17th August

So today it rained again. I ran from the bus to the Art building and still managed to get soaked in the thirty seconds I was out. It was glorious.

I had my second ever theory lecture today on Sidney this morning, and I have to say this Prof Kumar is a hell load better than the other one. He made sense, and not only that, he was challenging, engaging and incredibly insightful. I think I am going to enjoy his class. Yet another lovely lecture from Prof Chakranbati (I think that is his name…) on Swift. I need to get to reading that book…I feel I can’t keep up in his classes and I have been too absorbed in Tom Jones lately. Variety is the spice of life they say.

This afternoon I finally went and got more credit from Reliance. I also shocked myself by having some lunch. That is like…three times in one week! 

We had our second Hindi class today. The teacher just keeps on saying ‘Mai hu!’ at us every so often. I understand it is probably a corner stone to the language for him, but he really doesn’t need to repeat it so enthusiastically constantly. We are not brain dead; we do have a memory of more than five seconds. I think these classes will be ultimately beneficial, though I think starting off with something other than Devangari script and instead things like numbers, directions etc would be just more useful. Particularly for the rickshaw drivers who just disbelieve everything we say and then charge us ten rupees more than everyone else because we are white.

Tonight we got the sarees out for the first time to go to dinner with the International Students Dept. It was sort of ridiculous. The whole thing seemed to be a triumphal meeting for Delhi to say that they had done so well, when in reality they have done jack shit to help us and make our time here any easier to get into. They have bugger all idea about anything to do with us. We were proud of David for getting up and saying that we had been unable to think about the wonders of India as we had almost been made homeless. Women kept on coming up nd complementing us on our sarees though, and I feel proud that they stayed on the entire night seeing as it is my first time tying one. It did have a lot of pins in it of course…but you know…

It was quite funny. The Guest House totally out-did themselves food wise. There was chapatti and naan and everything you could possibly want. I need to stop eating so much. It is not good!