Orientation Camp & First Night in Hamilton

Sorry to everyone who's been waiting for a blog entry - if that is anyone. I didn't have computer access for the first four days, and things have just been sooo busy I've hardly had time to write.

The orientation camp for the program included all of the Canadian participants in my group as well as the Canadian participants doing an Orangeville/rural India exchange in social services. The people in my group are Amrit, Barbara, Jared, Jenny, Katrina, Stephanie, Stephen, and Wafaa, and we all get along incredibly well. During the few days living in cabins, we did some teambuilding stuff, reading and discussing an article and poem, sharing our limited and humourous knowledge of Hindi, and sharing our desires and expectations for the next six months. We were responsible for planning welcoming activities for the participants arriving from India, so we spend the good part of Thursday making posters and cleaning up. I had no idea what to expect - if they'd step off the bus in saris or the same clothes we were wearing, how much English they would know, etc.
They arrived around 4:00pm on Thursday wearing very similar clothes as us, some even with English writing on it, and everyone was basically fluent in English. In fact, they mostly spoke 'Hinglish' with each other (mostly Hindi with a few English words thrown in). That night we made a nice bonfire and introduced them to S'mores which were a big hit never heard of by them.
On Friday we got to find out who our counterparts were, and I was paired with the sweetest girl ever, named Annu. She is only 17 - the youngest in the group by far, but is very easy going and mature. We had a nice conversation once we were told we were together, and she told me that when they were driving in on the bus and saw all of our houses with pointed roofs they thought they all looked like 'dream homes' since houses don't have roofs like that in India. When they saw our toilets they were sure to remind us that they would NOT be like that in India - just holes in the ground.
Friday afternoon we got to find out who our host families would be, and where in the Hamilton area we would be staying. Annu and I are staying with a very sweet woman in her fifties who is an RPN at a chronic care hospital. Sharon's husband passed away in April of this year, and thought it would be nice to have our company around.
The three of us went out to breakfast on Saturday morning to 'Egg and I' and talked about many things, including relationships and teen pregnancies. It turns out Annu's parents are from an arranged marriage, and she expects to have one as well, and has no problems with this since she assumes her parents will choose very well for her, and 'love marriages' often don't work out anyway - EEK! Sharon said that she did not allow her daughers, even in their late twenties, to sleep in the same bed with their partners under her roof. However, no one seemed surprised or concerned that I live with Brendan, so that's good.
Last night (Saturday night) there was a celebration of the 60th year of India's independance, which all 18 CWY/SPYM participants and the two project supervisors went to. Eleven of us wanted to go to a bar together after, as we had not been able to hang out since the orientation camp.
There were seven Canadian participants and four Indian participants who made the trek downtown, but it turns out all the Indian particpants have for ID is a photocopy of their passports. We managed to sneak into a bar and have a couple pints before they checked the ID, and kindly told us to leave after our next beer was done, which was cool.
Today Annu and I are going to do a bit of laundry (finally!) and take a bus downtown for an adventure.