Reporting from New Delhi — Hello from India! We're at the end of day three in a whirlwind 10-day tour of India with Journalism 585, Reporting on Religion. Over spring break, eight graduate students, another undergrad and I are interviewing and writing stories in New Delhi, with an emphasis on religion and politics. None of us had been to India before. So far, it's been overwhelming and in-your-face, but in the best way possible. We spent the bulk of the first day observing a variety of religious structures in Delhi: a mosque, a Jain temple, a Hindu Shiva shrine and a Sikh gurdwara. We visited Humayun's Tomb and the India Gate, tried our first authentic Indian food and bought local clothes. Our second day began north of the city, where a Christian NGO agreed to walk us through a 100,000-person slum. Half of the slum's population is children, and they gathered around us, shouting "Hello! Picture!" as we walked down the streets. Groups of students spoke with women's support networks, visited a local school and toured the poorest areas of the slum. Later that afternoon, we had lunch with a USC journalism major from New Delhi and met with veteran BBC reporter Mark Tully, an expat Brit who's lived in and covered India for nearly 50 years. We sat in a circle of couches and armchairs in his living room and picked his brain about our stories and working in a foreign country. Our third day began before 6 a.m. when we got on a bus in the chilly morning mist to drive to Agra, home to the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. No photo of the Taj Mahal can prepare you for its breathtaking beauty: despite being made of thousands of tons of marble, the building seems to float on the horizon as you approach. The last three days have been an exhausting but lovely orientation to a city different in every way from anything I've encountered before. Tomorrow, the work begins. We'll be fanning out across the cities in twos and threes to begin our reporting projects, topics we've been honing and researching since class began in January.