Hampi- Rolling down the river

My first Sarree

12 Hours Hard Core City Sight Seeing

It was great!! We started at 7.30 in the morning, had to leave sick Mahin back, but continued to see everything that Hyderabad has to offer. If you like to see more than my favorite picture, visit http://picasaweb.google.com/tanja.schmidt/CityTourHyderabad!

Swinging in HYD

Today was fun. I went with Tina (our ambassador from Q2) to the handicraft market after work. I bought some pictures and some masks. I also bought cloth for something that I kind of do not remember the name of. It is not a sarree, well, I will show you pictures when the tailor has finished it.

I also had my first begging experience. They fucking didn´t give me dime. Just kidding. When the driver picked us up from the market and I got in the car, there was this little dirty 3 or 4 year old girl, beautiful! She looked at me through the window from outside and put her hand to her mouth in order to show me that she would like to have something to eat. I told the driver to be careful when driving off as the little girl was right there. “No, Ma´am, that is fine Ma´am!”

It is so bizarre to get back in our rich ghetto. That is the thing that is the hardest for me. That extreme opposite from the normal life of an average medium class Indian to the life we expats live. It is “Jammern auf höchstem Niveau”, so freaking annoying.

The picture shows me in the room where we have our dinner at. It is my favourite spot, because you just can swing there. Very nice.

We have really everything taking care of. Someone cleans up the room everyday after we go to work. People that know how tidy I am, can imagine, how much work this is for them. Can you imagine how I flipped when my malaria tablets where not all over the desk anymore, where I left them, but hidden in one of the drawers?

First day in India

I arrived in Hyderabad last night. I had a funny encounter with a woman on the plane. She could not speak English very well, besides ordering apple and organge juice. But she was very interested in me. She broke the ice asking me for my marital status and after pitying me for not being married she told me her husband was Dr. Rao. She wrote down his name on my boarding card and also the URL of the company that he works for. She was a little disappointed because although I was doing my PPT presentation on my laptop I was not helpful enough on going online to check out the website.
After a while she got her own DELL. She managed to open it, but then she asked me for help to turn it on. She pressed the “Gmail” button, but interestingly enough the internet did not work for her either, 2 hours before landing.

Anyway, customs took some time. I was surprised by the airport, as it was quite modern. It had aircon, marble kindish floors, everything looked very neat. I was expecting more developing country style, like staircases instead of escalators, container like arriving halls, crowded chaos… you know, like Dublin. But it was fine.

Unfortunately my luggage did not make it to Hyderabad. Felt like a scum coming back to the apartment, so close to sleep in. But fortunately there were some ironed house keeper’s uniforms on a chair. I borrowed them for a pyjama purpose, it worked quite well 

Today I was hanging out with two American expeds, Joel and Keon. It was fun, going round town with the chauffeur, little shopping and stuff. The handicraft market was very relaxing. People did not force you to buy stuff, you could look around peacefully. I felt very comfortable. I really blended in.

As today is Ghandi’s birthday, it is a bank holiday. I will go to work tomorrow and I am excited.