Landing. Lagging.

I am writing this at about seven in the  morning Hyderabad time, after waking up from a much needed 10-hour night's sleep.  I arrived in Hyderabad Monday morning at about 3 am, after 25 hours of flying and one very hurried layover in Qatar.  (Qatar remains my favorite country.  Airport security lets you keep your shoes on).  Interesting fact: in the Hyderabad airport, it seems pretty common to wait 1-2 hours at the baggage claim until your luggage comes out, or, as in my case, until a sympathetic woman tells you to stop standing there blankly and look along the far wall, where dozens of bags have been pulled off the carousel and lined up, waiting for their respectful owners.  At this point, I had run into a bunch of kids from my program, and we all set off together into the Indian night.

Unlike other airports I've been to, people do not come inside the building to pick up their arriving friend/loved one/business assignment/group of lost looking American students wearing strange assemblages of clothing.  Rather, everyone waits in a huge mass directly outside the building behind a railing, and stares at you intensely as you walk toward your CIEE sign.  To be honest, I felt a bit like I was facing the paparrazzi, only without cameras.  Or a red carpet. 

All of us manuevered through the airport parking lots with our huge duffels and goofy sleepless grins until we reached a bus with blue floral curtains covering the windows.  We enjoyed a very fun and bizarre ride through the dark Hyderabad countryside until we arrived, nearly an hour later, at the University.  Which is enormous.  Maybe picture a campus the size of ASU, replace 95% of the buildings with trees and fields, and then add in a few monkeys, oxes, and dogs running around.  And then put the Tagore International House at the very back.

We arrived at the house at about 5:30 in the morning.  All of us were pretty wired, as in our respective homelands it was closer to 5:30 in the afternoon.  We got our room assignments and then roamed around like the afformentioned monkeys checking out the building, trying to stay up until 8 am, when they would serve us breakfast.  We watched a very beautiful, very surreal pink sunrise and later ate what would soon be known as "the best eggs ever ever ever in my life."

And then, we set out to stay awake until evening.  This was very difficult, as all of us had been traveling for two days and hadn't slept much during that time.  So my first day in India felt like the longest day of my life.  I went on three long, exploratory walks, ate a LOT of food, and visited this crazy temple to Vishnu built into a large conglomoration of boulders, all the while feeling as though my brain was made out of cotton.  I finally passed out last night around 8:45.  Jet lag is a foreign (haha...literally...) experience to me, but coupled with all the other crazy new things happening all around me, it feels somehow suitable. 

On a different note, a man sang us lines from a Langston Hughes poem yesterday.  It was nice.