First Impressions...

I’ve now been in India for just over 24 hours.  Here are some of my thoughts thus far:

Holy ****, there’s too many people waiting outside the airport for 2:30 AM!

It’s 50 degrees out.  What are you guys doing wearing jackets and scarves?

I’m the only one wearing a T-shirt, way to blend in, Ryan.

What is this heavenly food you call a Dosa?  It tastes like clouds and unicorns!!!

Landed in Cochin at 9:30, now I just have to make it through half of the day before passing out.

It’s hot, very hot.

Ooh I have a private driver picking me up from the airport, how fancy!

Umm this is a two-way road, why are there 4 cars all going the same way.

Ahh!  There’s no such thing as rules or lanes on Indian roadways!

Made it!

 So I landed in Delhi Airport around 2:30 AM local time, and was promptly overwhelmed by the number of people waiting outside.  I knew I had to go through that crowd eventually, so I ducked my head and b-lined it for the bus that would take me to the other terminal for domestic transfers.

I then flew from Delhi to Cochin and landed there at 9:30 AM local time, and this time I was overwhelmed by the heat and humidity.  Luckily, my program director Sunny arranged for his private driver, Mr. Shaji, to pick me up from the airport at Cochin.

It was probably less than 70 miles from the Cochin airport to Sunny’s house in Kottayam, but the drive took about 3 hours.  Despite my complete lack of sleep in the previous 24 hours, I was still quite able to stay wide awake for every one of those 3 hours.

Kerala (the state of India where I will be for these first couple of weeks) doesn’t exactly have a highway system like we do in the U.S., so we took small two-lane roads the entire way.  This results in severely overcrowded roads.  Sidewalks are also seldom to be seen, which just adds hundreds of people walking through the streets as well.  The only real way to describe the roads here is organized chaos. 

You can visualize driving in India if you’ve ever played the game Crazy Taxi.  You see a gap? Take it.  Only room for one car in this lane? Let’s make it three.  No passing zone? That doesn’t exist here.  It was a free-for-all on those roads.  Every small chance had to be taken otherwise you wouldn’t get anywhere.

We finally arrived around noon to Sunny’s residence, which is absolutely beautiful!  I had some lunch and coffee, and promptly passed out for 5 hours.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to enjoy this beautiful sunrise!

Why India?

This is always the first question I receive when I tell someone that I'm going to India, and it's usually followed with something like, "Oh I knew a guy who went there," or, "OOH BE CAREFUL!!"

I would like to answer this question with a different one; Why not India?

It dawned on me one day as I was advising a student on study abroad at my university's international center that I could do this whole study abroad thing again.  I mean, I could've spent my last semester at GVSU, where everything would be routine and I would have a great job, or (for pretty much the same price) I could spend my last semester in one of the world's most complex societies, where almost nothing will be routine.  The answer to me seemed simple.

The resources we as Americans have for travel abroad is incredible, especially in college.  There are plenty of countries who will offer us jobs as English teachers just because of the language we speak.  Because of this, I feel a sort of obligation to utilize these resources as much as possible.

And I don't value travel abroad simply for the leisure aspect of it (although that is a nice perk!), rather I value it for the challenges it brings.  When you travel abroad plenty of things become instantly more difficult.  A trip to the grocery store lasts hours instead of 15 minutes.  The idea of sleeping in your own bed in your own room becomes a luxury.  The line between clean and dirty laundry begins to blur.  You spend hours doing the hurry-up-and-wait as you adjust to using pubic transit.  In short, each day becomes an adventure and you no longer take things for granted.

Each day of challenges shapes you and makes you grow.  Things stop being black-and-white like they used to be back in freshman year.

And so, when you finally return from a trip abroad, you question things more.  You wonder why we do certain things the way we do.  You gain the ability to see things from a different perspective.

That is why I am choosing to spend my last semester in India.  I want my thought processes and values to be challenged.  I want to pull insights from these challenges.  And I want to share these insights with anyone who will listen, because stepping out of your paradigm and understanding what makes other people tick is how progress is made.


I also owe a HUGE thank you to my friends and family, specifically my mother and father, for being supportive of me in doing this.  The reality is that not everyone can afford to take these kinds of trips and I feel incredibly lucky that I am able to.  I certainly do not take these trips for granted, and having the support of friends and family really comes in handy when you're abroad, especially when you're sleep-deprived and laying on the ground at 3:00 AM in a German train station!

So thanks everybody!!! And double thanks to you Maw and Paw!!!

bis nächstes mal,
Ryan