August 2023

The month of August was spent preparing to leave which included:

Doctor's appointments
Vacinations
Shipping books through Depolmatic pouch
Saying goodbyes (it was hard to leave family)
Packing

The Visa was acquired the month before. It is that reason that I only stayed 9 months because I finally left end of August and my Student Visa expired the end of June.

It was difficult to anticipate what was ahead. Even though for the last eight years I have been returning to India as often, it hadn't been since I was a teenager that I stayed for longer than a month or two. I was intent on settling somewhere. What actually happened was quite different, while I ended up getting an apartment in Ranchi that was where I returned to, I was traveling all over the place. My daughter said it was very confusing for her, since she has never been to India, because I was one place one day, and another the next. She couldn't keep up.

At Delhi Airport I was picked up by the USIEF staff and taken to a fancy hotel. We had a four day orientation, which was very informative......except for the jet lag. It was so fascinating to meet all the young people who had come to India to study a wide array of subjects. Yes I was the oldest among them.

After the Orientation I had to register at JNU. This required going to several offices to have one certain official stamp and sign my paperwork. It was not nearly half the ordeal that a regular student has to go through. since I was let in to go to the head of the line and had a guide to help me. But it still struck me as odd that the person who ended up giving the final approval was also one of the people who I had gotten a stamp from in another office, because he was "acting" something. It is amazing how the country lives on a huge amount of paper work that is required to get anything done. But I have more on that in my next post