Hindi training

The 6 of us spent 4 days in Delhi waiting for some news on our immediate future, and finally were sent on a train up north, back to Mussoorie. Now we are with the rest of our original group (17 fellows total) and have just begun intensive Hindi training. We have had one day and have already learned about 20 vocab words, how to ask basic questions, and about 20 characters of the Hindi alphabet. We were supposed to go South so we could learn Telugu, but they couldn't find a teacher in Delhi or here, which is why we are learning Hindi now. Hopefully they will get us a tutor in Telugu when we finally get to our placements (though supposedly almost everyone in Hyderabad speaks English, but I'd still like to learn for field work and just to be respectful).

We are staying at a hotel near the language school. We are about 45 minutes from where we were two weeks ago. It's also really beautiful here and if you walk high enough when it is clear you can see snow capped mountains in the distance. There are monkeys everywhere, swinging from trees, playing in the road, and occasionally swooping down to steal plastic bags containing fruit purchased at the market.

In Delhi, 6 of us stayed in our director's 2 bedroom flat which was pretty cramped. I went to several places with Lily and Leah, including the Bahai Lotus temple, these amazing ruins called Qutub Minar, went to old Delhi and visited the spice market and the wedding district, and saw a Bollywood movie entirely in Hindi (though the plot was pretty simple and Leah translated about a third of the movie since she took Hindi at Harvard).

I'll try and put some pictures up eventually.