the arrival

I am officially in Delhi. And yes, there are smells to be smelled. We are staying at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in New Delhi for our orientation, and every morning we wake up to chanting and, because of the late monsoon season, it smells like wet, wet dirt and intense tropical flowers. Right now lunch is wafting down from the kitchen (I am in the SIT Program Center, where we have classes and we have lunch on the rooftop terrace that overlooks the rooftop city of Delhi) and, though I just had some weird little fried snack, I'm getting pretty hungry.

The program is actually awesome beyond anything I expected. The Academic Director (Storm-ji, yes... that's right... "Storm-ji") is really nice and funny and even swears (Oh! Thank goodness). The staff is pretty amazing, and I'm getting to know the students. There are 12 of us, 2 boys and 10 girls. That is tough, but I'll make due. The coolest thing is that starting next Wednesday we begin our regular routine - yoga at 7 on the roof (!!), hindi for 2 hours, lunch, Arts and Culture lecture (various scholars come and give us the digs on all that is Indian art), and then PRACTICA workshops. The practice workshops are the coolest. We can do a workshop in pottery, or tabla, or bollywood dance, or sitar playing. I really don't know what to do... but I'm excited because everything sounds great.

Also, I just talk to Storm-ji about the possibility of getting my hands on film equipment and taking it into the mountains (and we are talking MOUNTAINS) for my Independent Study Project. She is down with helping me to facilitate whatever bizarre adventures I hope to have, which is really, really amazing. I will most definitely have to rent the equipment, but that's all right because I am so obscenely rich.

Also, a few notes about Delhi in general:
Basically I'm just overwhelmed at the moment by the people and the driving (insane, absolutely terrifyingly insane) and the sheer sprawl of buildings and little communities. It's pretty confusing. Granted, it's my second day here so I am sure that will get better. SIT does these things called "Drop-Offs" where they just drop a group in a part of the city and we have to find certain things and then report back to the Program Center. WE had one yesterday and got monsooned on and managed to find nothing useful... then, in about 1 month and a half we have a "Hindi drop off" in which we have to find things only using Hindi.

I do not expect that to go smoothly, but maybe I'll be a quick study.

Hopefully I will get pictures on on here soon...
Love to you all.