स्वागत ("Swaagat", Welcome)

Well here goes nothing. I'm dipping my toes into the proverbial blogging world. Joining the masses of  broke, lazy, males that dominate the blogosphere. Thank you to Annie for showing me the ropes on how to blog. Please be kind as this is certainly an experiment as much as it will be my attempt to share my experience. Why the blog? It's pretty simple : I'm going to India, the few friends and family I have want to keep in touch, and I'm always open to new technology. Blogging this 16 day adventure to India seemed like the solution.

To give you some filler, one of my biggest regrets was having not traveled abroad during my undergrad years and one of the main draws for me to the University of Minnesota and their HR graduate program was the chance to go abroad. There were plenty of options from full semeters abroad in all sorts of locations. I picked India for many reasons. First, the culture is one of the most fascinating to me. Second, it's going to put me out of my comfort zone more so than China or Brazil would. Lastly, I believe the business and personal connection to India is strong with the career path I have chosen.

I really don't know what to expect from this trip. To give you an idea, the academic portion consists of our group visiting and speaking with business leaders of companies such as Lenovo, United Health Group, Ameriprise Financial, and Target to name a few. We've been instructed on the seriousness and confidentiality concerns of these meetings so I will likely not be able to share any details of these experiences. These visits will take up most of our time during the days leaving us the night to roam about.

The meetings and academic portion I'm really looking forward, but the most excitment lies in the unknown and unstructured evenings we will have free to explore. This is what I hope to share extensively through this blog. I am aiming to recreate my experience as much as possible through this blog so my goal will be to share as many photos, video, audio and whatever other media I can think of with you as possible.

So welcome to the blog. I hope it satisfies and some of you find it entertaining yet informative. I hope I don't get attacked by a leopard while I'm over there.

- D