Birthday Adventures

Today I started my first two classes, or "papers" according to the Indian vernacular.  The first paper I had was Community Health with Priscilla Mam. In Indian culture instead of addressing your teachers as Dr. or Professor  you address them with their first or last name followed by mam or sir. Although my classes are taught in English, the student's accents were so thick that I swear they were mixing Tamil words within their sentences. Needless to say, classes will be more of a challenge than I thought. The second paper I went to is called International Social Work. This class was very small and my professor, Salomon Sir, used power point! It really helped seeing the words spelled out in front of me so I believe that this class will be much more manageable than the first.

A fruit stand in West Tambaram

The cow unphased by being run into

Pure love

After my classes were done for the day it was time to celebrate! Mercy, our friend from the hall, decided to take us out to West Tambaram to check out some of the shops and explore a bit. West Tambaram was a jumbled mess of colors, smells, dust, people, stray animals, and tons of bugs.  (Soooo, India in a nutshell?) We went into a store, ironically named New Jersey, where I bought a cool wrap around skirt. We weaved in and out of stalls and bartered with a man for a framed picture of Vishnu for awhile before walking away because we couldn't talk him down to a low enough price. As we were leaving the stall Mercy turned around and fell face first into a cow. YES A COW! It was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever witnessed and was something that would come straight out of a movie. She was so nonchalant about it, and shrugged her shoulders to move on with our walk. Of course, I was in hysterics because it is not every day that you trip and fall onto a cow in the middle of an extremely crowded market. I mean not every day thing in America, but here.... who even knows?! Soon after, we grew tired of the bugs (and the heat) and took a share auto out to Camp Road to partake in my first American meal since being here. It has felt like an eternity! So we went to get some good ole American comfort food, PIZZZA! Yeah pizza is Italian technically, but come on, I'm still considering it American. Anyways, It tasted like glorified microwave pizza, but it was the closest to home that we were going to get. Afterwards we crossed the street to a coffee shop in which chocolate cake was consumed along with strange coffee concoctions. The service was beyond terrible but well worth it to have something sweet. It was a fantastic way to spend my birthday & a lot more innocent of a way than if I was in the United States right now.

mmmmm, cake

Me & Mercy!

T h i n k i n g  o f  y o u  a l l  a l w a y s

xoxo,
Becca