Back to Kolkata! ...Again!

I'm sitting in Washington Dulles International Airport and I figure that now is as a good a time as any to write my first post for the summer. I know I wasn't the most consistent writer last summer, but hopefully this year my posts will be more regular.

I'm heading back to the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) for intensive language study in Bangla/Bengali, on a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) from the State Department, same as last year. Yes, it's a mouthful. Anyways, I'll be in Kolkata for 10 weeks this summer, and I'm really excited!

Unlike last year, this year the group of us going to Kolkata on CLS (there are four of us) get to go to Delhi for orientation with everyone else going to India (about 60 of us). Last year for some reason the Kolkata students did not get to do that. So I'm really looking forward to being put up in the Taj Hotel, one of the nicest hotels in Delhi, and getting to tour a bit in Delhi before we fly out to Kolkata later in the week.

I can already tell that this year will be very different from last year. This year there are 4 CLS students and 9 general AIIS students studying Bangla, compared to only 3 CLS students and no general students last year. Last year I had all individual classes, which had its pros and cons, but that surely will not be the case this year. Last year, I was the most advanced student at the institute. Rebecca, the other woman coming on CLS with me, has better Bangla than I do, and I imagine that several other people will as well. We won't meet the other 9 until we reach Kolkata, and I have not yet had a chance to talk to Ben and Jeff, the other CLS-ers in Bangla, so I'm not sure where their level is. But I'm really excited to have people who are more advanced than I am, because they can help teach me too, and it will push me more in class. Also, it will be nice to have so many peers who are willing and eager (and able) to converse in Bangla. I hope to speak much less English this summer than I did last summer.

I've had a really wonderful time seeing so many of my friends in DC before heading out. I arrived in DC a few days before the CLS pre-departure orientation began so that I could see my friends, some of whom I hadn't seen since December or January because they were studying abroad. It was really great to go all around DC without having a tight schedule or stressful classes to worry about. These past few days have really made me appreciate DC even more. The beautiful weather didn't hurt either.

Congrats to my big bro Evan for graduating from college! He kilt it, yo.

From one capitol to another...

Nomoshkar!

~Maura