the final countdown

You know that feeling you get during the last week of school? You've got final projects and final papers and final exams, so you really have to be studying. But concentration is all but impossible because it feels like your face and your brain are melting from the heat. You also want to spend as much time with friends as possible because you'll all be scattered for months during summer vacation. Besides, how can you concentrate when a long break with minimal responsibilities and all of the fun is fast-approaching?

That's where I'm at right now. It's the last week of classes, and it's brutal. We had an eight-page paper due yesterday, and we've got a revision of another paper due on Thursday. There's a Hindi written exam on Wednesday, coupled with an oral exam. I have to book train tickets to Varanasi and find somewhere to stay. There's e-mails to write and Skype interviews to be conducted. It's already hot and humid outside, even though it's barely April.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel though, and that light is the independent study project. The ISP is the capstone of the SIT study abroad experience, in which each sets out on her own to conduct fieldwork on the topic of hey choice in the location of her choice. I'm staying in Delhi, and I'm researching barriers to accessing water in urban slums. (This interest in water infrastructure explains why I spent a good forty minutes on Sunday climbing on my host family's roof like a madwoman, taking dozens pictures of their rooftop water storage system that's hooked up to the municipal water system.)

Starting next Monday, I'll be staying in a hostel in Parharganj, a neighborhood in Delhi that's known as a hub for travelers and backpackers. It'll be a much different experience than the one I've been having with my host family and although my host family is lovely and hospitable and warm and caring and wonderful, I'm ready to be on my own again. I think it's just the control freak in me that's been panicking with this loss of autonomy that's part and parcel with moving into a homestay after living on my own for the last three years and enrolling in this program.

But all of that independence is coming back to me, and it's coming back so soon! I just have to make it through this week, then I'll be free. I should add here that "free" is a relative term. I still have to check in with the program, and I still have responsibilities to uphold. What's refreshing is the opportunity to be on my own schedule once again, to have the opportunity to study what I want in the way that I want. I'm even getting excited about the simple thought of being able to eat the food that I want to eat, when I want to eat it.

I've had my ups and downs with this program, but my love for Delhi has remained constant. I'm excited to explore more of the city and to do it on my own time. First I need to pass my Hindi final, though.

Just one more week.