My first international trip!

It was during my research internship I stepped on foreign land for the first time in my life. It was the United States of America (USA), though technically it was Qatar first where I had my connecting flight. The feeling of meeting new people, their culture, lifestyle, and whatnot was enthralling.

After my brief stay of about two months, I can now safely say that the Americans are much more outgoing and friendly than what I had expected. I was welcomed with full enthusiasm and cheerfulness. At no point, I felt excluded from the group or being treated as a foreigner be it the clubhouse, the research group, my roommates, the hackathon team or the skateboard sessions.

I was accommodated in a 4BHK apartment, one of which was empty so I was having two American roommates and it’s no exaggeration that they were super amazing and humble. Oh boy one of them had a cat and I still can’t forget her, she was so adorable and fun to play with. Actually, playing with the cat was a great stress buster after a full day of involved work. I feel that I have so much to talk about the cat that it can make up for a separate blog. One really nice thing in the US is that almost everyone owns a car and is the common mode of transport similar to what motorbikes are to India. Kudos to my roomates who once took me to skatepark which was a completely refreshing experience, it was my first time but they helped me a lot and I was rolling on flat surfaces and turns within an hour.

Some more things which are common in the US but were slightly new for me - Greeting people at work, store etc with phrases like “How’s is it going?” or “Howdy?”, the latter being a more popular and exotic slang in Texas and particularly the university area. One more very interesting thing was that the sun used to set at around 8:30PM and so it would get dark only by 9PM, this grealtly increases the work that you can pull off in a day; to me it felt like having two days at once.I loved the green cover and maintence in almost all places in Texas I went by. My only painpoint was cooking, which I rarely enjoy and ofcourse no one wnats to cook after a full day at work.

To conclude it was a completely different and one of a kind experience which I will cherish my whole life. I got to meet people from various nationalities, including but not limited to - United States, China, Qatar, Pakistan, Cyprus, Mexico. Thank you everyone who directly or indirectly contributed to my make my trip succesful.

Some pictures that I clicked there …