Louisa's Exchange Year in India

     There are countless of different ways in which language can be learned. There is the high school class, the private tutiona, and the crash courses. There is the “I’m going on vacation for a week, so I’m going to buy a dictionary and go for it!” approach.  There is of course, the passive aggressive Duolingo owl, and his daily five minute lessons.  There is also the newborn baby method, in which a completely confused and deeply curious being is thrust into a whole new world.      My language learning experience was all and none of these. My lingual journal was, and continues to be, overwhelming, evolving, challenging and exciting. These are the stages that I experienced as I was plopped into a Marathi and Hindi speaking city armed with nothing but a little pink dictionary.  My method is one called, “The 15-year-old baby with a book.”      Stage One; my dad, ever the travel and language enthusiast, jumped onto Amazon the second AFS India excepted me to order every book he could f

     I had grown quite accustomed to the academic system in Vermont. I came to school wearing street clothes, I sat at big round tables, I called certain teachers by their last names, sometimes dropping the, “Ms.” or “Mr.”, and I was used to the casual conversational environment that was in place. When I thought of school, carts full of laptops and classrooms with projectors came to my mind, as did muraled walls, musical instruments, and red cafeteria trays. This was all I knew, but when I arrived in India, I found something completely different.                               I have speamt the last six months enrolled in K.T.H.M .  College, Nashik . Yes, college. In India, after you turn 15, high school is behind you. At that point, children are expected to have decided upon their career, enroll in either a Science, Commerce, or Arts college depending on that career, and then work hard towards achieving high marks and completing a degree. I am one of the students of K.T.H.M.’ s

     “Ritu, ut!” My host mom hollers up the stairs to wake my sleeping sister, Ritika.      “Patz minita Mommy, please!” Ritu groggily shouts, pleading for five more minutes.      “Nahi Beta, sahaa vasta ahe.” My mom says, meaning “No dear, it’s six o’clock.”      My sister grumpily clambers over me on her way out of the bed we share, kneeing me in the process. Although I theoretically can sleep for another half hour, I don’t. Ritu always says “oops sorry to wake you” but I know she did it purposefully because she doesn’t want to suffer the early morning alone.       We dress in our school uniforms, mine is a baby blue striped kurta and scarf. I attend KTHM College which on of the oldest schools in the city, hence our traditional uniform. Ritu and I do eachothers eyeliner because we’re both too tired to do our own. I braid her hair and she tells me which earrings to wear. When it comes to cooking, clothes, and braiding hair I’m the big sister, but often the rolls are swit

Welcome to my blog, friends!          Hello Everyone! I am Louisa Funk and I am an AFS exchange student exploring India. I’ve been on my cultural exchange for a little over two months now. Numerically, I’ve lived in India for only a tiny fraction of my life, but these last 60 days have felt the opposite of small. When I reflect on all the wonders I have seen, people I have met, the language I’ve begun to learn, and the sheer amount of life I’ve witnessed and absorbed, I think: “there’s no way all that living and learning happened in just a matter of weeks.” I’m living in a way I never have before. It’s overwhelming and new and beautiful and somewhat bizarre. I cannot wait to see where this whirlwind of a year will take me.                                   My new home is a saffron colored row-house with a mango tree in the front, slightly removed from Nashik City, Maharashtra, India. Nashik is the third largest city of the state Maharashtra, after Mumbai and Pune.