STUDY abroad?

so...all of you who are getting a little green reading about my fast-paced subcontinent-trotting lifestyle will be glad to know that the first word in that tricky little phrase has finally snuck up on me. my college isn't just paying for me to bum around the subcontinent, there's actually (actually, like the american like, has a way of creeping into every sentence here in india) some education involved, too- despite the absence of it in this blog. for the first time in a long time, this past weekend was not divided into bus time and beach time, train and tourism time; instead i was studying for the first of my interim exams- both of which i had today (hindi and sociology). it's hard to believe that the semester is already more than halfway complete!
anyway, someone or something was pleased with me and decided to grant me the gift of a small taste of monsoon season- which will reach hyderabad only after i am back in d.c. as i biked home it was just beginning to sprinkle, and by the time i reached the guesthouse there were limbs of lightning continuously reaching 180 degress across the sky. i don't really know if i can explain the awesome power of a sudden onslaught of rain (for the past few nights it has rained minimally) after more than two months of nearly cloudless skies and oppressive heat- i can only say that it has the power to turn me into a little kid again. once it really started coming down-with much more force than the water pressure of our shower- ashley and i dashed outside, stuck out our tongues to catch mouthfulls of water, splashed in puddles, and ran barefoot through campus to the amusement of many umbrella-covered and shelter-seeking students and professors. finally, when we came back home, a few inches of water had collected on the roof ( it's walled in) and we tried to plug up the drains so that it would turn into a giant swimming pool. no such luck, unfortunately. however- two of my friends showed up later at dinner (it was a candlelight dinner due to a rain induced power-outage) drenched to the bone, and told us of wading through knee-deep water in a low area. rain here is like snow back home-no one can function. my dance class was canceled, a friend's hindi tutor was cancelled, we had to rethink our plans to venture into the swamped city for tea tonight. it brings me back to rainy days at camp, a bunch of girls cabin-bound with nothing to do (except write excesive blog entries on the wonders of rain).