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| Arrival outside Indira Gandhi Int'l Airport |
Good first 2 days in Delhi. We are still jet lagged so excuse the lack of eloquence in this entry! Here are some things that we have noticed, thought, and did in the past 72 hours in no particular order. (We arrived on Friday night and it's now Sunday night - although it feels like it's been both longer and shorter, all at the same time!...hope this makes sense.)
-No Delhi belly yet! I wonder how long it will take.... So far we've stuck to the bottled and filtered water. We haven't had to go food shopping yet. The school filled our fridge with a quiche, lasagna, cheese, coke, beer, water, Skippy, variety fruit jam, butter and a few other things.
-Walked past our first pack of street dogs and many lone street dogs unharmed. I like to think Cesar Milan had a little something to do with our success. We walked with a confident stride past the pack with our chests pushed out! Although, one black wirehair dog with a snickering expression did start barking at us when we stopped in front of his spot. 20 seconds later he got up and walked closer and started barking more when we didn't move, so we moved. We have learned not to text near that dog at that corner of the street that he seems to own. The majority of the dogs seem very sweet and harmless. It's hard not to want to pet them!
-Walked past some street monkeys that were just chillin on a fence....didn't look them in the eye!
-We haven't seen any street cows yet...apparently they were all wrangled up and moved somewhere for the Commonwealth Games that happened the past 2 weeks. They are supposed to be coming back soon however.
-It's a lot cleaner than I imagined. We are told this is also because of the Commonwealth Games. Also, this time of year, we are told, is the best for air quality. It is post monsoon season so the rains clean out the air leaving blue skies. Once it gets cold in a couple of weeks though, people will start burning anything to keep warm, so the pollution levels will rise.
-The traffic hasn't been too bad. The worst was driving home from the airport during rush hour. Still no that bad. It felt like an extremely less orderly version of driving home on the outer loop of 485 in South Charlotte during rush hour. Again, we have only been in a small part of Delhi where it is not as congested. Our impression will undoubtedly change once we venture out a little more!
-There is a lot of foliage that I didn't expect, very tropical in our neighborhood and around the school.
The view from our living room window is complete greenery - beautiful flowering trees and palms.
-We had a successful first taxi ride to the American Embassy where we had pancakes, eggs and bacon.
-There are flocks of parakeets and pigeons who intermingle among other bird species in our neighborhood. Its peaceful to hear the parakeets in the morning.
-The apartment is very nice. It came furnished but we cant wait to get our shipments in the coming week. It will feel a lot more like home. We live within walking distance to
-Tonight there is a celebration in Delhi called the Dussehra Festival. We just learned about this festival when we noticed a huge statue made of wood and paper being erected in the traffic circle just outside our apartment in the
Basically, everything is new and very foreign. Everything. It's all very overwhelming and sometimes we sit and do nothing just to let our minds catch up or maybe just rest...don't know which! Luckily, we have both been through this kind of experience before so the culture shock is not a surprise! It is definitely there. We will be on a roller coaster of emotions as we learn how to fit in to this new culture, make new friends, eat new food, see new things, smell new smells and all that jazz! Thank you for reading this and we look forward to sharing our experiences with you!
