India and stuff

I make this first entry under a strange set of circumstances:

It is 4 in the morning, India time. I went to sleep about two, mayyybe three hours ago with a belly full of Kingfisher beer, the local favorite, and Papa John's pizza, which we'd ordered nostalgically with our booze after a long day of orientation at the office. I'd spent the entire preceding 32 hours being awake, so I thought I'd be happily exhausted, buzzed, and well-fed by the time I hit the sack - three ingredients for a perfect night's sleep, right? Wrong...

I apparently spent the last few hours in the company of a lovely bloodsucking friend. Many parts of my face, neck, and pretty much 80% of my right arm are swollen with bites. And while it does kind of look like my skin is boiling and the itching is starting to get pretty bad, the worst part is that I have a bite directly on my right eyelid, making it very difficult to open my eye entirely - and whenever I blink, it triggers the itching again, so essentially every time I blink I have to suppress the desire to scratch my eye.

I realize it probably seems like I am kicking things off here in this blog with a big o bucket of pessimism, but that is not the case. I love it here already. Every little thing, from the way people eat food here to the toilet flushing mechanism to the looks I exchange with strangers on the street holds me in captivation. Then of course there are the big great things, like the brilliant people here at TWU, the unbelievably amazing food, and the overall excitement of being in a completely new world - these things have lived up to everything I'd been anticipating and so much more...

The point of this entry is that even though I am sitting here with a swollen pinky and an itchy eye and the frustration that I cannot seem to master this jetlag turnaround stunt no matter how I try, it's all fine. Tomorrow will be another adventure, magnificent in scope, so much so that these little inconveniences will seem trivial in comparison. I'm excited to share everything here.