First day in India

Sep
2009
17

posted by on English, India Project, Livin' my Life, Local

Flag of IndiaHey folks,

guess what, now I’m really in India! To be precise – in New Delhi 🙂 After lots of stress on tuesday to clear out my room and get the last things done, wednesday morning I flew to Helsinki. It was a comfortable flight and I met a nice German women who was as well on the way to India. In Helsinki we had 4 hours to wait but time flew by due to a great conversation 🙂 The flight from Helsinki to Delhi was simply awesome. No turbulences, really smooth, nice neighbor, good meal and enough space – thanks to Finnair 🙂 The Norwegian women to my right was very entertaining and I got an invitation to visit her in the next two weeks in Rajasthan – maybe I gonna do that 🙂 Check-out in Delhi was fast and „europe-like“ and thus I was hitting Indian ground at half past four 🙂 The driver from the University was already waiting for me and brought me to the campus. That was my first „alright, this in India“ experience 😉 The driver wasn’t speeding, which was impossible anyhow due to regular bumps on the „road“. More frightening was the „driving without seeing“… Due to the humidity in the air the window got wet, the lights were bad and the „road“ not marked: I sometimes could not see 5 meters foreward and at one point we had to go back, because he obviously was on the wrong lane due to no sight… Anyway, I arrived save and got guided to my room in the guesthouse: „Sir, would you like to have tea at 7?“ „What, that’s in 2 hours!“ „Oh, you wanna sleep a bit?“ „Yes, maybe until ten?“ „Breakfast is at eight!“… So I haven’t slept much so far. Breakfast was indeed great with really good sandwiches 🙂 I used the rest of the day to organize my environment (setting up internet etc.) and spent quite some time to install Tor in order to get an unblocked access to the internet, thus circumventing the restrictions here on campus… 😉 Moreover I bought some Skype credit and was able to call family and friends in germany over skype via my iPhone – great 🙂 Weather is fine. It’s really warm but ok. Room’s ok as well and I got a little bathroom which only I use, so everthing’s really great 🙂 As I’m here living on the campus I already met all the Indians that I know from Germany (they were there for a two month long exchange) and tomorrow they are going to show me Delhi a bit. The campus is on the outskirts of Delhi and no real public transport system in place, so probably I’ll have to find an accommodation in Delhi over the next couple of days cause the TERI Institute I’m going to work with is in the center and thus hard to reach from TERI University. Tomorrow I’ll make some pictures so that you get an impression of where I am right now. I guess that’s about it. So far everything worked out really well and I’m looking forward to see Delhi tomorrow 🙂

Have a great day,

Strothi

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