Week 2

A typical meal at the school canteen. I am still getting used in eating spicy food with my right hand (left hand should be used for body wash). The contact of fingers and food is a new strange feeling but I have time to learn and improve my technique, as doing bolls of rice is not as easy as can appear!

On the way to the new campus in Ettimadei, Tamil Nadu. A 8-hours train trip plus 2hs of Indian normal delay, luckily shared with Chloe. There I will meet my supervisor for the project.

This other university campus (there are 5 Amrita campus in total around south India) is nice surrounded by the mountains. Temperature is also slightly better (33 degrees but only 35% humidity compared to the 90% in Kerala!)

Despite our small messy room without a proper shower and no real mattress, campus offer an awesome swimming pool! Obviously, modest clothes are necessary and we can access only during girls-time

Living at the girl’s hostel allowed us to easily meet many students. We spent the evenings together and we got to experience deeper the Indian culture. Harshita, Bhavanitha and Nandhini explained us for instance how arranged marriage works and how they feel about it. Interestingly, wedding ceremony can lasts up to 12 days! Moreover, they made us wear bindi!

In our free day we went to Coimbatore city, an half-an hour train trip from university. We spent the morning at the flower market. Men with dhote (skirts) is quite ordinary over here!

The locals like taking picture with us, and sometimes they even ask us to take picture of them. People here are very nice, above my expectations they are always ready to help you, they make sure you get off the train at the right stop and they let you skip one-hour cue for ATM when your Rickshaw’s driver ask them!