I'm going to India!

I am going to India! Most everyone who knows me is thinking Well, duh right about now... Yes, this post is long overdue. I've known since mid-February that I was a finalist for the Department of State's Critical Language Program to study Hindi in Jaipur, India for the summer. But the process has been so full of false starts and daunting deadlines that, until yesterday when I arrived at the Dulles airport in DC for orientation, it hasn't felt real. 

My transcript was delayed, my visa application was bafflingly intense, a stipend check never arrived, I wandered all over the US's noble capital city in search of my hotel wanting so desperately to give up and go home...but as I sat in a room tonight with the 30ish other people selected to study Hindi at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS, as I have learned to call it) and listened to Assistant Secretary of State Ann Stock talk about challenges, getting out of your comfort zone, and not going to Starbucks, I found myself snuggling into the reality of my summer. 

On Friday, June 14th, I will fly from Dulles to Delhi (via a quick stop in Frankfort, Germany). The travel will take hours upon hours and it will technically be the 16th by the time I am actually on the ground in India. There, I will meet my teachers, take a language placement exam, and continue preparing to embrace both the language and culture of a land I have loved at a distance for two years now. After another orientation in Delhi, we will take a bus to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, where I will primarily be for the rest of the summer. I'll meet my host family and begin life in India. The program lasts 8 weeks and will involve intense Hindi language classes every morning and various other activities (tutoring with a local language partner, cultural excursions, the possible Bollywood dance class) in the afternoons and on weekends. 

Why am I doing this? The real question is how can anyone pass up a free trip to India??? Well, it's been a long journey...I started learning Hindi and about the culture/religions of India two years ago when my mind started to crave a new language. I fell in love with the diversity, the paradoxes, the colors, the smells, the way I felt both surprised and at ease in all that I was learning. I applied for this same scholarship program a year ago and made it to the second round only to be turned down. I wasn't ready. I thought I was, which may be exactly the reason I wasn't. Now, I feel ridiculously unprepared. In the future, I think know I could live in India for awhile or at the very least work with Indian nationals in a different setting. And with the way that my views on service have been changing (shifting away from a "helping" mindset that puts one person at an advantage over another), really learning the language instead of expecting people to meet me where I am...the obnoxious American monoglot. I'm especially interested in working with people who have been marginalized by society, such as women in the sex trade, and I know that to be able to relate to people who have been it in that situation, it is important to know the language. So I'm setting off on a whirlwind adventure of learning and trying new things.

A lot of factors have complicated this summer for me, and it's been more difficult than I could have ever imagined to convince myself that this is what I'm supposed to do this summer. In fact, just a few hours after arriving in DC, I found myself in the bathroom of my hotel room giving myself yet another teary-eyed pep talk. But now that I have met some of my fellow travelers/students/housemates/future friends and the trip to India is starting to solidify in my mind, I feel good. This trip feels good. And in the words of former president George W. Bush, "if it feels good, do it; if it's wrong, blame somebody else."

So I will attempt to keep updating my blog...I make no promises, though. 

India, here I come.