Simone's First Impressions

I won’t start off and say that India is amazing, I love it etc. What I will say is it has been an experience. Nearly every aspect of the country is so different to what I know and am used to. When I arrived I just couldn’t get my head around it. I was in INDIA! It took a while for it to sink in, that after all that work and all that travel we had finally set foot in Kolcatta. Some people say that the first thing they notice is the smell and the noise. The smell didn’t bother me that much but it was the noise I first noticed walking out of the airport. There was the screeching of the huge number of birds flying above our head and the never ending honking of all the car horns, the chatter of all the people outside the airport but there was something else apart from all that. It was a noise I couldn’t distinguish at first and then I realized. It was literally the sound of the city. The city was humming and alive, just the buzz of a place so compacted with people that you could hear it. Now don’t get me wrong, from my first sentence it may sound like I don’t like it here but it is quite the opposite, I love all the new experiences I am having and how I see something new everyday. The reality of the poverty I am seeing really opens up your eyes and makes you realize how much you have and that happiness is not money. It is just a state of mind and if others can be happy with what little they have why cant you.