Traveling and Day 1

The adventure started in Chicago, where we flew out of O'hare international airport at 8:30pm CST. I've been on transatlantic flights before so I like to think I can handle them well but they're never fun. That being said we were given some of the best airplane food I've ever had which was an amazing start to the trip.

After about 14 hours, thats a lot of movies if you're curious, we landed at our layover Abu Dabi around 9pm local time. After refueling with the best Cinnabon I've ever had we boarded our second flight headed for the Dehli airport.... and got stuck on the tarmac for 2 hours for "technical issues", I chose not to question the technical issues of the plane that was about to launch us into the sky.

After finally taking off we landed about 5 hours later in the Dehli airport around 5am local time. At this point we had been traveling for over 24 hours but luckily everyone seemed to be too excited to be tired. We collected our lugage in pillied out into the chilly Delhi morning.

For the first portion of this trip we'll be staying with the Sehgal Foundation, our partner on this project, at thier main compond in the city. The Sehgal Foundation is a nonprofit here in India. Thier mission is to "strengthen community-led development initiatives to achieve positive social, economic, and environmental change across rural India." They do this by working in water management, agricultural development, an increasing local participation and sustainability. I love a lot about this organization, they do amazing work, but one of my favorite parts is thier focus on women's empowerment and particpation. They do this by providing channels of communication to women to allow them to come together to discuss concerns or issues on work together to solve them. They also provide sessions on leadership and communication to help start to bridge that gap between woemen and places where decisions are being made.

The drive to the compound from the airport was a shock. As someone who is already a nervous driver and aviods rush hour traffic like the plague, the driving culture was a lot for me. I'm told it is a controlled system and that it's not total chaos but I'm not sure I totally believe that. Car horns are a whole language here, three lanes really means five lanes and traffic laws are more of a light suggestion, stop signs aren't that important right? Off all the warnings of culture shock we were given, I wasn't expecting the driving to be what shocked me. But we've gotten everywhere in one peice so far so I'm doing my best to adjust and just relax in the back.

The compound itself is a gorgeous building. A mix of traditional and modern industrial styles, integrated with nature with it's greenery and courtyards, and fitted with the most up to date green energy systems, the compoud feels like a little oasis in the city.

After arriving at the compoud around 7:30am Delhi time, we got settled into our housing and enjoyed the breakfast the foundation was kind enough to provide us. We were told to try to stay awake until that night so we kept busy chatting in our main room and playing card games, which involved what I can only describe as a power stance... but he did win that round so maybe it really did help.

After some bonding time we headed up to the main building for lunch, indian pizza which is a perfect mix of indian flavors and pizza I'm already sad I don't have it in the states, and to prep our equiment for the feild the next day. We met with member of the foundation and discussed more of the work they do in the area and the specifics we'll need to know for our work.

We finished the day with shopping to pick up Kurtas for us to wear in the field and a very good dinner the highlighted different kebab dishes, and prompty returned to the house to finally crash.

Thanks for following along!

-Chelsea