Greetings from Chennai, India!! (Day 1, Part 1)

After 24 hours of travel, we made it, and arrived at our quarters around 2AM local time today.

Our flights were uneventful, though I had trouble sleeping on the plane, and last night. So I’m running on less than 4 hours of sleep in a 48 hour period! I watched Rango and Tangled in the air, and I even watched part of Finding Nemo in German.  I learned that “boing,” “dude,” and whale speak translate across language barriers.

We're flying over India!

Baggage Clam, and Cathryn

The ride thru Chennai from the airport to TANUVAS last night was full of surprises. After a long and seemingly superfluous extra screening, we got our bags and made our way outside, where we were hit with a wall of hot, moist air. India said hello by showing just HOW hot it really is, even at 2 in the morning! The streets were crowded with people and stray dogs as we made our way to the van. And oh, the van ride. It’s apparent that traffic rules are more like suggestions, and honking is encouraged at all times. I would never, ever, want to attempt to make my way anywhere driving in this city!! Along the way we saw people sleeping all over the sidewalks, and more stray animals (including GOATS in the road). It was great fun!

Before bed last night we headed over to the guest house with our computers and sat on the porch long enough to send messages home. I got to talk to Brad for a quick minute on Skype, and tried to email the rest of my family but the internet is very intermittent. Brad got the word out for me though.

We are currently staying in guest rooms on the TANUVAS campus, as a group from the veterinary school in Michigan are staying in the hostel. We will be moving over there in a couple of days. In the mean time, we’ve got a good place to stay with three of us to a room. My bucket shower this morning was very enjoyable (no, really J ) and we even have air conditioning (much to Janah’s and my dismay since we woke up at 4:45am feeling like we had somehow been plopped in the middle of the Arctic tundra. We have since learned there is a remote control for it).

This morning I headed to the guest house for breakfast (and to use the community computer with a more reliable internet connection), and was greeted with, by far, THE BEST cup of coffee I have ever had. It’s indescribable! I had two cups of it with breakfast, along with idli, sambar, coconut chutney, and rice. It was all very good, and a bit on the spicy side. I can only imagine what lunch will be like if even breakfast has a kick!! But on my way to the guest house, in the palm tree right outside our room, I saw a man who had shimmied up about 20 feet of bare palm trunk. He had a long bamboo stick in one hand and was beating a neighboring tree’s branches to shake out the fruit. I haven’t figured out what the fruit is yet. It might be jackfruit.

After breakfast Dr. Subbiah took us to meet the Vice Chancellor of TANUVAS in his office, where we took pictures with him, gave him a thank you gift for hosting us, and had some tea (ALMOST as delicious as the coffee).

And now we are back at our quarters, where I still can’t sleep, and the internet is down. Thus I am writing this post in Word and will put it online later when the internet comes back. Apparently between 10 and 6 are bad hours for the internet, so I will try to Skype tonight.

A view from outside our room.

So, thus far I’ve already learned quite a bit about modern Indian culture, and am looking forward to learning more!