The food's good!

Coming to India has been, to quote our program coordinator, an "unabated roller-coaster" for me. One of the goals that I have for this experience is to become a more positive, optimistic person in general. One of the steps I'm taking towards this is to (try to) refrain from complaining when someone asks me about the accommodation. It's really not that bad...I just need to remember that things are different here. One thing that I can really focus on: the food is good. And cheap!

This last week was the first week of classes. I did a bit of shopping around and managed to finalize my schedule. Most of my classes are really good, including a statistics course that I'm actually quite excited about. I'm also taking Arabic lessons here, in the hopes that I can continue when/if I land back in Germany. It feels really good to have an idea of what my schedule is going to be like.

To round out the week, there was some sort of holiday that was celebrated on campus. Many DJs set up for people to dance around bonfires...pretty interesting for a Thursday.

I also managed to do a bit of sight-seeing. I went to the Bahai'i house of worship, where they asked that we remove our shoes. 

Here I am in front of the temple itself 

And here is an indoor model of the shape of the temple. It's a beautiful structure, shaped like a lotus flower. 

And then, to begin the week, I went to class, came home and did laundry. I know, exciting right? For me it's actually kind of a big deal. I've decided that I'm going to wash everything by hand which takes forever but afterwards I have a strange sense of pride looking at all of the clothes hanging on the line. Here is the view from the top of my dormitory. 

It's nice.