Ok, where do I begin to talk about my past week in India? I feel like lots of things have happened, so I'm going to do my best to go over some recent events, without things getting too drawn out.

Last Saturday I moved into the Deep Griha Cultural Centre - the house for its international volunteers. Everything seems pretty nice here so far, other than the fact that I'm currently the only international volunteer living here. There's staff members here all the time, so its very safe, but for the first few days it was a lot of me time after work. That's probably some karma coming my way for constantly being around people all of high school and college, living in a dorm setting for eight years of my life. But lately I've been hanging out more with the local volunteers, and becoming more comfortable traveling by rickshaw, so life is getting a bit more social.

I started work on Monday with my job as volunteer coordinator, which mostly entails answering a lot of emails from upcoming local and international volunteers. I'm also compiling a Deep Griha alumni database - throwback to working at the Rhodes Alumni Office! Aside from that as my primary role, I'm also getting involved with one of Deep Griha's projects called Wake Up Pune - its HIV education and outreach initiative. India has an ever increasing number of people living with HIV, especially in the state of Maharashtra. Not only that, but the stigma against people living with HIV is also really intense.

Some of the Deep Griha field workers took me to see the slum area near our office on Tadiwala Road (that's where the picture of me with bike lady came from). It was certainly eye opening to see that. Here are some pictures from that excursion.

I also got to see the school that Deep Griha runs on Friday called City of Knowledge. Its a great place with a lot of really excited kids, and its also nice that its about an hour away from the city. You forget that there are quiet places in the world after being here for awhile.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the 10 day Ganesh festival! Ganesh is a pretty big deal in Pune, and throughout the state of Maharashtra. Tomorrow Ganesh arrives, and after 10 days the statues of him are immersed in the river. People have been setting up for the festival throughout the past week that I've been here, and its supposed to be one of the craziest and most crowded days of the year at popular sites. If this picture from my visit to Laxmi Road today is any indication of what it will be like, I'm sure it will be wall to wall people:

Oh, and there are stalls selling Ganesh statues everywhere. Really, everywhere. Like this.

Last point of interest, I visited this famous fort called Shaniwar Wada in Pune today. Because I'm lazy, I'm going to quote you the Wikipedia description of it:

"Shaniwarwada ( pronunciation (help·info)) is a palace fort in the city of Pune in Maharashtra, India. Built in 1746,^[1] it was the seat of the Peshwa rulers of the Maratha Empire until 1818 when the Peshwas surrendered to the British. The fort itself was largely destroyed in 1828 by an unexplained fire, but the surviving structures are now maintained as a tourist site." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaniwar_Wada)

And here's a picture of the grounds taken from the front wall of the fort:

That's it for now. 

Namaste!