I'm back!

Well, I've finally made it back to India! I'm spending a few days living on NUJS Campus in Kolkata, on 23 February my sister Juliane will arrive and then we'll be taking a trip around Southern India: First Tamil Nadu, then Kerala, then Bombay, and then we'll fly up to Delhi for another few days of sightseeing before I start an internship with a law there - this will be another six weeks, so in total I'll be spending ten weeks in India.

I must say that I've never been this happy to return to a place. I flew out from Frankfurt on Sunday morning, 16 February, had a good flight and then had my friend Shubho pick me up from the airport in Kolkata. I was extremely excited when I saw the first signs that I had really come back to India: I could see the Ambassador Taxis from the plane already, and when getting out of the airport I got excited by the smallest things like the smells in the air as well as cows on the street, little shacks by the road and all that. I spent the night at Shubho's place, and it was great to meet him and his family again.

The next morning, we went on to NUJS Campus, which I was anxiously looking forward to. I had only told very few people, like Shubho, that I was coming back, so I knew it would be interesting to see how my friends there would react to a surprise visit... Shubho, who is now in his fifth and final year, was teaching a class to the students in third year, many of which I had become good friends with when studying in India a year ago, so I thought I'd just enter the class with him unannounced. They really all were very surprised, and I was so happy to see them all. Within minutes I felt right at home again.

Now the last couple of days I've been enjoying college life, just being on campus and spending time with everyone, though unfortunately many of them are busy with their vivas (oral presentations of their written projects) at the moment - still, there is always someone that is not so busy at the time, and also, there's Tobias, my friend from Freiburg who is now doing a semester here just like I did, and Roman, who I also know from Freiburg and who is studying for two trimesters in another law college (NLS) in Bangalore, Tobias' parents that have come to visit, and Hava, another German student who is here for an entire year (which I think is a good idea - people have been asking me whether I had come back for an entire semester and I wished I could say yes. A part of me wished I had just planned to spend the entire ten weeks in NUJS, but many of the students will be in Delhi at the same time that I'll be there)

Anyway, there's still some things I have to take care of before I can be fully connected again - I cannot use my Indian SIM card anymore that I had last week, so I hope to get a new one soon. Hopefully, I'll be able to use that to go online also, especially when traveling. But for now, I just want to enjoy being back here and spending as much time with my friends as possible... I'm sure the days will pass all too quickly.