My trip from Atlanta to Paris to Mumbai to Belgaum to the Monastery was mostly uneventful. The flights were wonderful (yay, Air France!) and all of my luggage made it. One of the people in my group did not have their luggage make it, so my concerns about packing survival clothes/supplies in my carry-on was warranted. We got to the hotel in Mumbai extra late, due to waiting at the airport for the person to deal with the lost luggage. I'm not sure how jet lagged I am - I didn't sleep for the first 24 hours, so I think my clock was well reset by the first night of sleep.
The flight from Mumbai to Belgaum was later in the day this year, and it ended up being delayed. This meant we had many, many hours in the domestic terminal of the Mumbai airport. I bought some scarves and a cell phone power source. A group of us chatted and drank chai - not a bad way to spend the afternoon. We landed in Belgaum in the evening, so much of the drive to the Monastery was in the dark. It rained for half of the drive, which slowed us down substantially.
I will definitely get to witness Monsoon this year. When we were at the hotel in Mumbai, the news said that Monsoon had reached Kerala, in the south. I believe it takes about a week to move up to Mumbai - so we should have it in a few days. It was raining for part of yesterday, but not very hard.
There has been one major surprise so far - I am not staying where I thought I would be. The guest house (that I stayed in last year) is full, so many of us are in a second guest house. It is on the other side of the Monastery, and is a bit older. There is still AC, but it lacks many of the small items that had been in the room at the other guest house. Luckily, I had over-packed and brought many things I wouldn't have needed had I been in the other location, like AC adapters.
The power outages have been worse this year, though I only have a few data points. Last year the power outages were short, and there was only one long one. The power was out almost the entire first night we were here - that was bad since it was hot and hard to sleep without AC. I expect this will get worse, which is why I bought the power source for my phone. It will likely be harder for me to regularly blog this year, depending on how bad the power outages get.
Otherwise, everything has been wonderful so far. The food is as amazing as I remember and the monks are incredibly friendly and helpful. It is nice to know so many of them already and be familiar with the common names - I am going to do much better at remembering names this year. When we toured around the building, we looked into the neuroscience classes taking their final exam. In the 3rd year room I recognized some of my students from last year!
I'm excited to go off and start teaching today. I don't have as much ready for later days as I would like, and I don't know if some of our materials for today (math assessment, afternoon lab) have been translated. But the slides are ready and I'm feeling good about it.
The flight from Mumbai to Belgaum was later in the day this year, and it ended up being delayed. This meant we had many, many hours in the domestic terminal of the Mumbai airport. I bought some scarves and a cell phone power source. A group of us chatted and drank chai - not a bad way to spend the afternoon. We landed in Belgaum in the evening, so much of the drive to the Monastery was in the dark. It rained for half of the drive, which slowed us down substantially.
I will definitely get to witness Monsoon this year. When we were at the hotel in Mumbai, the news said that Monsoon had reached Kerala, in the south. I believe it takes about a week to move up to Mumbai - so we should have it in a few days. It was raining for part of yesterday, but not very hard.
There has been one major surprise so far - I am not staying where I thought I would be. The guest house (that I stayed in last year) is full, so many of us are in a second guest house. It is on the other side of the Monastery, and is a bit older. There is still AC, but it lacks many of the small items that had been in the room at the other guest house. Luckily, I had over-packed and brought many things I wouldn't have needed had I been in the other location, like AC adapters.
The power outages have been worse this year, though I only have a few data points. Last year the power outages were short, and there was only one long one. The power was out almost the entire first night we were here - that was bad since it was hot and hard to sleep without AC. I expect this will get worse, which is why I bought the power source for my phone. It will likely be harder for me to regularly blog this year, depending on how bad the power outages get.
Otherwise, everything has been wonderful so far. The food is as amazing as I remember and the monks are incredibly friendly and helpful. It is nice to know so many of them already and be familiar with the common names - I am going to do much better at remembering names this year. When we toured around the building, we looked into the neuroscience classes taking their final exam. In the 3rd year room I recognized some of my students from last year!
I'm excited to go off and start teaching today. I don't have as much ready for later days as I would like, and I don't know if some of our materials for today (math assessment, afternoon lab) have been translated. But the slides are ready and I'm feeling good about it.
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