WELL. I made it to a cyber cafe...no easy task. Everything here happens "tomorrow. Nate (the other intern from U.S.) and I got lost in the market and ended up at the cyber cafe! Good luck! And also bad when we try to find our way home in the dark.

I don't even know what all to write about. So much has happened here since we arrived. I do want to say that I want to send out postcards, but the town we are in is small and doesn't really have things like that that we've seen yet. It's mostly clothes and food at the market. But we hope to travel to other places on the weekends, so hopefully we can find a post office or something. I think I will just pick some random stuff that's stood out so far to write about. OH and I have all these great pictures and videos, but we're in this sketchy slow cyber cafe and I have to trade Nate computers to try to load something onto the internet at the rate of like one picture per hour. =/

Hospitality: Everyone we've met here has been so friendly and nice. Lots of stares (I think we may be the only Americans many of Pen's residents have seen), but we are offered chairs and chai everywhere we go. Everyone wants to ask questions and learn about us. No bad experiences with people so far. Much talking and visiting and eating.

Eating: SO MUCH. We have a woman (servant) who comes to make us breakfast and dinner. We are served lunch at CFI (the charity organization we are working at). Sheetal makes us really good food and so much of it, although it turns out I'm not a huge fan of Indian food. Who knew. =p Anyway, we are full all day long and then everyone we meet wants to feed us more and give us chai. Lots of rice and lentils and spices and chowpatties (wheat tortillaish things). Sheetal made us special American food for breakfast one morning - jalapeno omeletes and white toast. Very good for a change. =p

Sharad Kale: A very nice man who works for India Study Abroad Center who has been showing us around. He checks in on us, shows us where to buy water, brings us toilet paper (unavailable for the most part), takes us to the India doctor on the corner when our eyes turn bright red with infection, eats dinner with us when we won't finish the mountain of food, etc.

Bats: We woke up the other morning at 4:30am, because our times are all out of whack, and just before sunrise, allll these huge bats started flying over our bungalow. We watched from our balcony and tried to take pictures, but we were too slow. Anyway, turns out they all live in a tree behind our bungalow and hang upside down there looking all ominous. Intense.

Language: So it turns out English is spoken here...sort of. Many of the local children speak very good English that they learn as one of three languages in school. The local language is spoken most - Marathi. We have learned a few words, but it's difficult to keep up with what's going on at work and stuff because everyone speaks Marathi for the most part. Those who do know English only speak it when they are speaking directly to us and it's often difficult to understand. We're getting by though.

Traffic: Holy cow. Hahah..also, cows are holy here..I did not mean to make that pun..just happened. Street lanes are sort of a rough suggestion of where you might want your vehicle to travel. Left side for the most part...unless you are passing someone..which is most of the time. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, rickshaws, and cars all kind of share the road in a big chaotic pile in town. I'm not sure how we haven't run anyone over yet in the mobile health van. Seems to work out though.

Things that can, and did, go wrong on the way to India: Broken video/audio on the 15 hour plane ride from New Jersey to Bombay...only my seat. Broken eye...a dry eye that started out on one end of the 24 hour flight extravaganza and ended with a massive infection by the other end. This led to my encounter with the Indian corner doctor on my first day in India. Car sickness allergy attack on the three hour drive from Bombay to Pen, where we are staying. Things got much better after this! =p

Weather: The rainy season just ended, so it is supposed to be hot before it cools down in November and December. So far it's been pretty balmy and rained once or twice. I'm not sure about the temperature...no access to weather.com from the bungalow.

Work: We are working at CFI (Children's Future India), a charity organization partnered with Norway. It has TONS of projects and activities going on, all run by fewer than 100 employees. It is amazingly efficient and accomplishes so much! - especially for the Indian way of taking lots of time for everything and running late often. We have been riding along in the mobile health van to remote villages surrounding Pen. Everything looks very much straight out of National Geographic. The huts, the landscape, everything. The villagers are often malnourished and receive food or nutrition supplements with the medical treatment provided by the mobile health van about twice per month. It's very safari-like traveling to the villages. We travel out into lush vegetation on rocky/dirt roads and bounce around like Ace Ventura in his jeep in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Like, I said, I have taken many pictures, but it will be difficult to load them online. I will try! We also spent time with the HIV/AIDS project today while they did patient and family check-ups. The doctor gave us his phone number and address so we could find him to ask additional questions if we have any - more Indian hospitality!

I'm sure I have been very incomplete, but will try to write more later. You can ask me questions through email or the message board if you want more info. I have written tons, but there is so much to say! I hope everyone is doing well!

Carly...in India =D