave up and just went for a walk. It was amazing how many other people were taking advantage of the cooler temperatures at that time of day (it has been 90+ degrees and extremely humid both days I've been here) - there were even a few soccer and cricket games taking place at that early hour.
Overall, so far so good. Everyone at the school is very nice, and I have already started tutoring several students. The school is actually on holiday until June 15, but there have still been 100+ of the "rainbow" students (street children who either live at the school or drop by periodically) running around each day. It has been fun getting to play with the younger ones, but the language barrier has definitely been difficult. I've been told that the older students could serve as good Bengali tutors, though, so I definitely plan on taking advantage of their kindness.
Internet access has been more difficult than I planned, but I found an internet cafe near my housing. Also, the food has been pretty good so far, even though my dinner yesterday included curried fish eggs (I am not the most adventurous eater so this was an accomplishment for me). My stomach has protested a little, but in the spirit of India they have only been non violent protests so far.

3 comments:

tom said...

glad you made it, jay!

regarding the fish eggs, tess says: ewwwwww!

and ben says "why is it ewwwww?"

amanda said...

i'm jealous of you being in gandhi's homeland. have fun and learn lots.

Tess said...

I can't believe there were people playing soccer and cricket at 5 in the morning!

Happy belated Memorial Day.