Jaipur (pink city)/Agra

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After just one day in Dehli, we spent the next 3 days with an Indian host family in Jaipur. This week was an orientation week run by our company IDEX to help us better understand the culture, food, how to behave etc. I found this week quite tough and a little boring at times as there was a lot of sitting around being spoken at! I did, however, find it very interesting to learn about women's position in society in India .

The Indian family we stayed with were very friendly and accommodating. They fed us traditional (spicy!) curry every night and were interested to learn about where we came from. I stayed with two other girls from the volunteering program (Nicole and Cat). This week is when the culture shock really hit me and I found it quite difficult at times. Communication was an issue at times and coupled with the incessant begging and heat, I felt like at times going home!

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The latter part of the week did improve though, and as I began to make friends, I became far more comfortable with being there. The highlights of this week were visiting the Amber fort by elephant and watching a Bollywood movie.

After saying goodbye to our Indian family, we boarded the bus for yet another 8 hour bus ride, this time to Agra to see the Taj Mahal!