Today marks my fifth full day here in Shillong so I figured it’s about time to explain why I’m here and what I’m doing. The name of my program is “Wooster in Northeast India” and this is the second year a group of Wooster students have ventured to St. Anthony’s College. Rakhal (our guide throughout this trip) is a politics professor here. He lives here with his wife and son. St. Anthony’s is a Catholic college and everyone has been incredible kind to us!
The girls and I live in this large building. It’s a “hostel” (basically another word for dorm). Overseen by a very small and sweet woman named Sister Mary. (She really got a kick out of the fact that my name is Molly). To the right is a picture of the house where Jill and the three boys live. This is also where we have all of our meals and where we enjoy wifi...until our 8:30 curfew for us that is....the boys get the TV, the washing machine and the wifi!
My bed! Claire and I share a room. And the picture on the right? Yeah...that's the lobby of the hostel. My room is there on the left. Jesus and Mary are watching us.
This lovely man cooks us our food! It’s been very good and he usually tries to include at least one spicy dish for those of us who miss the spice! And we get a lot of really delicious fruit (lychees, mangos, papayas, jackfruit, strawberries, and did I mention mangos?...the most delicious mangos!)
Food time! Here is Claire Jill and Vernon about to enjoy a lovely meal.
This week has been a full week of classes. Our first class starts at 9:30, we have a tea break, then another class, an hour and a half lunch break, a guest speaker, a second tea break and a fourth class. We get out of class at 5:30. Our teachers are very kind and the subjects are interesting (politics and environmental studies). But...let’s be honest...that’s a lot of class, especially when you’re in a foreign city you’ll never visit again. I won’t elaborate on my feelings about this just in case someone from the school sees this post. If you are reading this and happen to work for Wooster or St. Anthony’s, class is the best thing ever. 
Class and Tea. Life in Shillong. In all seriousness though, Sabrata (Rakhal's wife and one of our teachers here) is really wonderful and teaches a class about the relationship between culture and geography which I love.
We are supposed to have the occasional field trip which will be nice. This week we visited a Sacred Forest which was beautiful and wet. I was also told that leaches are known to fall from the trees and under your clothes. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t completely paranoid the entire time. But it was a beautiful drive through a very lush, green and mountainous part of India! I do love me some good scenic drives.
We stopped of course for some tea on the way back from the forest. (They really love their tea here).
Overall, everyone has been really kind to us and we all really appreciate it (Sister Mary just came in to tell me she always has icecream for us!) St. Anthony’s has been lovely and all of our teachers and guest speakers seem very happy to talk to us and teach us and the weather is a really great added bonus. (I comfortably wore jeans and a long sleeved shirt today). Oh and the wifi is very much appreciated.
Okay! Off to see the Bangladesh border this afternoon! (Yeah I know, my life is pretty cool!)
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