School, heat, and also SWINE FLU!

Okay, maybe it's not swine flu. But it sounds more exciting if I say it is.

What I'm talking about is how many people in our program, including our program director Viji, have come down with the flu. It's not as bad as the regular flu, and is extremely contagious...sounds like swine flu to me, don't you think? I only had a fever for one day (yesterday) and now I'm just all sneezy and sniffly and have kind of a nasty cough. It's kind of weird, after having been warned of all the deadly diseases we could catch here, to wind up with a plain old, not even that bad, run of the mill flu. Kind of a let down, although I'm sure some of you (parents) may disagree.

So, about Delhi: it's really, ridiculously hot here. We didn't get to fully appreciate how hot it was during our first week here because we were staying in an air conditioned hotel room. In our un-air conditioned apartment, we get the full impact of summer in Delhi. The nights are the worst, because we can't keep the windows open for fear of mosquitoes getting in (which they will, in droves). So we've spent several nights so far lying awake, practically drowning in our own sweat (I had no idea I could sweat so much), just thinking about how hot it is, unable to sleep. It practically consumes our entire life at this point, at least from about 4 PM onward - the mornings, at least, are not too bad. And we have absolutely no respite from the heat - as yet, we have no refrigerator (which will hopefully be rectified within a day or two) so we only have lukewarm water to drink, and no ice. It sucks. A lot. I'm trying to tell myself that it's all part of the experience, but it's a bit of a life-ruiner at this point. It makes the flu even less fun than it otherwise would be, too.

But anyway, enough complaining. Lots of exciting stuff has happened in the last week, too. We all had meetings with our host departments at the university, and we'll be starting class tomorrow - a lot of people even started last week, but our schedules didn't work out that way. So we have a pretty good idea now of what we'll be taking: I'll be taking one psychology class, called An Experiential Inquiry into Selfhood, which I couldn't resist taking despite its inconvenient timings - it looks really interesting in an Eastern sort of way (which is, after all, the point of being here), and looks at the concept of Selfhood from the viewpoints of, according to the course description, "Psychoanalysis, Existential, Engaged Buddhist and Critical Psychology". Also, contrary to my original plan, I couldn't resist taking a philosophy course while I'm here, so I'll be taking Buddhist Ethics. Two classes may not sound like a lot, but we're also taking Hindi at the study center, so two university classes is pretty standard. Plus, that leaves more time for taking extracurricular classes (dance, cooking, music, etc).

Jordan will be taking Indian Philosophical Classics, and in addition to that, the Philosophy department at DU is extremely accomodating and awesome, and has offered to give him a personalized, one-on-one class on a topic of his choosing. I'm so jealous! He has a meeting tomorrow morning to figure out his personalized lesson plan and all that jazz, so I'm sure he'll have a lot to say about it in his next post.

We still don't have internet at our place, but will hopefully be getting it in the next week or so. I just have to talk to the landlord about it and get it set up, which shouldn't be an issue because our landlord is SUPER NICE and also speaks really good English, two things which apparently you never find in landlords when you're living abroad.

By the way, I encourage all of you to write us emails...I feel pretty cut off from everyone over here, so it's always nice to hear from people. Even a short one to say hi would be nice. We miss you!