Thanjavur

Hey everyone! Right now me and the rest of the SITA students are staying in a hotel in the town of Thanjavur. We will be staying here for the next few days for orientation and some intro classes so we can start our semester. We arrived in Chennai on Sunday morning around 8 pm after a long travel, a 12 hour flight to Dubai a 6 hour layover and then another 5 hour flight....I wasn't sure what day it was, or what time, we had experienced over 24 hours of night time due to flying into different timezone so it was nice to reach Chennai and see daylight. Our first day (which was only yesterday but seemed like forever ago) was spent somewhat resting and exploring the city of Chennai. Then we took a sleeper train from Chennai to where we currently are. The sleeper train was interesting, i woke up in the middle of the night because i had to go to the bathroom and managed to find my way to the Indian Style bathroom, basically a room with two footholds and a whole to the tracks...It actually was not as bad as it sounds. But due to jet lag and completely different timezone it took a long time for me to fall back asleep. We all woke up around 5 am when the train was supposed to arrive in Thanjavur, but it was delayed for an hour so I spent the time standing between our sleeper car and the next one watching the Indian countryside go by with some other SITA students, it was beautiful; southern India is much more lush and tropical than i imagined in my head. Today we took our first class in Tamil the native language where we learned the phrase "ennaku coffee veendum" which translates to I want coffee or coffee is needed to me. The most exciting and traumatic (to some but not to me) part of the day was shopping. We walked a few blocks away and got to see the city to a local clothing store for women where we bought a three piece "suit". This is a pair of leggings or pants, a long tunic and a scarf to cover the chest. I ended up selecting a purple and pink tunic shirt with a matching pink scarf, i really like the clothes I chose so I am excited to wear them soon! We need this traditional set of clothing to visit the temple in town tomorrow which I am very excited for. Oh, we also bought a nightie as they call it or a long nightgown, this nightgown has sleeves and goes all the way down to your ankles so no part of your body can be seen. The experience in the store was exhausting, of course none of the leggings were designed for my body type so i had to try pair after pair on in a small extremely hot changing room. Good thing i packed some of my own!Since we are told that India is such a slow paced place i was surprised at how fast and busy the process was.