first impressions

4 hour flight to Chicago
5 hour layover in ORD
14 hour flight to Delhi
1 harrowing taxi drive through the Delhi night with our luggage on the roof of the car.
1 sleepless night in a Delhi hotel with 3 girls and 2 single beds
3 hour train ride to Chandigarh
1 even more harrowing auto-rickshaw ride with all of our luggage
= finally home with a family.

That was what I was going to write yesterday about my trip from Seattle to Chandigarh. Unfortunately the last part is no longer true. Kate and I spent a couple of hours at our new home in the outskirts of the city (settling in, chatting with the family, drinking tea and enjoying the views of the city and mountains) until our professor called with a “situation.” The undergraduate boys were unhappy with their accommodations and needed to be moved. The temporary solution was to move Kate and I to another house where the rest of the (6) girls were staying. The temporary solution may now become permanent? Or at least the boys get to keep our old house. We are now in limbo, hoping that our professor can find another home for us. We are currently living five girls in one room. Granted, it is a large, spacious room with a queen size bed and a small sofa. It will be fun for a couple nights, but not ideal for nearly 3 months!

So far my impression of India is mixed. I could write about the India I saw (albeit incredibly briefly) in Delhi. That India was full of smog, dirt and grime, with flashing signs and fancy hotels with spotless interiors and homeless sleeping on the sidewalk right outside. There was so much life everywhere: dogs playing in the road, cows, street hawkers, rickshaw drivers, people huddled around fires, and so many ladies with beautiful scarves and saris!

The other India I’ve seen is Chandigarh. I had been unsure of what to expect of this city, having heard that it was “not an Indian city, it was just in India.” It does feel very European, and much cleaner than Delhi. There was a marketable change in the landscape as our train arrived in the city – the mounds of trash littering the landscape miraculously disappeared. We didn’t see any slums or makeshift houses on the ride from the train station to our house. Women are in jeans and there are high end stores in Sector 18. We are currently living in Sector 2, which is where the government officials and ministers live. It is considered the nicest sector in the city, with expansive gorgeous houses in concrete and brick. The houses are each surrounded by gardens and locked with beautiful ironwork gates that announce the family name (and sometimes occupation) in formal plaques. This is not the India I was expecting to live in!

Our house has marble floors throughout and tall, highly detailed (European) ceilings. The living room alone is comparable to my apartment size in Seattle. Our host is an older couple, but there are always many more people around. We were never introduced to the help but they also don’t appear to speak English. Our host mother is friendly but we feel more like it is a boarding house than a home stay. Perhaps that is because there are 9 American girls in the house. (Or perhaps Kate and I just miss the first family we stayed with.) We are served chai on trays in the morning before breakfast and in the evening before we go to bed. Our breakfasts and dinners are prepared for us and served at the dining room table, but we don’t eat with the family. The food is amazing, and our host mother has offered to teach us to cook later.

The hot water situation will take the most getting used to. We turn on the hot water heater in the morning and wait for it to fill to its 5 gallon capacity. Then we turn on the faucet and fill a bucket, tempering the hot faucet with the cold to reach the ideal temperature, and use a smaller bucket to dump water on ourselves as need to clean. We all have to conserve our water usage so that there is enough for all five of us girls to shower each morning with at least lukewarm water. I think that the situation won’t be so bad once the weather starts to warm up (we arrived just in time for the coldest day on record in Chandigarh).

We start school tomorrow.