arrival

so! I'm in New Delhi.

Left Kansas City a bit after 2pm on Friday, Jan. 4th. Arrive in Newark a few hours later - kind of a shitty airport frankly, but still better than KC's. Found a burrito place and got a veggie one with guacamole. Never managed to get to Chipotle this break - that will have to be rectified upon my return.

Found the gate in Newark and hung around there for an hour or so, sneaking glances at all of the other people waiting with me. A lot of them were Indian, unsurprisingly, but the word "Indian" is so misleading, because there is so much variety there. North India, South India, rural India, Muslim India, Jain India, Sikh India... and even these are gross generalizations. Anyway.

The flight was ... unmemorable, really. Even now looking back on it, it seems to have taken place in some sort of limbo without time; we left Newark at night and landed in New Delhi at night too, so in a way it was as if no time had passed. But of course it had, around 12 hours of it. Spent part of it watching "Knocked Up" and simpsons episodes available on the nifty little tv built into the back of the seat in front of me; most of the rest of it was semi-sleeping. Before unboarding we were handed sheets of paper we would have to fill out to get through immigration and customs - in doing that I found a few other IES students on my flight: Amanda and Beth, who also goes to UPS. We met up again after unboarding and found Laura, also an IES student. Immigration and customs were disconcertingly easy. The airport we went through, Indira Gandhi International (named after the only female prime minister in India; her story is interesting to examine, especially in light of Bhutto) was very much under construction. There was a sense of dust and smoke everywhere, and that didn't stop when we went outside. During winter the nights in Delhi are foggy, which combined with the dust from all of the construction everywhere and the smog makes for pretty poor visibility.

Driving to our IES residence was a bit harrowing. The traffic actually wasn't bad at all since it was so late; even though lanes are pretty much considered loose suggestions to Indian drivers, I actually felt really at ease with the traffic. Everyone knew what they were doing, from the motorcycles to the farm trucks to the autorickshaws to the taxi I was in, and even though there was honking everywhere none of it really seemed in anger, which is what most distresses me about US traffic. So it wasn't the driving that scared me, or even the driver... for the most part. I only became unsettled when our driver decided to stop following the other taxi that was taking students to the IES residence and struck off on its own. Then all of the horror stories I could think of crowded into my head - we were going to be robbed, raped, whatever, by this driver that I don't think spoke any English, or just left in the middle of New Delhi at night. In any case, that all turned out fine, but it was still worrying.

But Delhi!

There are stray dogs everywhere, trotting along and minding their own business. I saw at least seven around the airport and on the way from the airport to the residence, so this morning when I ventured out and actually saw pet dogs on leashes it was a bit unexpected. People make their homes wherever they can. I saw more than a few mud shacks among the construction sites. And there's graffiti, in both Hindi and English (strangely enough, the English writing was advertising classes in English, but it would be necessary to read English to understand where it was being taught in the first place...). The birds here are different, and there are some squirrel/chipmunk animals that run around our house.

I'll update later with pictures of our residence and info about what I do today. Meep!