After a long (8 hours!), bumpy, hot drive from Nagapatinam, we arrived in Chennai. We stayed at the YWCA, and it was nice...my room even had windows, woo hoo! There were a ton of foreigners there, including a big group of American teenagers. I think they were part of a church group or something. One good thing about the YWCA is the delicious juice stand down the street...yummy! I have been addicted to papaya juice for the last week or so...
We had meetings with Oxfam on Thursday and with our implementation group on Friday. It was so great to see people from Oxfam Boston. I was talking to the person that arranged for me to come to Tamil Nadu, and it turns out that he and his wife used to live in Hanoi and they visited Hong Kong often because it is such a short flight. So, we were reminiscing about restaurants in Vietnam and Hong Kong, and it was great. Even though I talk to Matt every night, it got sort of lonely being down in the village, basically by myself.
The next day we had meetings with the implementation team, and things look like they are finally gettng started. Hallelujah! I am learning a lot about trying to plan a project in collaboration with many different people...it is slow...and then when you add in the cultural differences and miscommunications, it moves at a glacial speed! So, it turns out that basically I will not be doing anything until NEXT Saturday, when I am working with another team member to create the quantitative questionairre. So, now that I know I will basically have nothing to do in the village for the next week...I am getting antsy! Luckily I talk to Matt everyday and have internet access.
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