Delhi Orientation

So we had a busy day today! We went to see the new Indian foreign secretary this morning, Nirupama Rao. It was a really cool experience! She worked in Peru for awhile and studied literature before she was secretary. And she was really interested in everyone's different project; we actually went around and told what we were doing, and there were over 40 of us. She seemed really cool, like I wish I could have just sat and talked to her about literature and stuff. They gave us these big colorful bags from Indian tourism with this big box with some perfume, incense, pretty bags of silver candy ( we didn't know it was candy - we had to ask the bus driver!), a cd of music, pretty cool!

After that we went to the Fulbright House for orientation stuff. An american guy spoke - he had a consulting business in India to teach and help Indians adapt to American culture for work and such. And they had a doctor here come in and tell us about different illnesses and health concerns we should be careful of. She was so cute in her sari! Her presentation was pretty amusing, too!

Then we had some briefing about grant administration. It's weird though, I don't yet feel like I'm really in India. One speaker said everyone experiences their own little slice of India - and my slice had been Ahmedabad. Delhi seems so much more westernized than the first impressions I had of India from Ahmedabad. But I'll get to see A'bad again shortly!

We had lunch at the cafe there on the Fulbright house campus. Paratha, daal, fried lady fingers (some kind of green bean), other indian food.... I finally met the other girl who will be in Ahmedabad. She's also affiliated with CEPT and is studying the architecture of step wells around Ahmedabad. So it was really cool to meet someone else there who is in arch and planning and speaks the language and all!

We had a break so a few of us girls ran over to Connaught Circle to go shopping at FabIndia - I got one blue and one teal kurta (shirt). We had to book it to get back to the Fulbright House for our dinner reception. They had set up a big tent and had Christmas lights strung up everywhere. It was really nice! They had tons of servers walking around with appetizers, and they kept ambushing us to offer us food, ha. It was really nice, but you could tell everyone was feeling the jetlag and just running out of steam! So a very busy day, but exciting for the most part! I can't believe I'm still awake at this point!