Program, orientation, village, city

A lot has happened since I last checked in; it all seems pretty relevant though, so I'm going to put down all I remember.

On Monday evening I met the people from my program in a hotel in Mumbai. I met Zane who had been in last year's summer program and is now our Alumni Adivior and studies yogic religious practices, and Abishek, who is the Assistant Resident Director and a native of Pune, though he has travelled all over India (and never outside the country). Abishek also is very skeptical of Indian cinema, and doesn't like Sharukh Khan. (All of us are quite mystified by this.)

I stayed in a single room because there's an odd number of guys in the program, and had dinner with some of the early arrivals. A couple people (Elizabeth, Casey, Jenny) had gotten to Mumbai a few days early and had spent the last couple of days visiting all the touristy places. We also met Uttara, who is the Resident Director and made us feel right at home.

The next morning, Tuesday, at breakfast most of the rest of the program had arrived and I met about twenty more people, who I'm going to only describe as they come up, and then we went to this retreat place called Durshet, which is between Mumbai and Pune and near Pali. Pali, which we visited, has one of the eight major Ganesha temples of Maharashtra. It is in the foothills of the Deccan Plateau, as is Durshet. We also visited a small village about half an hour up the mountain from Durshet, where there were rice paddies, irrigation systems, and chickens. Those of us in the program wandered around taking touristy pictures and learned how to separate rice from chaff and grind rice into flour.

The three nights we spent at Durshet, however, did take me by surprise. That is, I completely missed the memo that we'd be spending multiple days in a cabin without access to a store or internet. (Well, except for those in the program who already had phones; apparently it's possible to get incessant Skype calls in a rice paddy in a small mountain village, as one of my program-mates discovered. Welcome to the 21st century!)

In short, I should have purchased shampoo at least and possibly a phone while I was with my family in Mumbai, rather than assuming I could just buy such things in Pune. Or packed it or something.

Other than my forgetting to bring things, though, the retreat area is gorgeous. We're surrounded by green all the time, except when it's raining and we're surrounded by wet. The food is great too; we've not had a repeat dish yet because the program wants us to all know what dishes we like and don't like.

We also got to play dancing games with some of the women who work at Durshet; as far as I can tell clapping and dancing in a circle is the equivalent of American line dances, and instead of Cotton-Eyed Joe Maharashtrian women sing about Krishna throwing gulal.

My roommates here are literally every guy who's a student in this program, which is to say the other two guys in our twenty-four person program, Ryan and AJ. They both go to Georgetown and are pretty chill. Ryan brought a bunch of American films along, just in case, and thought it would be cool to see a tiger in the woods here. (He wasn't the only one; Rachel also mentioned tigers and how cool it would be to see them. Apparently I'm the only one who doesn't want to encounter a wild cat large enough to bite my head off.) I don't know AJ's opinions on tigers, but he can do yoga, which is cool. I'm pretty sure he and Ryan were friends before this program, which is probably good because they're sharing a homestay.

Speaking of homestays, my host family contains one of Abishek's best friends, though he's not going to be there. Abishek is a huge fan of them; for the Ganapati festival, which is starting today or tomorrow, they invite all of their kids' friends over, and since their youngest is my age that means I'm going to be meeting a bunch of awesome people. I also heard rumors of ice cream.

I am, however, the first student this family has hosted, so we'll be learning together, I guess. My family is the only one that hasn't hosted before, though, and I'm the only one staying with them, though a couple other students live down the street, so I doubt it's a big deal.

Since today we're going to Pune, so I'm going to ask this question of you, dearest darlingest readers: Have you ever been on a long journey and finally reached your destination? How did you feel when you got there?

Update: The views on the way to Pune look like someone jacked up the saturation. There's just these casual gorgeous green mountain vistas. I think this is what's called the Aravali Range.

Update 2: My host family is amazing. The eldest son (who is going to France in a couple days) showed me around and says he'll take me somewhere the next couple of days, his sister makes the most amazing kerela fry I've ever had, and their parents are super nice and welcoming. I'll write a post about Ganapati tomorrow.