India

I have indeed arrived. So i got into india two days ago. After getting up at 4:15am on friday to catch three different trains to paris. One which the one to paris from geneva i didn't have time to print off a ticket and almost had to pay an additional 77 euros, but i sweet talked the frenchie, even though i've decided in the most ethnocentric way all frenchies are snotty (no offence Em and X). And then took an hour long subway ride into the city, to catch a flight to london, to wait and catch a flight to Delhi, which got in at 6:30am. I did get a little sleep on the last flight, because it wasn't full- like 3 hours. Then i booked another two and a half hour flight into bangalore, and caught a 40 minute bus into the city, spent 4 hours looking for a guesthouse--all of which were booked because of an event taking place last weekend, so decided to catch another 3 hour bus down to mysore, where i got in at like 9pm, got a room, and locked it. Gosh i need to eat something.
So it's been a lot of traveling in the past 48 hours. The good news is culture shock didn't set in immediatley- from the time i landed in delhi til about midnight last night, i felt really satisfied. Really excited but also really peaceful. then the frustration of public transportation and the hours of looking for a place just to take a nap combined and as my head was touching the pillow last night, i asked myself (outloud) What am i doing here? I should be in the studio, working on some clay.
don't worry, i talked myself down. And slept rather peacefully. The talking down (again, outloud) mostly consited of, ok don't worry, you just need to finish your proposal, need to take a ton of pictures, make friends, your going to be fine. this is going to be an amazing experience.
i was too tired to try and argue back.
ps jet lag sucks. i might have it eternally.
So I spent the day in Mysore yesterday, running some errands, and there was a Jain festival going on. Jains believe in total non-violence, they won't eat food that was grown in the ground because of the violence it would cause to worms, insects, small mammals, etc. So I snapped a few photos, ate an incredible South Indian meal (1 dollar all you can eat rice with 7 different veg dishes), got an electrical adaptor and caught a bus to bylakuppe. Bylakuppe, like a lot of Tibetan settlements is a protected area, and requires a permit in order to spend the night there. We are still waiting on these, but for now I am staying in the Sera Jey Monastery's guest house. What a cool place. I still have lots of walking around to do.
Thanks again dad for an incredible Swiss Family Johnson, it was an amazing trip. My blog for school is criminalmonkeyfeed.blogspot.com. The second page in the Hindustan Times two days ago was about the criminality of feeding monkeys in Delhi. And since IndiaEx, Indiaexp, exindia, expindia, marcinindia, visualindia, and about ten thousand other options were taken, i decided this name would be best.