Even though the threat of war between India and Pakistan may discourage many people from visiting the Indian Subcontintent, Bermudian Zayna Foggo isn't one of them.

In fact she can't wait to return to India and will be disappointed if the boundary conflict escalates into a full blown war and she isn't able to return to Pune to complete the second year of her two-year scholarship programme with the United World College.

"The general feeling amongst people in India - including myself because I stayed with my best friend Gayatri in Bombay for about ten days after school finished and we talked about it a lot - is that both sides are quite serious about it but none of them have enough guts to actually start the war," said the Bermudian teenager.

"The main feeling is that they all just want media coverage. Given what has happened in the past year you just can't throw it aside and say `okay, they are just talking and are not going to act on what they say'.

"Obviously, it has to be taken serious but it is not as bad as it is made out to be. Pune has a big nuclear plant so if anything happens Pune could get wiped out. The given situation in India is that Pakistan and India are going to go to war, which is completely blown out of proportion by both the American stations and BBC."

The 17-year-old (18 next month) made India her home over the last nine months and has become so immersed in the Indian culture that she cannot wait to return in August.

"The way I feel about living in India and my school, I definitely want to go back," she stated.

"Obviously if a war breaks out the school itself will probably say `there is a war, it is not safe for any students to come back', so they might close the school down for a period of time. I definitely don't want that to happen."

Zayna is learning to speak Hindi, the country's national language, has made lasting friendships with other scholarship students and is getting the kind of experiences and exposure many thousands of miles away from home that will remain with her a lifetime.

"The United World College is a foundation that was started by Nelson Mandella and my take on the foundation is they want all different sorts of students from all different countries, nationalities and races to get together and interact with each other," explained Zayna, who is back home for the summer.

"My sister Amne applied two years before I did and that's how I came to know about it."

Four other students from Bermuda also received scholarships and are attending UWC colleges in other parts of the world.

"I know I am the only Bermudian at Mahindra United World College. Mahindra is the company in India that sponsors the school. My school has about 200 students, 100 in the first year and 86 in the second year. You get selected through a process and around the world there are national committees. They do an application process and interview process."

United World College has ten schools around the world, with another being established in France. Zayna's top three choices were Norway, India and Japan, while places like New Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom were towards the bottom of her list.

"I'm glad I got placed in India," she says without hesitation. "I wanted to go somewhere exotic. If I hadn't been chosen to go to India, I probably wouldn't have gone to that side of the world for the next ten years of my life.

"I had applied to universities as well. United World College is not a university, more like the 11th and 12th years, but because the level of the courses is so high when you apply to schools in the US and Canada, you can opt to go straight to the second year and transfer credits. It sets a great foundation.

"When I first went my plans were to go to university and study actuarial science, particularly at a university in the US, but now they have changed a bit and my heart is not just set on the US, it is pointing towards the UK and the US."

Zayna is meeting students from all over the world and that is enabling her to broaden her circle of friends and learn about other cultures.

"With each college, depending on how the school is funded, there might be a certain percentage of natives that you have to have in the school," she explained. "For instance, in Hong Kong there are 50 students just from Hong Kong - not including China because they are considered separate - and that's because the land that the school is on is funded by Government. With my school, the land that we have is not funded by Government, we bought it from a villager. But Government has said we have to have a certain number of Indians in the school.

"When I was there in my first year there were about 40 (Indians) out of 200. All of them come from different areas in India and each area is completely different...the style of dress, obviously the language and the culture of each different state in India."

The students at the school in India lived on campus on four wadas (a cluster of houses). Zayna started out with three roommates, but the girl from Norway became homesick and left after just five weeks in India. Her two remaining roommates, Nisha Dhawan and Gayatri Divecha, are both Indian and helped Zayna learn about their culture.

And while both Nisha and Gayatri were in their second year, which means they have now left the school, strong friendships have been formed between the trio.

"And I will keep in contact with them for years and years," she promised.

"There were supposed to be two first years (students) and two second years, but the roommate from Norway left in October so that left Gayatri, who is from Bombay, and Nisha, who is Indian but was born in Holland and also lived in Canada," explained Zayna.

"My housemates include one girl from Holland, one girl from Croatia, a girl from India and one other girl who is from Mauritius but is half-Indian. They tried their best to make the house as diverse as possible. The living arrangements are designed to create an informal atmosphere and a close knit community."

While the students have two project weeks each year, they are not allowed to leave the country. Obviously in the case of India, the country of about a billion people, 16 major languages and 1,269,339 square miles there is more than enough to do, see and learn.

