India

All ready for work in my new Indian clothes

I’ve arrived in India! As some of you know, my preparations for this leg of my journey were somewhat…err…complicated. Getting a visa and trying to find housing in New Delhi felt overwhelming at times but things worked out splendidly as they always tend to. So I’m not homeless! And I didn’t get deported yet!

Jet lagged view from my apartment

Women selling dahl at my local market

One of my great sorrows is that I am not allowed to blog about my work at the World Health Organization (WHO). Because it’s already been incredibly fascinating and I feel very lucky to be here. Seriously lucky. And I have a supervisor who is committed to making this a great learning experiences. By my second day she has started to arrange a meeting with a major newspaper and TV station here and we have arranged a field visit to a rural hospital with a large population of patients with leprosy. But that is all that I will say.

Given that I am unable to talk about my job I will have to work hard to ensure that this doesn’t turn into a chronicle of my inevitable gastrointestinal misadventures. But even if I manage to avoid the salacious tales of digestion, I know it will be hard to refrain from talking about how hot it is here. Spoiler alert: it’s really, really hot. I was walking with the woman I’m staying with (an incredibly nice American who works at the world bank and offered me shelter just as I almost hit a panic mode) and she remarked that it was “pretty nice out and not actually that hot.” Not wanting to appear a pathetic, weak newbie I agreed that it was “very temperate.” Meanwhile I could have filled a swimming pool with the sweat of my pinkie finger alone and I was strategizing how many more steps I could take before I could invent an excuse to stop under a shady tree to “admire something.” Which I did and felt very successful until I realized that I was standing near a dead cat. Signing off now so I can chug some water.