I’m ‘out of station’ for this month as they call it here. I’m in S. India. Its funny, I lived in Andhra Pradesh for three months and thought I was in S. India. Turns out that the people in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu welcome us to South India like we weren’t in South India before. I’m pretty sure after composedly being shown to our room on a campus that is basically just a tropical paradise, into a room that is so clean and new and just lovely—pretty much me and Elise jumped up and down for a long time. Wait, that was just me.

We spent the morning (well, its 3pm but we just finished lunch, so there are long mornings here) working out our program for this month. We’re going to get to spend time in such a variety of different places and doing a bunch of different things. Basically, we got to devotions this morning and ended up being the speakers. And I didn’t hate it! Maybe I’ll be used to the whole public speaking thing by the time I’m done with my time in India. I’m going to get to do a pretty good variety of public health teaching on health and hygiene and nutrition. We sat down with leadership and they brought a lot to the table, and we shared with them what we would like to be involved in. It was actually a very encouraging experience.

I like the very relational nature of this culture. There is a chance it may drive me crazy by the end of this month, but going into it with flexibility is helpful when doing anything in this culture. In the past several weeks, I actually had some responsibility and stuff to ‘get done.’ At first I was so frustrated and tired ‘cause it would take hours to get two jsimple tasks done. By the end though, I knew to give myself a couple hours, so I was totally content to sit and talk with people while I was waiting.

One of these days my task oriented nature will be overcome  It is much diminished from three months back without a doubt!

Bangalore is quite different than Hyderabad. I’ve seen such a small portion—really just drove through the city, so I’m sure four weeks from now I’ll know even more ways that it is different from home. I saw much more modern, western, cleaner architecture. I could imagine much more that I was in an American city as we drove by a sign for Texas Instruments.

The most important thing you NEED to know about is that India won the Cricket World Cup. If you were unsure, all you’d have to do is to be in India last night and the fireworks and boys running around screaming would remove any doubt! As we drove through the city the most amusing thing I saw while I was there was a techy store with TV’s and stuff like that. It was a nice store, totally empty except the clerk, the storefront evident because of the glass windows. Outside this store probably 30-40 men were huddled, all gazing intently at the screens inside. It was hysterical. India is a happy country today!