हेल्लो एवेर्योने! Hello everyone! सब नमस्ते!

Sorry that it has taken me so long to actually publish this first post! There is so much to say, but first I will just write a little about where I am: I living in Nasik, which is a holy city which means that there are many temples and it is relatively close to Mumbai - which means actually it takes about four hours to drive there... But for Indians, a four hour drive is not that far because we have been to Mumbai for day trips. I unfortunately will not be able to post as many times as I would like because my host family does not have internet, so here is from the entire last month some of the things that I have been doing. If you are interested in checking more, you might want to check Tomke's blog: http://www.tomke-in-indien.blogspot.com/ (Tomke is the exchange student from Germany and also my neighbour!)

This first foto is of Savannah and me in the San Francisco airport! Savannah picked me up and we walked around San Fran and got Mexican food for my last time and it was so much fun! I really enjoyed this day and it didn't even seem like we were leaving until we were on the plane. We also stopped in Shanghai, which was not much because they coralled us into this tiny room and the only thing vaguely Chinese was the drinking fountain, which spoke to us in Chinese and these hanging red diamond things.

This is my host sister, Ria, who is nine years old. She has taught me how to read and write to a certain extent, as she has only just learned last year herself.

Ganesha is kept in cars many times, and this entire last week has been a huge festival dedicated to him, his mother, and his wife. Ganesh idols are brought into the houses and kept for pooja for 1-10 days, but this celebration is mostly Maharashtran and my family is Punjabi so Ganesh is not kept in our house right now.