Day Two, Chennai, India

12:51pm 

         

          I have officially eaten my first Indian meal. As expected, it involved curry. The rumors that Indians eat curry for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is absolutely true. I guess its a good thing that I kind of like it. My stomach is going to have some serious adjusting to do before I'm able to eat such spicy food at 8am. That's one part of this adventure I'm not looking forward to.

          This morning, I got to meet my fellow interns for the first time. So far, so good. They all seem like really cool people with very different backgrounds. I've always said that the best part of studying abroad is the new relationships you form along the way so I'm looking forward to getting to know these people on a deeper level over the next few months.
          As you can probably tell, the internet access has been surprisingly good. Indians seem to be extremely tech-savy people in general. My program director was telling us at breakfast that even the poorest Indians own some form of cell phone.  This is probably what makes India the largest consumers of mobile devices in the world.

4:34pm

          The jet lag is starting to kick in and I'm feeling insanely tired. The curry-induced burning sensation I have in my stomach is certainly not helping the situation. We just got done with a 2-hour "briefing" with our program director. He went over everything we will be doing for the next two weeks in Chennai before we head to Mumbai. The list of cool things we're going to be doing is endless. 

          The "optional" daily yoga classes have turned into "highly recommended wink wink nod nod you better be there or I will hate you" daily yoga classes. It looks like I'll be waking up at the crack of dawn and participating in 2-hour yoga sessions on the terrace for 12 of the next 14 days. Should be interesting to say the least. 

          The only reason I'm blogging right now is because we're waiting on a taxi to arrive to take us to a shopping market. We've been told it's the largest retail shopping market in the world. Not sure how exciting that will be for the men of the group, but I'm sure it will at least be a new experience. 

          As I think about it more, I probably won't have nearly as much time to blog in the upcoming weeks. I'm going to try my best to write something every day. Whether that will actually happen or not, remains to be seen.

8:31pm

          We just got back from our adventure around the busy streets of Chennai in 3-wheeled taxis. Sankaran (our program director) suggested the 3-wheeled method of transportation over regular taxis because he thought it would be a good experience for us. He could not have been more correct. I've never been bungee jumping or sky-diving but I think the adrenaline rush is about the same. There are traffic laws here, but each and every one of them is broken all day, every day. Cars are constantly coming within inches of each other regardless of what speed they're going. As for pedestrians, they are basically nonexistent in the eyes of the drivers. Crossing the street is the most intense game of frogger you can imagine. Pedestrians have no rights and drivers assume no liability in the event of an accident so the drivers have no incentive to stop while you cross the road.
          Culture shock hit a whole new level for me today as soon as we got into downtown Chennai. The streets around the retail stores looked like an American wal-mart on black friday with 100 times more people and . And the best part? Today is an Indian national holiday so half of the stores weren't even open and our programmed director described the chaos we saw as "a slow day in Chennai".
          We stopped in some silk stores along the way and saw gold-dipped threading made into wedding outfits costing over $10,000. Indian women love gold more than their own families. They have found a way no put a piece of gold on just about every part of their bodies.
          I could sit here all night and try to describe what I saw today, but I'm jet lagged and don't have that kind of time on my hands.

Some pictures from today: