Let’s do this

Consider this the formal welcome to this blog. I originally wrote an awfully pretentious introduction, but thankfully had the peace of mind to delete most of it. Here are the good parts:

Holly and her first cup of tea in Bangalore.

Hi! This is the place where I’ll be talking all about my time abroad. Here’s the stuff you’ll need to know to follow along:

• I am in Bangalore, India (now Bengaluru, India) in the southern tip of the country.
• I will be here for 10 weeks. I arrived June 26, 2015.
• I am one of three students completing an internship through the University of Washington Journalism program called Foreign Intrigue. Each of us travels to a different country to work for a local publication. I will be working for Citizen Matters, an online news outlet for Bangalore.

This is an entirely new experience. Terrifying and wonderful already, and I’ve only just begun. And when it comes to articulating the new experiences I have here, I expect that the words I normally rely on may be left, like myself, shrugging their shoulders and wondering “How could you possibly say it?”

The answer, of course, will be “In any way you can.” So that’s what will happen here, on my blog: storytelling of the most sincere kind.

Storytelling informed by my experiences here, by my interactions with the people at home and India, by my work at the paper.

I can pretty much guarantee these stories will include things that are awkward and strange and silly, and I can sincerely say I hope that they’ll also be funny and useful and, at the very least, interesting.

With that, I’ll see you around.