Well, I don't really have very much to say for myself today. Marathi got canceled because Sucheta's daughter went into labor, and Sucheta went to be with her. I think we're going to have a replacement teacher for the next week or so of class.

We talked today about plans for our two week break. Laura, Sarah, and I are all planning to travel together, and I think we're going to be kind of loosely traveling with the group of three boys. We're all planning on heading to southern India to see kind of the same things... wildlife, the spice villages, and some other cool things in the south. It seems like the other two thirds of the ACM students are going north for the break... up to Delhi, Dharamsala where the Dalai Lama is, and to the Taj Mahal. According to people here, though, the Taj Mahal is basically an over-hyped tourist location that's not really worth seeing, and there are much better things to be seen and done in the south (like elephant rides). Anju even talked about a time that she spent the night in a treehouse in the middle of the forest, and she woke up with the treehouse surrounded by elephants. For some reason, she didn't recommend this experience for us.

We have to plan way ahead for the break because it's going to be happening during Divali, the festival of lights. Apparently, that means virtually everyone will be traveling and celebrating while we're out, and it'll be hard to book trains and transportation if we're not careful. So we pretty much have to have set plans very soon, and I kind of wish we had more time to figure things out and plan them. However, as far as the break goes, I'm pretty content with just about anything as long as riding an elephant is involved somewhere. I'm pretty easy to please, and I'm basically just so thrilled to be here that I'm not too picky about what we do. Except the elephant thing. That's a must.

I'm kind of thrown off by the schedule here. First of all, everything runs on brown time. And I'm kind of used to that, so usually it's not a problem. But my stomach has some issues with it. Breakfast is usually served whenever I get up and ready in the morning. Monday-Friday it's usually around 8, and later on the weekend. We have a couple of tea breaks during classes, but then lunch isn't until 2 or 3. There's another tea-time in the mid afternoon, and dinner happens sometime after 8 o'clock. I'm used to eating two meals a day at about noon and 5, so the eating schedule here is so weird for me. I feel kind of like a hobbit with my elevensies and tea time and things like that. I'll probably be round like one by the time I get home with all they're feeding me, though. For breakfast this morning, there was oatmeal and idli with sauce and chutney. It was amazing, but there's always just so much.

Also, I dislike caffeine. It doesn't really give me a buzz at all anymore, but I'm still getting caffeine headaches after every cup of tea. Hopefully that'll wear off eventually.

For lunch today, we went to a Western-style cafe. It was actually kind of neat to eat American food in India. It's about as accurate as eating foreign kinds of food in America. I basically got a tomato-mozzarella sandwich, but I'm pretty sure the main ingredient was garlic, followed closely by basil. After those two, there was bread, tomato, and some cheese. It was pretty awesome, considering I like garlic and basil.

Tomorrow, I'll be going with Gene to sit in on a lesson with the violinist and then have lunch. I'm going to miss some of Marathi and Contemporary India classes, but I'm really excited to meet the violin lady and to find out what I'm going to be able to do this semester.