Surprise!

Truth be told, even though I knew I was here for work, and even though I checked my email on a daily basis, I’d all but forgotten that school even existed. That is, until I received an email from the DOPP for a work abroad assignment.

“Week 3: May 16, 2011
List and briefly describe three aspects of your host culture (inside or outside of work) that surprised you when you first arrived in the country”

Let’s pause for a minute. Work abroad assignment? Excuse me? I’m already half-way around the world, and instead of sight-seeing or traveling or relaxing, I’m working forty hours a week. And you tell me I need to do writing assignments on top of it? Thank you, Georgia Tech.

Well, I wrote it. But I have to admit, this entry was rather hard to write. I would say I’m pretty far to the right on Piaget’s scale. Way past acceptance or integration or whatever. Is it Piaget? I may or may not be making this entire thing up, haha. Anyway, regardless of what the theory is, the fact remains that I have been here before. I have lived here for an extended period of time before. Switching into “Indian Mode” comes fairly naturally now. So what is there left to surprise me?

But as I thought about what to write, I realized that this city has changed and grown. It’s bigger, for one. Busier. The buildings are taller, the roads wider, the stores cleaner. And yet, that feeling, that atmosphere, that city spirit that is so inexplicably Indian, hasn’t changed in the slightest. And perhaps that is what is most surprising of all.

-May 20th