Two Weeks To Go!

It's getting closer! My program starts in 12 days, and I leave for INDIA in 14!

It's starting to finally sink in that I am leaving--and am leaving soon--for India and for a such an intensive language program in Urdu.

I'm getting my malaria prescription and a typhoid vaccination Monday, and I learned too late that I could have been vaccinated against other "prevalent" diseases in India, i.e. rabies and Japanese encephalitis. A nurse I spoke with yesterday really, well, freaked me out about the fact that I don't have time to complete the 30 day process for getting vaccinated for Japanese encephalitis. Japanese encephalitis, a relative of West Nile, is transferred via mosquito-to-human and can cause result in permanent brain damage, coma, or worse for a severely afflicted victim. Annually, 50,000 people in Southeast Asia are afflicted with the disease, and of those, 15,000 die. However, some other research of mine indicated that only 5 Americans have contracted the disease in India since 1981. The program I'm going with assures me that I'm safe in terms of many of the diseases, like Japanese encephalitis and rabies. So, fingers crossed, I'll be good, but it's things like that that I've got on my mind these days....

I'm still not sure what my housing situation will be once I arrive--and apparently, I might not know until I land in Delhi, and that's certainly not a lot of notice.

Overall, though, I'm excited for this experience, but it doesn't seem possible that it's already time for me to be going!