Only one month left!!!

In one month I will be in India and I'm becoming more and more excited! I found out a while back that I'm going to be living in Mumbai and going to one of the most famous schools, Dhirubhai Ambani International School. The school is huge and has almost everything! It is an IB school and I will be in those classes (which means a lot of work). But all the same, it seems very fun and will open many doors for me.

In fact, the school sent me some information on it a few weeks back. It consisted of the school magazine (like a yearbook), the school diary, and it's Annual Day DVD. Each school in India has what is called an Annual Day which is like a big performance that the students put on for their parents. So, for example, DAIS's Annual Day had a storyline that took place years in the future with humans who returned to earth to see what it looked like. There they met some remaining humans who explained to them the past of what happened to earth and why there weren't many people, etc. plus important wars and drastic events in history. It was very interesting to watch.

So along with finding out my school, I've recieved information on my host families. That's right FAMILIES. ahahah Usually AFS students only have one host family but I get two, one for aug-dec and another for jan-june. I have sisters my same age in both families that go to my school and have been talking to them a lot, getting to know each other. We get along really well from what I can tell and I think we're going to have fun.

My first embarassing sort of situation came up a few days ago. I was talking to my host sister and she had mention getting a SIM card there in one of her messages. She mentioned it again during our the chat messages and so I said something along the lines of," So you guys have cell phones?" The reason why I thought teenagers might not is that India is a rather conservative, thirld word country, so wouldn't teenagers not have cellphones? But my host sister told me that since Mumbai is so big, they really do need them. Plus the cost of having one is so cheap, some people even have two numbers! I was really surprised! Although maybe I should've expected it since my school is very up-class so the people who send their kids there must be pretty wealthy as well....

Oh! As I mentioned before, I love bollywood. So I was excited to find out that some famous actors' kids go to my school! Of course, they're all under 5th grade but I thought that was pretty cool. Oh! And my first host sister loves movies as well so we're probably going to be hitting up the theatres a lot :D heehee But I promise that I will focus on my grades! I do need credits for my school here. I will try my best and battle IB! I tried before and lost so this is my chance to redeem myself (in my freshman year).

Although my host families are fluent in english, I hope that they can speak to me in hindi very, very often. I'm pretty sure that becoming fluent is one of YES's goals so always speaking in english would halt that process. But my host sister says it's easy to learn and use, so hopefully I'll pick it up quickly and use it a lot. Plus knowing another language is a great asset, you know?

I guess this isn't that important but one of my best friends just came back from her own AFS exchange to Italy. As a present, she gave me a whole journal full of tips and encouraging words for during my own exchange. Talking to another exchange student is always helpful, even if they went somewhere completely different. One thing that she said to me was especially interesting: "it's like jumping off a cliff and then looking back up to see someone else do the same thing." I laughed at the time, but I still know what she said is true. Living abroad without family is kind of like jumping off a cliff :]

So that's all for now. I still have to submit my visa but the processing should only take a week since I've been in contact with the U.S. consulate. My presentation is still in the works... ahaha anyways, wish me luck!

Annah