It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

After two weeks in India my most burning question is how Indian women remain composed and immaculate after a day of dust, sardined bus rides, crowded markets, and cooking. It's a mystery, especially when I look in the mirror and see the train wreck of hygiene I have become. But today I woke up and thought, “Hey, it isn't that hot here.” Hooray for acclimation!

I wish there were a graceful way for me to begin writing about India. I'll try. My first taste of the country was the famously hot and filthy city of Chennai. My group met there on Saturday, May 3rd and tried to get out as soon as possible, but the trains to Coimbatore (the major city near our present village home) were booked and we weren't able to escape until May 7th. The train booking offices are a perfect representation of Indian bureaucracy and time management: come early, wait, move up in the line of people sitting ten benches deep, wait, flash a hundred rupees at the desk clerk, move up the line more rapidly, find out you need to take a train to a different station to book through the foreign booking office, do that (and have a rousing conversation about arranged marriage with a group of Muslims from Sri Lanka going to Delhi for three months of religious study) and finally meet someone who can decipher my American English and book the tickets. I learned in Chennai that it's possible to drink more than a gallon of water a day and still feel thirsty, as well as fast until five in the evening and still not feel hungry. Before acclimating, the best way to handle the afternoon heat is a short nap, shower, mango, and reading under a fan. It's strange to have the environment shape my daily life. In America I can carry on with what I need and want to do independent of the weather. Here, if it rains in the village I can't go into the city that day because of the roads, or if the power goes out that means no phone calls or computers . As a result, the pace of life is slower and people spend more time talking to each other. When plans are delayed or fall through, no one worries because everything happens in its time. That attitude makes India a heaven or a hell, depending on what one wants out of life that day.

Chennai is also memorable for its insane rickshaw drivers and a trip to the city's central mosque. Halfway through visiting the Muslim saint's shrine on the side of the mosque I found myself being blessed in a curiously Hindu manner with a bouqet of peacock feathers. Interesting how cultures blend...Eating sugar crystals and having giant black ants crawling on us also left particular impressions on us.

We enjoyed an eight hour train ride to Coimbatore with open windows and tiffin (snack) vendors hawking chai tea and coffee. I've never seen so much trash thrown out of windows before, but there are no rubbish bins on trains, so whatever you buy from the snack vendors that isn't edible eventually finds its way to the tracks. The family of a Pentecostal pastor sat across from me and he spoke English very well, so we talked about family, Indian politics, the orphanage he runs back in Chennai, and his education. The best moments in India come when you think you're stuck somewhere and then you decide to begin talking to the person next to you. Sunday at a coming of age ceremony for a Hindu boy (an Upayanaman), a businessman from Mumbai struck up a conversation and we spent the next hour talking about the changing culture of India and the influence of faster-paced lifestyles in India. He has several family members living in America, but while he enjoys modernization he misses traditional ways of living. He was dressed in a linen kurta and wearing Armani glasses. I didn't quite know what to tell him except that it is possible to preserve good families and the sacred parts of life as well as enjoy modernization, because my family and many people I know do it.

Getting out to our host family's village was an adventure! We arrived by train around 10:30 at night and found every hotel in town we could find full. Picture nine tall Americans and one very tired two-year old hanging out on the Indian streets in the dark. I was thinking, “Hey, it could be worse. It could be raining.” And then it did. A lot. Fortunately we found a hotel that let us camp out under its awning and arrange some taxis to take us to the village directly. Our host family welcomed us at 1:30 in the morning and when we all walked into our room and saw the woven mats, cement floor, and Indian-style toilet I thought their home was paradise.

My research group lives at the home of Matthew and Jeeva Daniels in a little village called Chavadipudur, about a 40 minute bus ride south of Coimbatore. They have been hosting BYU students for 10 years and are very patient with us, especially when we do ridiculous things like plug in our power converters on the wrong voltage and blow their circuits. (I’m not speaking from experience.) Jeeva teaches us how to string jasmine flowers and wash our laundry, and Matthew speaks English well and is our cultural advisor. He learned English as a missionary in the 70s. I enjoy talking with him; he spied my book of indulgent reading, The Battle for God, and now he's reading and we're discussing it. I'm glad to still have someone who enjoys sorting things out through long talks. Evening time is veranda time, and everyone comes out of their rooms and sits, eats and talks while swatting at mosquitoes. It's good to forget all of the inconveniences and frustations of the day and enjoy being with people. I may not be able to handle everything about this country, but India's all about detaching from the material world and coming into harmony with the spirit (right?), and veranda time is one of the ways that is accomplished.

The weeks have seemed short but the days go slowly by. India certainly feels like the land of contradiction, but I'm enjoying it so far, probably because I haven't yet been struck down by any form of nausea. The fresh squeezed fruit juice still tastes great!