Hotel Surguru Pondicherry

I'm here! Whoopee! I left the States on Saturday around noon, and arrived in Chennai Monday morning around 5am. Turns out my suitcase got stranded in Mumbai-I'll have to make do with one change of clothes for several days. Could be worse. I flew Air India. Instead of typical suits, all the waitresses wore saris or punjabis. They also showed Bollywood films practically nonstop--thank goodness for eye-masks! On the flight, I tried to figure out at what point I crossed into India and thus had to...

Morgan and myself embarked on a Cathay Pacific flight from LAX at 1:10pm on July 3rd, 2008 after a lot of groundwork. We had to take care of Visas, Passports, Tickets, Packing, Planning, Finances, Vaccinations, and many other things in a very short period of time- about a month and a half. But we did it! The last couple days that I had in the US I spent with my family and friends. It was really nice to see the people that I love especially since they will be the thing that I miss most about ...

First Look at Pondicherry University and Auroville The other IISAC students and I had to register our visas upon 14 days of arriving in India- so one of the assistants, Priya, took us to get pictures, passport copies, and finally to register our visas in the government office which is an old building that is falling apart like many other buildings in this country, but this is to be expected because India is a third world country in a phase of economic transition. After the Visa Registration w...

Pondicherry Saturday July 5, 2008 (~7:30 a.m.) So many people out so early! Even as early as 5:30am there were people milling about the town, so different from America. We finally got checked into the Hotel Suguru, and it was so refreshing to finally have a base camp to work from. The shower had a typical showerhead but also a bucket if you wanted to take the more traditional Indian shower, and it all emptied into a big drain in the floor. The hotel seems very into energy conservation as well...

Monday July 7, 2008 Today was an interesting one, beginning with overwhelming apprehension but ending quite well. Jessie and I began the day with a little bit of mixed information, as Priya, the very helpful (but new) program assistant, had been in communication with us but due to language barriers/phone reception issues we were unable to pin down a time or place that Jessie and I were to rendezvous with the rest of the group. This coupled with an incorrectly copied cell number for the direc...