My research is coming along! I am so relieved to be gathering data like crazy, and I have another week of focus groups and interviews to look forward to. My research assistant and I spent the 22nd-27th in Rajasthan conducting focus groups with migrant laborers and interviews with labor contractors, parents of the laborers and others. The places we are going are very far apart, so we hire a vehicle and driver to get us around. We also have a local woman helping us since there is a combination of three languages being spoken (Hindi, Gujarati and Vagari) at any given time. This is not the Gujarati or Hindi of the classroom either. But I am managing and with the help of these two women the research is really going well. The day after tomorrow we head back to the area by bus and begin again. Hopefully we will double the number of focus groups and I have my hopes up for several important interviews to come through as well.

It seems like yesterday I felt that I would be here forever, and now the time is slipping through my fingers. I have two solid weeks of research planned, and then Sage is here for two weeks! We plan to go to all sorts of places that neither of us has ever been and then we will come back to Ahmedabad for a few days. After that I don't have much time to get a ton of research done, but I am into it now and feel confident about where it's going.

I am getting excited about life after the research, about getting back to Seattle, about the writing process, about being near everyone I love again. And I have to work really hard to keep my head here for a little while longer. That is not to say that being here is not captivating and an incredible experience filled with new ideas and more to learn than I can possibly absorb, I just miss home.