Like any good high school graduation speech, I'm starting this abroad blog (ABLOG!) with a quote. Yes, I got it off a page called 'The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes of All Time." Forgive me—I was getting excited. Anyway, it makes me consider that I'm going to India, a country I've never been to, that (reportedly, I don't know yet) is much much different from everything I'm used to. Everyday things will seem terribly exotic to me. This quote just makes me think am I going to be learning more about a different culture and way of life, or more about my own culture and myself while submersed in something so foreign?
Well, that's probably the type of deeper question I should be thinking about. Mostly I was spending my time thinking far too hard about what to call this blog. The problem is, too many things rhyme with Delhi (where I'll be this semester...should I have started this off with saying I'm studying abroad in Delhi, India for 4 months on the SIT program National Identity and the Arts?). One of the things that rhymes with Delhi is Shelly, a nickname for Michelle that I actually DESPISE. I have very few pet peeves (I mean at least I think so...anyone else have anything to say about that?) and the nickname Shelly is one of them. So I settled on this blog name, which kind of sounds like Shelly anyway BUT WHATEVER I decided I'm done.
Anyway, I'm flying to Delhi today, starting my abroad adventures, and beginning my malaria pills. I would love love love it if you people kept in touch with me—send me updates on your lives, I will literally be estactic I'm sure. And here's another quote, this time stolen from my abroad program's facebook page (I'm nothing if not original):
Mark Twain on his three months in India: "This is India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations--the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien persons, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that allmen desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined."
!!! Isn't that awesome??? I'm sure I'll appreciate it even more if I don't get malaria.
