The PDPDP
Saturday, July 31st
Hello all! Welcome to my blog which follows what I am sure will be a grand adventure to the subcontinent of India. For those of you just coming from my West Coast blog, (first of all, thanks for your support!) you are probably already familiar with the title of the post. For the newbs/those with leaky memories/those with better things to do than read every bit of my babble (no hard feelings, I skim too), the PDPDP is my post-departure pre-departure post.
But Ellen, you ask. Isn’t that a bit of a conflicting statement? Why yes, young grasshopper, it is. But unfortunately, as is oft to happen, I keep running out of time and having to write my customary pre-departure post after I have already departed. It’s a sad life.
But basically, I am going to use this post to give you all, my ever faithful (*cough*) readers, an overview of this trip and to highlight a few events leading up to this trip. A glimpse of our GLIMPSE trip. Hahaha, I crack myself up. (This is what happens when you write blogposts in the wee hours of the morning after several cups of coffee and being on an airplane for the last 9 hours – it’s not pretty).
Bad puns aside, here is the overview:
The Overview
Starting today, Saturday July 31st (Harry Potter’s birthday – just in case you were wondering) I will fly out of the Los Angeles airport, connect in Chicago, and then London before finally arriving in Bangalore, India on Monday, August 2nd at the ever convenient time of 4:30 am. Provided I make all my connections of course, which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a guaranteed thing. (I have absolutely horrid luck with airplane travel, as seen in this particular episode).
Once in India, I will spend the next two weeks travelling around the country with a group of students from Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School through the GLIMPSE study abroad program. And no, I’m not super excited and thus yelling the program title – GLIMPSE is an acronym (though I am ashamed to admit that I have already forgotten what for). We will be spending about half our time in Bangalore, the other half in New Delhi, and then a few of us will continue on the Jaipur for a few days at the end. Yayyy I’m excited.
While in India, we will have the opportunity to meet with many different types of businesses that have offices in the area. We will also get to tour the US embassy (which I am pretty pumped about) and see many of the major cultural sites, like the Taj Mahal and the Friday Mosque. The cool thing about the trip (besides the fact that the B-school is covering most of the expenses) is that we all get course credit! Credit for travelling around and seeing cool, amazing things? Sign me up.
I believe there are about 20 of us students in total, with Dr. Lawrence Mur’ray leading this expedition. Leigh Babian and her husband will also be helping lead our group. In addition, several people from the travel agency will be accompanying us, filming us for a promo video (I think – I’m a bit hazy on the details). They actually asked me (as well as a couple other people) to help out and be periodically filmed giving our impressions, which I am really pumped about. Hahaha if my blogs are any indication, I really have no problem giving my opinion on matters.
Prep Time
Now that we are all on the same page, we can move onto the pre-departure aspect of this post-departure post. Thrilling, I know. Well, as I alluded in the second sentence, I am coming from a bit of travelling prior to this trip. For the past couple weeks, I have been travelling with my family all along the western part of the U.S. We went to a family reunion in Colorado, hit up Vegas, the Grand Canyon, San Diego and Los Angeles. They will be continuing their way up the West Coast without me. Tear. Not that I would trade places with them or anything. If you’re interested in reading about any of these adventures, click here.
I also did a bit more travelling earlier this summer, I got to spend time travelling in Turkey and Mexico. They were awesome trips and if you want to read more about them, click on their names above.
But back to the trip at hand. (I really need mind-blinders or I am going to keep going off on these moderately relevant tangents). Prior to departure, I am staying at the house of my second cousins, Ruth and Wayne Glass, outside of Los Angeles, CA. Because I am getting tired, I shall summarize:
1. Packing is so much easier when all you have is your one suitcase of clothes to choose from. (ßthat was quite a revelation, Ellen. Sometimes you shock me with your genius). But in all honesty, it was a nice change from my usual ahh!gogogo!throwinsomeclothesI’mlate!
2. Despite being already packed, I got very little sleep (though I didn’t pull my usual all-nighter). Hey, creating this masterpiece of a blog takes precedence. [that’s your cue to fill in all the comment fields with your fervent agreements on the all-around beauty of my blog. Get crackin’ :P]
3. Steve Huyler, my cultural anthropologist cousin who has been coming to India for the past 27 years or so, was very kind and shipped me several of his books on the regions we’ll be visiting in India. I’ve only read a little of them so far, but they look great.
4. Not checking in luggage is always the greatest decision of any trip I take. There is nothing quite like the feeling of thumbing your nose at all the long lines at the ticket counter as you breeze on by them with your nifty carry-on.
Also, since this is a for-credit study abroad experience, we did have some prep work prior to departure. We had two or three pre-departure meetings during this past semester in which we did research on various aspects of India and presented it to the class. We also watched the movie Outsourced, which was quite good and I recommend it.
In addition, we had to do a brief paper on a business topic in India (I chose the recent declaration of the Indian gov’t demanding that Google, Blackberry, and Skype allow access to their encrypted messages) and a summer conference call. I was initially a little apprehensive about the conference call as I had never done one before and talking on the phone deeply terrified me as a child (ask child me to call a store to find out their hours and I would very near wet my pants), but it turned out to be fine. One cool thing was that I got to be interviewed and filmed by the travel agency peeps for the promo video that I mentioned earlier, which was a lot of fun.
I will admit, I haven’t done as much reading on India as I wanted to do in preparation (but isn’t that always the case?). However, I still have about 20 hours of travel time left and the always reliable Wikipedia page on India up on my computer so that I can at least put on the appearance of being prepared. Which is always what it seems to come down to. Sigh.
Ok, I’ve rambled on quite enough I think for a simple PDPDP. Apologies. But accolades if you read this far. The next post should (hopefully) detail my victory dance on arriving safely in India. Insha’allah.
Hasta luego, mis seguidores.