One month

The first month of my new life has almost passed. As I am writing this, I am sitting somewhere in between wada four, the gym, the social centre, the pool and the parking lot and I'm happy. The sun is shining and I hear some people laughing in the background. There is no place I'd rather be than here, in MUWCI, in India.

I learned a lot this month. I learned a lot about other cultures, about other people, about the world and also about myself. One of the reasons why I came here is because I wanted to find myself in this multicultural (learning a lot about nations, states and identities, I think multicultural is a better word than international) place. I didn't find myself yet, that's a process that will probably take years, but I'm working on it. In this place, I have all what's needed to become who I want to be.

Though I still see new faces everyday and talk to new people everyday, I'm starting to know names and I'm starting to get real friends instead of only 'people I talked to a few times'. I'm having a great time with my roommate Indi, who's really an awesome girl (Indi, if you read this, I love you!) and we're having fun all the time, decorating our room or cleaning up or just doing everything that is not homework (:

MUWCI isn't as perfect as I thought it would be, but that doesn't make this place any worse for me. I think it's imperfections make this all so real, so interesting. I feel like I've been here for ages, we've done so many activities yet, I'm completely settled down and I feel good here, but on the other hand, I can't believe it's already one month since I arrived. It feels like this all started yesterday, or didn't even start, I still do not realise that I'm actually in India, in MUWCI. I wonder if I'll ever realise (how should we define realise?).

I started missing home and it's hard sometimes, but I always feel better after five minutes, because I know that this is where I should be and that missing people is not a bad thing. And for every tear, there's hundred smiles so that's completely fine (:

School is hard. Talking in English all day and listening to English all day is more difficult than I expected it to be. I need to concentrate a lot. But since this week, it's starting to get better, I'm starting to understand the classes and I hope that I will soon be able to speak more in class soon.

Last Friday, we celebrated the Ganesh festival (Ganesh is the "elephant-god"). We all got pink powder and then we could throw it at eachother and there was music and we were all dancing together with the staff, in a big pink cloud (: We walked down the hill and stopped regularly to dance and then it started to rain and that made everything even more fun. We walked to the nearby village, Khubavali, and there we celebrated with the local villagers before walking to the river. Once arrived at the river, the villagers let a statue of Ganesh in the river and they also jumped in the river theirselves. It was a really really nice day, I enjoyed it so much! I'll try to upload some pictures in a next post.

The dates of the Belgian infodays are fixed (check http://www.uwc.be/nl/students_parents/ for more info). If there's any interested people reading this, please let me know if you need any help or if you have any questions. This is an experience that I really recommend so just try (:

Love
Louise