By the numbers: My best guess at how to pack for a month in India

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Hello from Frankfurt! I have no idea what time it is here. We’re fresh off of our (8? 9? 10?) hour flight across the Atlantic. From here we fly to Delhi — another 9 hours or so. 

Packing light isn’t my speciality. The girl who’s wildly moving items from checked luggage to carry-ons at the ticket counter, madly throwing some combination of shoes, hair appliances, and jeans into her carry-on and hoping that it will tip the scale to 49.5 pounds? Nice to meet you, that’s me. And that makes packing for a month-long trip to India a challenge. Especially when you consider that you have to take your own toilet paper.  Continue reading →

Eat, Pray, Love. Well, kind of.

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Some time ago, a women named Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a book called Eat, Pray, Love. Everyone except me read it, and then it was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts, and everyone except me saw it. A lot of people, though, associate India with the book/movie, as evidenced by the co-worker who keeps asking me when I’m leaving to go “eat, pray, love or whatever.”

Here’s what I knew about the story: a woman goes on a journey, and on that journey she goes to India. Thanks to Wikipedia, here’s what I now know about the story: the author finds herself devastated at the end of a relationship. She wants to travel. Conveniently, she is a writer and her publisher pays for a year-long trip in advance. (Shouldn’t we all be so lucky?) Continue reading →

I’m going to India!

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A couple of years ago, I learned about Rotary’s Global Study Exchange. Launched in 1965, the GSE is a decades-old international cultural and vocational exchange program for young professionals.

When I first learned about the program, my friend Sheri (and GSE Poland alumna) had encouraged me to apply to go to on that year’s trip to Argentina. Unfortunately for me, there are age minimums for these things, and at 24, I wasn’t qualified. So I bided my time, waiting for a couple more years to tick by and for a trip that I’d want to go on. And what do you know? On Sunday, January 27, I’m getting on a plane in Oklahoma City and heading toward New Delhi, India. On February 25, 2013, I’ll make my way back to the heartland — and in the mean time, I’ll be chronicling my team’s journey here.

We’ll do a LOT over our four weeks in India, and I hope you’ll follow along.