The First Day In India

I have arrived! When I stepped off the plane in New Delhi a nice little smog awaited me. Not only was this smog outside, oh no, it had also penetrated the airport so that if you looked down the hall, the very far end was a bit mirky.
We (me and two other girls that were on my flight) were picked up by the academic director, Akim Ji, and then taken to the hotel. We didn't get to the hotel until 2am, but at that point we still had some organizing/showering to do. We got about 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up to start our first full day in India.

In the morning we walked a short distance to the program center. This is where I will go every morning for classes and lunch. We were welcomed with a traditional welcoming ceremony. We got some type of red paste on our forehead with grains of rice stuck on, a little red cotton string wrapped around our wrist, and finally a garland. Goutam Ji (one of the Hindi teachers) has better pictures, but these will do for here.

We then had a tour of the center and started orientation. It was a lot of information about accepting culture (a seminar by two Americans who have lived here for 10 years) and answering of questions. We had a very mild (and edible!) lunch and I took a short walk (hence the picture below) before we ventured into South Delhi to go to a hospital to get our health orientation (information about the different health risks and how to treat jet lag).

It was a very long day, and it still doesn't really seem as if I really am in the sub continent of India. This is so crazy.

How could my first post in India not have a picture of cows?