Successfully in Dehradun!

As I write this, the lights have all gone out in the computer lab at the Wildlife Institute where I am staying. So I am getting a pretty accurate reintroduction to India after being in a five-star hotel in Delhi for orientation. I am staying at the guest hostel in the Wildlife Institute for now, but I'm going to try to head up to the Landour Language School, which is about an hour away within a couple of days. My Hindi is pretty disastrous at this point, so I need to fit in some intensive language lessons before starting field work in mid-September. It seems that I'll be based out of Joshimath for my field work, which is great because there are numerous PhD students out there doing socio-economic research like myself. So I have been lead to believe that making surveys, finding translators and so forth will be relatively easy given that I've never done this before.

I like Dehradun a lot and I like where I am staying. I am beginning to get a little homesick, but I think that could also be from the fact that I haven't really spoken to anyone back home for days. I'm hoping that I can work out my wireless situation and become more accessible. Also, I have gotten more than four hours of sleep for the past three nights, so I feel like I'm going a little crazy. Hopefully, I will not feel so homesick once I adjust to the time difference.