FINALLY

You can breathe now...I finally made it to Chennai. My first impression of this city...hazy, crowded, colorful, humid. I arrived late at night and Eric, Sanjay and Cambel were there to pick me up and take me to where we are staying. We are staying at a Christian Church led hostel. It is actually a non-denominational Christian Church (imagine my surprise!). We call it CSI, Church of South India. There is a small chapel with a small hotel and canteen attached which is run by the Christian Indians that live there. Among our group we have ten or so rooms with three people in each. The rooms are nice, reminiscent of summer camp. Three beds, a desk, two dressers and yes...a full bathroom in each room. However drainage systems are interesting...that I will save for another day. Did I mention each room is air conditioned? That was a nice surprise. :)
One thing us American students must get used to while living here at the CSI is being more conservative. Since we are living at a church, we must abide by their rules, and that means dressing appropriately, keeping our voices down and not swearing (our hosts do speak English). They are so serious about all three of these things. Swearing is hugely offensive and that could cause them to ask us to leave. In all honesty though, these are not unreasonable requests, and seeing as though the CSI is centrally located, inexpensive, and safe, I think we got a pretty good set-up. Hopefully I'll be able to upload pictures at some point because it is interesting.

The city of Chennai itself is breathtaking. Not for its beauty (because to be honest, it is filthy), but because of the sheer amount of people that fill the streets in all forms of transportation and in all methods of dress. I learned today that there are close to seven million people here, and I have a feeling every single one of them all try to cross the street at once. The busy roads here are full of motorbikes, rickshaws, cabs, cars, bikes, people, everything all at once and driving in different directions, swerving and crossing in front of eachother. Not to mention they drive on the left side of the road whuch made my first ricksahw experience very frightening. I am astonished that there aren't more head-on collisions. I don't really know how else to describe the street life except that I am going to have to upload pictures as soon as my card reader arrives...
On that note, still no luggage.
Oh well.

-S