"In other UWCs, for instance in Hong Kong, they are allowed to go to Malaysia, Thailand and China," she explained.

"You can opt to take a student-led group or a teacher-led group, and I took both student-led groups. Your parents are supposed to sign something right from the beginning saying you are allowed to go on a student-led group."

A trip up north was aborted after arriving in Bombay from Pune so the opportunity to visit Taj Mahal was missed because another student missed the train in Bombay after they had travelled four hours from Pune.

"It was a group of 15 and my roommate Nisha was on the platform with a boy from the US, Justin, and they were leading the project," she explained. "One of our friends wasn't at the platform and Nisha and Justin said they weren't getting on the train. The train was leaving and we had to jump off the train while it was moving.

"Then, we had to sleep in the train station, which is not a big thing because everybody sleeps in the train station. The worst that can happen, if you are not paying attention, is somebody might try to take your bag."

Zayna explained that project week is designed to help the students learn more about the culture in which they are living. When she returns for her second year she is looking forward to the first project week which will involve a two-day trip up north to Rajasthan.

"School is very different from everyday life in India," stressed Zayna. All the students are required to do community work and every Saturday she worked at an orphanage called Sofosh at Sasoon Hospital where she came into contact with children with various disabilities and illnesses.

"We are based in a village called Khubavali and it's a different world. In Khubavali you don't have to worry about getting sick from eating the food or drinking the wrong water because we have a purification plant on the school grounds," she explained.

Adventure has become the story of the 17-year-old's life. Even the day she left Bermuda last September was probably the worst day for flying...the day after the terrorist attacks! In fact she was due to leave Bermuda on September 11, but the flight was cancelled. She was accompanied to London by her mother Lovitta and Uncle Gregory.

`I didn't want to fly, my mother didn't want to fly, but of course I wanted to get to India," she said.

After the initial adjustment to the food and the culture of India, Zayna thoroughly enjoyed her first year at the school, though she did miss her mother and sister. Unlimited internet access helped her keep in touch with family and friends.

"My mother would call every two or three weeks," said Zayna.

"I definitely think my mother, being a former school teacher, has been a big part of my life. She just got out of teaching last June when I finished school."

As a lover of sports, cricket in particular, Zayna quickly saw how big that sport is in India.

"Cricket is on every field that you see," said the self-confessed tomboy who even played a game of cricket for her school. She has also played football here for Wolves Girls.

"Sometimes, depending on how large the field is, there could be a hundred fun cricket games going on at once. I was mad with myself because when we were in Kerala there was an international one-day match going on - I can't remember who was playing India - and we were watching them on TV.

"It was about an hour away and the night before my friend was offered to go to the game and she thought the guy was joking. We could have gone. Cricket is huge. At my school I was the only girl who had every gone to play cricket with the guys.

"I played basketball for my school as well, we played against a few clubs in Pune. There is a really physical Indian sport called kabadi but I never played it because my knee is injured and I didn't want to mess it up."

Zayna has the looks that enable her to pass for Indian, which is a good thing. It did almost get her in trouble with the law, however.

"I was told off by a policeman in Hindi and I couldn't understand half of what he was saying," she remembered.

"This was towards the beginning of the (school) year so we hadn't learned that much Hindi. One of my friends had taken a picture of me but there was a Government building behind and that is illegal. I just said to him `but I'm not Indian'."

Because she looked Indian, Zayna found the vendors do not try to rip her off as much when selling her something as they would some of the other foreign students.

"You don't have to deal with bargaining down so much, but they still try to cheat their own," she revealed.

"Then there are times when things happen and somebody starts talking to you in Hindi or Marathi, which is the more prominent language in Maharashtra, the state where Pone and Bombay are in. Then almost with every village there is a different dialect...thousands of different dialects.

"Because I'm taking Hindi as one of my six courses, I'm one up on some of the other students that just had to take Hindi for a couple of months. It's mandatory that you do Indian studies courses outside of your six courses. "In the beginning I couldn't understand anything, now I can listen to people's conversations and picking out certain words I can piece together the conversation.

"I'm doing French as well and Hindi is much easier that French, I must say."

The experiences of India have certainly put things in a different perspective for the Bermudian.

"The major change within myself is you learn to appreciate every small thing that you have. You see so many people who need what they can't have," she says.

"You think about how many youngsters in Bermuda just waste opportunities. Every country doesn't have Government scholarships to universities, definitely not India." Her advice to any young person interested in a similar experience is simple: "You have to want to have something, if not it will be a waste of time. Life is what you make it and you have to take advantage of the opportunities when they are presented to you.

"I wanted this, I really wanted UWC!"