The neighborhood.

Initial India.

It's happening again. I'm on the move and this time to India.

“Soul Stirring Bamboozling. There’s simply no other word that captures the enigma that is India. With an ability to inspire, frustrate, thrill and confound all at once, India presents an extraordinary spectrum of encounters for the traveller.” – Lonely Planet

Forty-eight hours into my arrival in India saw me vomiting into the Indian toilet of a roadside restaurant. Something was definitely stirring, but fortunately this is one spectrum of encounters I am familiar with. Been there, done that. Mid-hurl I thought to myself, hm, perhaps I should start blogging again.

Which brings me to the reason for this particular foray into a new land. Through my university I have been granted the opportunity of a summer internship with an organization called Srinivasan Services Trust. SST is the social responsibility arm of TVS Motor Company. SST’s work focuses on community capacity building in rural villages in various locations around India using an integrated development model. We (2 interns) have been tasked with assessing their model while “telling the story” of SST’s communities.

Now if someone could just explain what that means exactly then I’ll be on my way.

So far what this means is that we are treated as "esteemed guests" by SST and have our every need provided for. Our first two days were spent in Chennai recovering from the flights. We were put up in a 5 star hotel and provided a car and driver. Now I consider my parents to be well-rounded caretakers with effective parenting strategies, however, it has become apparent that in one area they have failed spectacularly. They failed to teach me how to behave in situations of luxury. Unsuspecting hotel staff members' attempts at doing their job resulted in me running around also trying to do their job while thanking them repeatedly.

This may come as a surprise considering that we’re the type of family that piles all the food on our porch when the refrigerator breaks down.

We have just arrived in the village Thirunkkurungudi (or TKI for the less linguistically nimble of us) in the south of India and are getting acquainted with everyone and everything. Hopefully this means that I will soon have a better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing.

Actually as I'm re-reading this post I'm finding it quite boring so apologies for that. Although, as a good friend once said, if I wrote a memoir it would be called Setting the Bar Low: The Hannah Hutton Story.