Hello!!!
Today was our first day out and about not as a whole group, and while it was overwhelming and tiring, it was super fun to be able to adventure around Delhi on our own. My partner/roomate and I, Elena, completed almost all of the tasks, but not quite. We began our day by getting lost on the metro and getting off in a part of town where there’s not much but train stations. We looked around, got frustrated at each other for 15 seconds to get it out of our system, then asked a police officer for help. Eventually we found out how to get back on the metro, only after asking a police officer, two random strangers, one who let us use his phone to google maps how to get to where we were going, we finally were on the right metro car. At this point I was extremely uncomfortable with my surroundings, and couldn’t really pay attention to the beauty of what was around me. As the day progressed and we wandered through a bazaar, slowly checking off things on our list, I began to feel my shoulders relax and was able to look around, and pull out my camera to take some pictures. We soon learned that anyone we asked for directions was more than willing to personally lead us to our destination “no charge, I lead you, I don’t want anything from you.” Countless times, a kind man would lead us to wherever we were trying to find, but our problem then came when trying to move on. They so wanted to talk and walk with us, but we then found trouble when trying to say goodbye. We had a hard time getting across that although we were thankful for their time, we wanted to navigate on our own from there. I think after a couple times we kind of figured it out, but it wasn’t easy. As we walked out of our metro stop near our hotel, we noticed how much more confident we felt on our own, and were really proud of ourselves and what we had discovered throughout the day. Overall, it was a really fun 3rd day, and can’t wait for the next 3 months!!
Kippie