Though I can hardly believe I’m saying it, 24 hours from now I’ll have left India behind me. Rather than spouting some gushy bit about how I leave having attained spiritual enlightenment and inner peace, how I have fallen in love with the Indian way of life and will live my life differently from now on, I’ll just say this: I’ve learned a lot this semester.

I’ve learned that Indian research science is both promising and flawed in many ways. I’ve picked up just enough about the political situation in India (both historic and current) to discover I still know very little. I now know the significance of the ability to communicate with someone in a common language, and that sometimes it’s not just the words you’re using that is misunderstood. I’ve learned that sitting cheek by jowl to 40 or 50 other people in a small city bus can feel oddly comforting. I’ve learned the value of patience and perspective.

India was my first exposure to international living, but it will certainly not be my last. Rather than having satisfied my formerly mild curiosity about the world, I find myself filled with an intense hunger for travel. Life in the States, which are so large and bordered by only two countries, makes learning about foreign life first-hand rather difficult. Having finally travelled far enough away to have a host of other countries at my fingertips, I don’t really feel ready to go back home! Of course, I do miss my family and certain Western comforts, and I am very excited for Christmas and New Year’s celebrations taking place in the next two weeks, but I know that I will find my way abroad again during my youth.

Having lived outside of the U.S. for a fairly long period of time, I return with a widened sense of awareness of life in the rest of the world. I believe this awareness is extremely important for me to have as an American citizen and I think many people in my country would benefit from seeing our home the way the rest of the world does.

I know it’s been almost a month since my last update, but I have some good excuses. The first is that I haven’t had much internet access lately. Maybe that’s the wrong way to say it. I have my own internet connection in my room here, but it’s only on between 9:00 AM and 5:30 PM, which are the hours in which I typically work, making it difficult to use the web for any large amount of time…classic India. Now, however, my research project here in Pondicherry is winding down and I have some free time to catch up.

Since my return to south India in mid-November I have been living and working at VCRC (Vector Control Research Center), a facility run by the Indian Council of Medical Research primarily geared toward researching the mosquito-borne disease lymphatic filariasis. And they have their work cut out for them—cases of LF far outstrip cases of malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya in the south, and in Pondicherry most of all. Our rooms here are nice, but simple, and a convenient five steps away from my lab space. The facilities are pretty well funded and there is even a small cafeteria on the bottom floor that serves breakfast and lunch for 10-30 rupees a meal. They don’t stay open for dinner or weekends, so we spend almost all of our free time in the city itself.

In comparison to other Indian cities, Pondicherry is a bit of an oddity. It was founded as a French colony, their only real effort to challenge British colonial dominance in the sub-continent, and gained its independence in the 1950’s before joining India as a Union Territory. French is still an official language, though few locals speak it. The city was built on a neatly arranged grid, split North-South by a canal. On one side of the canal, all of the buildings you see are typically Indian. The signs are all written in Tamil and English, and the streets are filled with motorbikes, cars, rickshaws and the occasional cow. The other side of the canal feels nothing like India. The architecture, shops, well-manicured parks and quiet streets belong in a small town in France. There are even quite a few French ex-pats to add that final touch of realism to the place. It’s a strange divide, and though there is obviously no official segregation going on, it can feel a little like entering a gated community on the east side of the water.

The food all over town is fantastic. It’s the best of south Indian (in my opinion) and the only place you can easily get authentic French food in the whole country. There’s a 24 hour cafe along the Bay of Bengal, next to this huge statue of Gandhi, which serves great coffee, tea and chocolate croissants appropriately named Le Café. People walk along the promenade and watch the waves roll in while they drink their coffee. The area is perfect for people watching too.

Another highlight so far has been visiting the Sri Manakula Vinayagar temple, where an elephant blesses people in exchange for small coins. Locals believe the elephant is holy, and so it’s very well cared for. They dress it in silver bangles on its legs and sandal powder on its forehead. I had the opportunity to receive a blessing from Lakshmi (the elephant’s name, also the Hindu goddess of wealth), but I wasn’t able to get pictures! You just walk up to the elephant, holding a coin in the palm of your hand, and Lakshmi scoops it up with her trunk, then pats you once on the head, and once on the shoulder. If I go back sometime in the next two weeks, I’ll make sure to get good pictures of myself being blessed!

Pondicherry is pretty widely known for its shopping scene. It’s another remnant of the French influence, but also has to do with the presence of nearby Auroville, an international community that makes a huge range of craft items and clothing and is traditionally focused on peaceful and sustainable living. Auroville has a number of boutiques in the city, and we’ve visited a great deal of them at this point. We’ve done quite a bit of shopping for clothes…and by “we” I mean mostly Rachel and Emma, though I have done a bit myself. The large number of shops and cool craft stores in the area made finishing up my Christmas shopping extremely easy. I don’t think I’ve ever even started at this point in past years, but living in Pondicherry has made things extremely easy, not to mention cheap!

Though you can’t call Pondicherry an especially large city, it has a lot of hidden treasures. I don’t know how long it would take to really see everything in the area, but five weeks certainly isn’t enough time. As my time here draws to an end in a little over a week, you can be sure that I’ll be scrambling to see…and eat as much as possible.

Travel Break was amazing! Without a doubt it was the most I’ve ever done and seen in a 12 day period. Though Lauren, Brooke and I were initially skeptical the Indian public transportation system would see us through to all of our destinations, everything in that department ended up going off without a hitch! This is made even more amazing considering that Kingfisher Airlines decided to cancel almost 50% of their flights the day we travelled with them because they could no longer afford to fuel all of their planes. We made it everywhere we wanted to go, saw everything we wanted to see, and no one got sick or had anything important stolen. We met a ton of really interesting people, both locals and fellow tourists, and generally had a great time seeing some of the rest of India.

 We spent time in Rajasthan seeing the cities of Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Jaipur, visiting forts late night bazaars and going on a camel trek. We then trained to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, and after a quick turn around, found ourselves in Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple (the center of Sikhism) and see the Whaga Border closing ceremony. From there we flew down to Goa for four days where I got to snorkel, parasail and drive a certain 2-wheeled motorized vehicle for the first time. I have pictures of all of these things, taken by myself or one of my travelling companions, but there are just too many to post them all! I’ll try my best to put up a good mix that represents the biggest things we saw during our trip.

I’m currently living at VCRC, South India’s premiere vector bourne illness research center, outside the city of Pondicherry, which constitutes its own union territory adjacent to Tamil Nadu. I’ll be living here and researching survival rates of vector mosquito larvae in various rural water bodies outside of the city for the next four weeks, then I return to the U.S. It’s crazy to think that the last three months have gone by so fast! The city of Pondicherry will be the subject of my next update.