A Penny for Your Thoughts - Pre India Style

It’s about ten until seven on the morning of our arrival in Chennai, India.  Usually, around this time getting into a port, you can find me up on the highest observation deck watching the land come closer and closer.  However, this morning, we can’t see a thing!  It is very densely foggy.  Good think Captain Jeremy is awesome, and our pilot boat should be running up along side us any minute now.  It’s sort of a bummer though, because seeing the port from a distance usually helps me acclimate myself a little bit better than just stepping off the boat and walking around.  I just looked out the window in the dining room that I’m typing this in, and we can see land sort-of.  It just looks like a VERY industrial strip of land.  Which, I’m being led to believe, Chennai is.  Apparently, the port in Chennai is one of the grossest, perhaps the most gross, port we will be docking in: the pollution in India is so bad that you actually bring in back on board the ship on your clothing and shoes, so they’ve covered all of the floors with cardboard and plastic wrap sort of stuff.  I wish I could cover my lungs the same way.  I am really trying so hard to be positive about India.  It was one of the ports I was looking most forward to, but after Casablanca, I’m feeling very apprehensive.

I think, for the next five days, I’m going to be on senses overload, and I don’t do well in that situation.  I shut down, which defeats the purpose of being in the situation in the first place.  I think that I will be completely over-stimulated until I get back onto the ship on Tuesday evening.  I need to make sure that I take care of myself in this port; be SUPER cautious of what I eat, while still trying everything; be unaffected in the moment by poverty, but still trying to do everything I can…  I don’t know, I’m stressing out.  Good thing this is India, and if I need to just stop doing whatever I am doing and concentrate on my breathing… no one will think I’m crazy.  Maybe I’m “borrowing trouble,” like mom would tell me.  I probably am.  I just want to be prepared, and not as shaken up as I was after Morocco. 

So I’m going to have my breakfast, and hopefully buy plane and train tickets for China this morning.  Also this morning, we have a diplomatic briefing, and then I’m signed up for a yoga demonstration, an orphanage visit, and the welcome reception tonight.  Tomorrow, I go on my home stay!  I will be spending three days and two nights with an Indian family in Chennai, and on the last day, I’m doing a school visit, and hopefully I’ll be able to join in on a few Global Nomad events.  It’s going to be crazy. 

I’ll be writing in a few days.  Until then, be well everyone. 

Ps. India smells a little bit.  Like grime.