Hey everyone!

Before our Spring break last week we finished up the homestay portion of our trip, so I thought this would be a good time to do a “day in the life” kind of post, and show you all a little bit about what life is like here. I don’t have too many photos, but I do want to share some basic-but-hopefully-not-boring details about what it’s like to live here in McLeod, and in India more generally.

The most important thing I have to say about my homestay is that my host parents were absolutely spectacular. My host mom spoke excellent English, so I didn’t usually have a problem communicating what was happening, which is absolutely essential when you’re living together for three weeks. I had some great conversations with her while she was making food or knitting or sitting on the front porch ordering chai by shouting down at people on the street below. My host dad spoke less English, but was also one of the funniest people I’ve met. This is a photo of us having a dinner of momos early in my stay, when a couple of other study abroad students were also staying with us:

Food is an important part of every experience I’ve had in India, and for the homestays this was even more true because we had breakfast and lunch together every day. This is the breakfast that I had brought to me while I was still in bed, at or just after 7:30 every morning. It’s an omelet with a sweet roll and peanut butter and jam, the standard breakfast fed to westerners all over town as far as I can tell:

You didn’t notice it in that last photo, but I have not been without a water bottle at any time during our trip. Which is my way of segueing into mentioning that you don’t drink the water in India, because it’s never to be trusted. We drink only bottled or filtered water, depending on what you have access to. I was lucky enough to have a supply in my homestay so that I was able to fill up my bottle, but members of my program who didn’t have that had to go through a whole lot of plastic bottles, which is really problematic in a country that doesn’t do so well disposing of waste, as I've mentioned before.

Speaking of things that India doesn’t do so well with, power is absolutely sketchy. Outages are frequent, and everyone carries a flashlight ("torch" due to British influence here) because they tend to occur while you are trying to open a door or just finishing a bathroom experience (more on that in a moment). This is a terribly blurry photo of me eating a dinner (of absolutely spectacular fried rice and momo soup, in case you were wondering) by candlelight:

When you eat lots of tasty food and carry water everywhere, you also have to be aware of what your bathroom options are going to be. This means carrying toilet paper at absolutely all times or stealing napkins from meals, not being too concerned about the state of your clothes and shoes, and in my case being willing to get dressed and go outside to the place next door whenever you needed to go number two. This is due to reasons of plumbing that I will not describe for your sake. Here’s our bathroom:

The squatty toilet will be familiar to those of you who have travelled Asia before, but the big white tank up on the wall on the left side might not be. It’s a miniature water heater, which is the fancier (as opposed to solar heat) way that you can get hot water. This does not mean a hot shower, but a bucket of hot water, which is absolutely essential in a place as cold as it is here in the Winter and early Spring.

Climate control isn’t a thing here, so you learn how to adapt your personal climate to whatever is happening outside and to always be prepared pretty quickly. Exceptional layering strategy is essential, and at night you might be wearing all of your clothes and also using blankets. For a month or two of our time here I woke up being able to see my breath, but by being smart and planning ahead it’s always possible to avoid being cold or to warm up. This is the room that I stayed in, which was absolutely beautiful in the early morning and afternoon and truly a pleasure to wake up in:

That’s all the photos I have to share, and I’ve covered most of the basics, so that last thing I’d like to mention is the internet situation here. Because Mcleod is a tourism-dependent town, wifi is absolutely everywhere. That said, it does not exist in houses—unless you’re lucky enough to be across the street from a giant hotel like I was. As clever and constantly connected college students, we were very quick to learn who had the best wifi, what the passwords were, and what kind of café you like to do your work in. The only downside is that it’s usually kinder to order food and drinks. But when a cup of tea costs maybe fifty cents there are certainly worse things in life.

That’s all I have to share for now. I’m holding off a bit on posting about food because I want to make sure I really do it justice. I’ll be back soon with a post about our Spring break trip, which is certainly worthy of substantial documentation and explanation. For now, thanks for reading!