First off, I wanted to post links to the blogs of Joel and Matt who are interning with me this summer. Check them out at http://blog.joelboucher.net/ and http://www.mattprindible.com/india/ respectively.

OK, so three work days down, 47 to go. Pretty eventful happenings the last few days since my last post: a lot of firsts. I managed to get sick for the first time - not terrible, just some stomach issues, but I know that's part of the normal adjustment process. By the time I make it back to the U.S., I'm going to be immune to anything it can throw at me. I don't know if it was food or water or what, but I'm just going to take it a little more slowly with the food. It's all very spicy: breakfast, lunch, dinner, you name it. I like spicy, but I'm just going to need to get adjusted to it.

I also exchanged money for the first time. I handed over $160 US dollars and $10 Euros and felt like I got completely ripped off when I was handed back like 8000 Rupees. The stuff feels like Monopoly money, or maybe better said Ghandopoly money. Every bill has Ghandi on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_rupee. It's about 42 Rupees = 1 US Dollar. Overall things seem to be cheaper here, though. For example, I can get a meal out somewhere for about 100 rupees, which is like $2.00. Anyway, so that was an experience.

Another first was my first day at our campus. Honeywell in Bangalore is comprised of a couple different campus locations. We spent the first days at the Main Campus (comprised of buildings each named after a planet), then today went to the Orion campus (catching onto the theme?). Orion is where I'll be working the rest of the summer. I met my manager for the first time and some other people on my team. I'm not really sure yet what I'll be working on, but that should be sorted out by the end of the week.

It was a little bit frustrating and boring today not having anything to work on yet, and also not having Internet at our cubicles (!). But, hopefully soon that will all be worked out. The biggest positive to take out of everything so far is that everyone we've met and worked with has been so very nice. The HR people here have all been absolutely fantastic, and the guys on my team also seem great. They're going through this for the first time as well, so I can understand that things are a little hectic here to start. If my workstation and email and things are all set up tomorrow, I'll be able to finally access the calling card information to call home, communicate with everyone else using the internal communicator, and hopefully start work on my projects. That will make things a lot better.

One first that I'm still waiting for is a HOT SHOWER. The apartments we're staying at are fantastic, but I always seem to catch the shower at the wrong time. I know Larissa gets a hot shower everyday and Joel has been lucky as well, but I must be trying to get a shower at the same time as everyone else. I'm going to try some different times so I can start getting hot showers. Otherwise, it's going to be a long ten weeks.

I've been keeping up with the news from the U.S. as well: Ortiz on the DL for a month, and Barack finally declares victory over Hillary. I guess with her out of the picture, the scariest woman in U.S. politics is now officially Michelle Obama. As far as the Red Sox are concerned, I've missed not being able to flip on a game at night, but it's fun to get up in the morning and check all the scores and follow along online for a couple innings before I go to work. (The standard 7:05PM start time is 5:35AM here.)

I guess that's about it for tonight. Hope all is well with everyone wherever you are. Also, if you're having trouble commenting, please shoot me an email or an IM and I'll try to figure out the problem. I've heard from a number of people that you can't comment on here, so I'd like to fix that if possible. Take care!