It has not rained much here for monsoon season, but their is certainly moisture in the air. There is a slight relieving cool here when the clouds actually do burst and let the rain out. That hasn't happened much though, so I don't think I've stopped sweating (besides when I'm taking a cold shower) since I've been here. The heat makes class something to look forward to because at least the classes that IES (the program I am here with) offers are air conditioned (although I don't think the university's are). Right now is kind of a limbo period because we are taking 'intensive' hindi this week and next week and have no other classes. Thus far I've been occupied with trying to figure out what classes to take at JNU or Delhi University, but it's not simple here. The course lists are not online, so we spent about 3 hours this morning going from building to building on campus (which is HUGE by the way) looking a piece of paper posted on the wall of every department that lists what is offered...but not the times of the classes. For those, we had to find the professor and ask, streamlining is not exactly the way of life here. After 3 hot hours of simply accomplishing writing down a list of 3 classes (not enrolling in them or even being able to get the times for them), me and 3 other students got lunch at the one place we know is safe for our bodies that is not American fast food. They give you sooo much food here for so little money. I ordered hummus (to mix it up since I've been eating only Indian food) with pitas, which cost 60 rupees ($1.50) and I think they gave me enough hummus for a week. My favorite things to eat here so far are the fruits. My host mom made plum juice the other, which was not only a fabulous pink color, but tasty; the mangoes are amazing; chikoo, which is very sweet and apparently high in iron (and it looks like a potato before it's pealed). There are so many flavors and smells here, good and bad, just walking around outside.
Navigating everyday life is very different here. The streets are nowhere near a grid pattern and only the very big ones have official names (or at least those are the only ones that either have signs, which you must search hard for, or that people know the name of at all). Bit by bit I'm starting to understand where things are, which makes me feel a bit more secure because I'm not completely relying on the autorickshaw driver to take me to the right place. Chester, the IES student living closest to me, and I explored our neighborhood, Vasant Kunj, the other day and took the liberty of giving our own names to the streets like RMLOO (road mackenzie lives off of) and Coffee (home of Cafe Coffee Day, the Indian equivalent of Starbucks). Otherwise the city is organized by main roads with names and neighborhoods, like Vasant Kunj, that are then split up into Sectors (A,B,C, etc.) and then into numbers. I'm amazed that the auto drivers and delivery people find the correct places. And speaking of delivery, they DELIVER ice cream here, amazing. Anyway, it is nice to feel like pieces are starting to fall in place is my mind. Every time something clicks I feel a little pressure relieved in my head and it feels good to know I'm a little closer to understanding Delhi than I was a few moments before. Let me tell you though, I have a long way to go.