First Week Complete! August 4th

Hey everyone! I hope you're having a great day.

Saturday marked me surviving my first week here, and what a week it has been. It feels a lot more like a month then a week, and the memories and friends i've made here feel strong even though i've only known them for a week. 

Last thursday night we made the hammock again. It was a great sunset and we were probably out there for a solid 2 hours. 

There is some major interest in the hammock these days. Everyone that sees it wants to have a go in it. Cory was thinking about charging 250 rupees for entry.

On friday night there was a 'welcome back' dance for grades 9-12 in the hostel. No one really danced so a couple of friends and i just played table tennis and cards against humanity. It was a fun night and in the morning the whole dorm was a mess.

Saturday was open bazar day, which basically means the students are free to walk into the town of Mussoorie and buy food or go shopping. So of course my mates and i headed of at 12 for the bazar. One of my friends said he kind of knew the way there, so we trusted him and off we went. We walked for a good 30 minutes until my friend whom we had been following muttered out "I have no idea where we are" All of us just looked at each other with the most worried expressions. None of us were from India or knew any hindi, so we were in quite the dilemma. We talked about if we should head back to school or go up these really steep steps that had a chance of taking us where we wanted to go, but we weren't sure if they'd get us even more lost. We stopped everyone and asked "Bazar?" and we either got a "What the hell" expression or just random sounds none of us knew. We finally decided to just Y.O.L.O it and go up the stairs. These stairs went straight through houses and people were drying cloths and everything on them. People gave us weird looks as we casually walked through the middle of their houses. We got held up at one point when we came across a pig just chilling on the footpath. It gave us quite the scare but we got our way around it. At the top of the stairs we crawl through this gap between two shops and enter these really busy streets and the friend we had followed said "oh, i know where we are" It was such a relief to hear those words. The first stop was food. We had heard of a place called "Kalsang" which had really good food and most importantly it was safe. The only problem was that we didn't know where it was. We walked around the busy streets for another 40 minuted until we finally found it. The streets here have no footpath and there are plenty of cars just constantly honking. You had to stay really alert because cars would be within 10 cm of you and one brain fade and your foot is run over. It was nearly 2 oclock and we were absolutely starving so we orded our food at "Kalsang" and it was soooooo good. I had sweet and sour chicken on mixed meat noodles and it was the best! We all walked out of their with full stomachs and happy smiles.

 Isaac (left) Cory (right)

Saturday night there was a huge storm. It was easily the biggest storm i've ever seen and it was so damn cool. As soon as i saw the first flash of lightning i dawned on my raincoat and equiped my camera and went out on the deck for some photo's. I was joined by a kid called Mathai and Cory and together we went into the storm. The video below was by using Mathai's camera because my camera only video records at 15frames per second so it didnt pick up the lightning as well as mathai's.

Youtube Video of storm here

I did take a couple of picture's which I hope you enjoy.

For those interested, the 1st 2nd and 4th photo's were done with putting the camera on macro mode and turning on the flash, i thought it turned out pretty well.

Sunday was a super lazy day. They have the indian equivalent of foxtel in the dorms and one channel was showing all the spiderman movies back to back then redoing it. So I woke up and watched the beginning of spiderman 3 while having breakfast, then went on my computer for a while and then saw the amazing spiderman and spiderman 1 in the lounge while reading my english novel. I then played some pool and mucked around with Isaac, then came back and saw a bit of spiderman 2. After that I had dinner and watched spiderman 3, again, then 'The amazing spiderman', AGAIN! This day will always go down as Spiderman Sunday.

Well the bells about to go for lunch today i've spent my whole study period writing this entry when I should of been reading, but who cares i'm on exchange ;) Quick shoutout to my man Rohan Bunsee coz it's his bday today! 

Stay well,

Lachy Wild