July 19, 2010

My Hindi class began today! It went well. I think speaking it will be easy but writing it and reading it is going to take a little longer. Our teacher is very nice and patient. After three hours of Hindi starting at 8:30 am, we had lunch at the IES Center which is about 15-20mins on auto rickshaw. After lunch we had about 2 hrs of more orientation. We had some guy from the embassy talk about safety in India. The things he was saying were making me mad because he made it seem like Delhi is so dangerous and a bad place to be in, which it not true. Hamunchu (teacher and the person who lives in the IES residence with his wife) and I were talking about what the guy said about Delhi. After that we had a doctor come and talk to us about being safe. Then around 3:30 we went back to the IES residence to relax before our next activity. On the way to the residence I talked to the taxi driver in Hindi which made me happy. Around 4:30 we got into groups of 2 and Hamunchu had is find two things that we had to bring back. We walked around the city and for my group we were supposed to find a food stand menu and sit in restaurant menu. When we got back to the residence we showed the other groups where we got the menus and we marked it on the map. We also marked a gym, markets, pharmacy, shops, tailor and other places around the residence. For dinner there was lentils, some meat thing (I didn't eat it because I'm trying to not eat meat), rice, naan, and some vegetable thing that tasted like potatoes. After dinner some people went to bed, some went to see Inception with Hamunchu and his wife, and the rest of us studied Hindi together. Tomorrow, more Hindi, getting cell phones, and other stuff.