I leave in 3 days for India! On Thursday morning Hannah and I will fly out of Seattle to begin the 23 hour journey. We'll stop in Chicago with a four hour layover and arrive in Delhi (India's capital) at 9:45 pm February 5th to meet the 25 other American students.
After a day's orientation in Delhi, we will travel to Jaipur, the capital city of Rajasthan, a desert state in the Northwest of India. We'll continue orientation there and meet our host families! The program I'm on is called Sustainable Development and Social Change, and for 2.5 months, we'll be living with Indian host families in Jaipur and taking classes at the program center. We have three hours of Intensive Hindi every morning, complete with a chai break and our own chef to make us lunch every day. In the afternoon, we have a seminar covering all kinds of topics related to the program title. We'll study India's history, politics, environmental, social & religious issues, and we'll take several excursions to places like Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, Jodhpur (the Blue City), Bikaner, Pushkar, and of course Agra, home of Taj Mahal.
For the last month of the program, I'll take off for the Independent Study Project. I will have designed the project throughout the semester based on some aspect of social change/development that really interests me, and I can choose anywhere in India to live for a month and complete my project. That means interviewing lots of people and maybe interning with activist groups or non-governmental organizations. Then, we all return to Jaipur with the 30-35 page papers we've written and present them to the class!
If you'd like to write me in India, my address will be:
Molly Knell
SIT
2, Shree Rampura Colony
Civil Lines
Jaipur, Rajasthan, 302006
India
I adore writing letters, so if you write to me, I promise to write you back. However, it does take about 3 weeks to send/receive letters, and packages often don't get there at all, especially if there are valuable objects in them.
My Skype name is molly.knell, and India is 13.5 hours ahead of Seattle. Woah. I will have my laptop with me, but I'm not sure how often I'll have internet access.
Keep in touch with me about your lives, leave me comments, and I will write more once I get to India!
Much love,
Molly
Welcome to Jaipur-The Royal Pink City !! I welcome you in the World of Blogging !!
ReplyDeleteMolly!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to hear about your trip and how everything unfolds. It sounds like you are embarking on the most amazing trip and I admire the hard work and dedication you are taking on. I hope you are safe and sound over in India. Where in Europe are you going? I'll be in Rome from the end of March through the beginning of June so if you're in the area let me know and maybe we can meet up!
Love,
Denver
p.s. I know this is anonymous but I don't have another account to post this as, haha.