Arrival and Orientation - June 27th

After arriving late last night, I awoke with a couple hours of sleep to get my first experience with Bangalore. Walking down to the main road, I jumped aboard a tuk tuk, a three wheeled Indian taxi, and made my way through the city to Christ University. On my way, I passed by people commuting to work crossing the busy highway, people with food stands lining the streets selling pedestrians breakfast, and hundreds of tuk tuks and motorcycles weaving in between the cars in a hurry to reach their destinations. Upon arriving at Christ University, the clutter and chaos of the street died down and I entered a crowd of students dressed in both European-style and traditional Indian business attire. Stopping by the cafeteria to pick up some freshly cooked chicken puffs, I made my way to class held in the adjacent building. 

I arrived to faces from across the US, ranging from other southern states like Florida and South Carolina to California, Maryland, Ohio, and Nevada. After spending the morning familiarizing ourselves with the University rules and expectations, we walked to a nearby hotel for a lunch buffet to celebrate our arrival. Everyone was eager to try the various different curries, filling their plates to the brim with the biryanis, tandooris, and various spinach, chicken, lentil, and chickpea curries. After stuffing ourselves with every dish possible, we walked back to Christ University and toured the campus. Across the multiple building complexes we saw a large auditorium used for student produced plays and dances, conference rooms used by the priests that run the University to host guests and discuss business affairs, and multiple sporting fields used by many students to play tennis, basketball, football, hockey, and volleyball after their classes. The most intriguing part of the tour, however, was the horticultural department, which runs a green initiative on campus. This included turning biowaste from the school’s bathrooms into fuel, enough to run a house for 3 to 5 people and a full paper recycling system which turned used exam booklets and answer sheets into pulp which was then pressed and dried into sheets that could be dyed and crafted into folders, bags, notebooks that could be bought by students.

Finished for the day, a group of the students made a trip to a local mall to both browse and pick up items they had forgot to pack. As we entered, we heard a crowd cheer ahead of us, all gathered around a central area. A new Bollywood action movie was being promoted and in this central area was dancers, singers, and some of the stars greeting fans and building excitement for their upcoming flick. We watched entertained by the spectacle of the whole event. Getting back with travel adaptors, water, and various other purchases, we all went back to our room exhausted both from jet lag and the overwhelming experience of Bangalore.