Pre-Departure Leadup

So, it's about a month away from my departure. I am getting super excited. For those of you who don't know much about my upcoming semester I will be spending the entire semester abroad in Madurai, India. Madurai is in southern India in the state of Tamil Nadu. In my ANT 121 (Peoples and Cultures) class first semester of freshman year a representative from SITA the South Indian Term Abroad program came. She explained to us that this program was an anthropology based study abroad experience where we take classes at a small center in town, live in home stays, travel on the weekends and conduct an ethnography. At the time I thought it was cool, but nothing more, despite I kept the flyer in my notebook all year long. As a sophomore I started to look into my study abroad opportunities. As a photography major my options were Florence or London; my options didn't tickle my fancy. Instead, I remembered about SITA discussed it with my mom and ended up applying. I was accepted earlier this semester to the program. The group of students on SITA this upcoming semester is only 12. The program is pretty small, obviously. The ethnography that I have proposed is a continuation of my senior project. The senior project that I completed at Watkinson was a comparative study of cultures through photographs. The photographs were taken by children of the 5th grade educational and age level. The two places in my Senior Project were Oaxaca, Mexico where I had gone on a service trip and Hartford, CT with children at SPHERE. I am super excited to be going abroad next semester and even more that I will be in INDIA! As departure gets closer I have just got my immunizations, sent in my Indian Student Visa and got an e-mail describing my home stay family. "Mr. Sugumaran is 47 years old and runs a boutique and handicraft shop near Meenakshi Amman Temple. He is a young, pleasant and energetic person. His wife, Mrs. Kavitha, is 42 years old. She is a home maker and runs a women's beauty parlour. They have a son, Sanjayan, who is 19 years old and doing his 2nd year Auto Mobile Engineering in KLN College. Their daughter, Kshmaa, is 15 years old. She is in 10th grade. She is a badminton player and won the State Championship in both under 17 and under 19 tournaments. Both are lively kids. Though both Mr. Sugumaran and Mrs. Kavitha are busy with work, they manage to give time for children and students and love to have more exposure in cultural exchange. They live 4 km from the SITA Center. They are a Hindu family and speak both Tamil and English. They cook both vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals. You will have a private room."