First post, I am going back to an email I originally wrote to Kelly (my oldest sister, for those of you who don’t know) in the middle of the night at 3am my first week here. I couldn’t sleep because of the time difference! :

So, really liking it so far! But it’s only my second full day so I still feel completely new and out of my comfort zone. I’m adjusting and not really sure who to go to and talk to at the Yoga Institute – I feel like I’m a floater since I’m not enrolled in a program yet. HUGE culture shock – even flying in, starting form the airline (AirIndia) which was red and gold with Indian music playing when you walked on, served 3 INDIAN meals (I’m talking super spicy curries, masalas, rice etc.), Indian women wearing their colorful scarves and dresses, all the way to when I landed and looked out the window as the plane was coming down and, I shit you not, it is no lie a scene from slum dog millionaire – “houses” piled on top of houses, and when I say houses, I mean tin walls thrown together and I don’t even know how they stay together. Like just looks like little huts falling all over the place, slanted, stacked on top of one another. Everything is blue – I can’t explain that until you see it. But it’s like when you look out the window when your touching down in different parts of the US, sometimes it’s square lots of brown, or green, or city buildings, or mountains… this is just like blue everywhere. Anyways, I’m at the Yoga Institute and we are in the middle of the LOUD and dirty city of Mumbai (Bombay), but once inside the walls of the Institute it feels very peaceful, clean, and safe. It’s very structured and their are guards at all of the entrance gates. Lots of gardens and plants. The instructors and directors are all super nice and I have met a few people that I really enjoy. I’ve been mostly relaxing since I got here and dropping in on different sessions of the 2 different teacher training courses that are being offered right now – one is a 1 month teacher training course, the other is a 3 month teacher training course. The 3 month course seems pretty sweet – lots of practicing with these masters who just come around and correct you. The style of teaching here is SO different than in the states. The class isn’t lead as a “flow,” it’s a lot of individual postures, holding, and then the teacher coming around and correcting.  Or they’ll show you a mini series and then you repeat it on your own. Maybe it’s just for the teacher training course, but still the teaching style just seems so different here. Tomorrow I will start a course – it’s called a 7 day health camp – so 7 days of yoga, meditation, lectures on yogic and health topics, etc. So that will be nice to actually be enrolled in something with a group of other people and not feel like a floater. I have no idea what I will do after the camp but lots of different possibilities. I’ll keep ya posted…. The food at the institute is great – they serve 3 meals a day and one “snack” (which is essentially a mini meal and tea) at 4pm. All the food is typical vegetarian Indian dishes, except not spicy. It is all “Sattvic” – a Hindi/sanskrit term that means “pure” – basically nothing spicy, deep fried, no meat, no caffeine, no white bread, flour, sugar, nothing that can disturb the nervous system ((Pic posted here!)). I share a room with 2 other girls but they haven’t arrived yet. The room is pretty big and super clean, and we have our own bathroom. Oh and today I ventured outside the walls of the Institute for the first time to walk down the street and get some fruit and make photo copies of my passport – the streets are a whole different ball game. NO traffic rules, people walking everywhere, cars and little rickshaws driving all over the road, all different stands lining the streets. Super hot and sweaty and claustrophobic and smelly and dirty. Total chaos. You don’t even realize how hectic it is until you walk back into the walls of the Yoga Institute, and then it’s like AH, bliss. Haha. From the way I’m describing it all, prob sounds awful, but I weirdly think I’m gonna love it – SO many colors, people are just dressed so colorfully, so many good tastes and flavors in all the food, and the contrast of the peaceful Institute and the busy city surrounding it is kinda cool.