getting started

I'm sitting at Heathrow. My flight from Seattle to London was actually really pleasant, minus the fact that I couldn't sleep. I sat next to an Indian couple (fabulous coincidence) who gave me lots of advice about being in India in general as well as how to get a SIM card for my phone once I get there. I was pretty shocked to find out how cheap that will be. They recommended that I wait to buy it until I get to Varanasi, but that I'll want to pay 100 rupees for free roaming (really inexpensive). They also said that, with the best plan, it's only about ten cents a minute to call back to the United States. Finally, they told me which companies to look at and which to avoid. As they were getting off the plane, they asked if I had cash, which I do, but only American. These kind strangers gave me one of each rupee note denomenation, adding up to 670 rupees. They wanted me to have some Indian cash to get started with once I'm there, in case I need a water bottle or something. Super helpful and thoughtful.



I guess since this is my first post, I should mention/ recap what I'm doing. I have a nine week teaching internship with the nonprofit NIRMAN in Varanasi, India. I'm teaching elementary level math in a school which was founded and is run by the organization. It should be meaningful, fun, and rewarding, but I'm starting to get nervous about the task of teaching itself. I'm worried about the discipline and respect issue, because I feel like on the first day of school, I'll be as afraid and aprehensive of my students as they will be of me.



Anyway, it's currently 1:15pm here in foggy London (it's charming...) and I don't leave for Delhi until 5:30pm. Pulling two red eye flights in a row is going to mess with my head. On long flights like these, where I'm going overnight but basically miss part of a day, I feel like time gets suspended and distorted. Like the nine hours I spent on the flight never happened, but then it's suddenly morning. Oh well. That's making me feel like my head is spinning. Also, I'm feeling both exhilerated and overwhelmed by all of the accents and languages I'm hearing around me. It's distracting because it's so different from what I'm used to. Some initial culture shock...and I'm not even in India yet! eek. They gave us two (rather bomb) meals on my last flight, and since the hours are basically the same on my next one, I bet it'll happen again. Cheers to you, British Airways. To keep myself entertained, I watched Invictus (wow, great movie), BBC News, Nowhere Boy, and part of Valentine's Day, and I listened to an amazing genius mix with a lot of Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson, Death Cab, and the Shins. Most enjoyable...thanks again, Sam, for rescuing my silly ipod.

I'm running out of internet time, so that's basically it. Will suggested that I have people write me letters, so here's the mailing address for NIRMAN:

Pyper Scharer
care of NIRMAN
N-1/70 Nagwa
Varanasi - 221005, U.P.
India

Please write to me! I'll write back. I just heard MGMT playing in a store behind me. Yay for familiarity...but I'm definitely looking forward to new things too!