Preparation for Departure

This Thursday (March 30th), I have an appointment at the traveler's clinic at the local hospital to get the CDC's recommended vaccinations etc. in preparation for my departure to Chennai, India on May 26th. Also in preparation for my departure, I've been auditing a class on Modern South Asian history (I've got to do the reading still!) and am taking an econometrics course to give me statistical research tools.

Happily, I will not be alone in India. There are already two teams working to research and document SLS at the two PlanetRead stations. Scott, a fellow Brown student, is also going to work with PlanetRead this summer. While in India, I'll be living with all of these hard-working individuals to get a behind-the-scenes look at the operations of an international social enterprise; I am very excited.

This map shows to which regions of India Brij (my supervisor) is planning to send me: Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The states shown in orange are where I am scheduled to go. Those in yellow are tentative destinations: Maharashtra and Gujarat. I've indicated the two cities, where the PlanetRead headquarters (where I'll be spending the bulk of my time), are with red dots: Mumbai and Pondicherry.

This weekends goals: finish a fellowship application to try and get funding for important accessories for the SRL camera (which I'll need for my work this summer) and for my plane ticket. Other To-Do's include: applying for a tourist visa for 3-6 months, researching equipment, keeping this blog updated, and watching the recorded temperature in Mumbai climb.