pictures part 1 - our residence

So today I'm feeling a bit better and figured that I'd post a few of the pictures that I've taken so far. This first one is sort of the "backyard" to the group residence - it was taken around 9 am, so you can see how foggy it is in Delhi in the morning. The tree that's hanging over the fence has a lot of little orange fruits on it; I don't know what they're called ... yet.


I've never lived in a gated community, but I have to guess that in India it's a lot different; you may have migrant workers there to work on your lawn/swimming pool/ whThis is the inside view of the gate that closes our residence off from the rest of the community. In the US I'veatever, but you don't have them sleeping on the street outside of where you live at night and building fires to keep warm. Not that the upper-middle-class Delhiites are really ok with this - apparently there's been a lot of lobbying to keep stuff like that more "hidden." We'll see how effective legislation is...

This is the gate from the outside. You can see the basic shape of our residence as well as the security booth/guard (I don't know his name yet). The buildings of both the residence and the center are pretty discrete - apparently it's a security risk to have to be incredibly obvious where all sorts of (mainly female) naive foreigners will be congregating. Not that it's not obvious enough to follow all 13 of us when we're being shepherded from one to another as well as whenever we go out to dinner, etc. The lovely girl exiting the gate is my roomie, Beth Graves, who also goes to UPS. She's also now officially our first floor representative!

There are technically four floors to the residence:
THE BASEMENT
This is a communal area, although no one has really communed here yet, I think because we're all too tired and the florescent light is scary. The director of IES, Vibha Sharma (soooo awesome), has said that a yoga instructor will be coming at some point and that this will probably be where we'll be doing it. It'll be awesome to take yoga from an actual Indian - I love Martha, my instructor at home, but I feel this guy will probably know more. Anyway, there's computers (even though everyone brought a laptop) and a DVD player/TV.


THE GROUND FLOOR

This is where around half of the residents live and we eat. The kitchen down here is mostly controlled by Pawam, an incredibly nice man with an incredibly beautiful wife and incredibly cute 1 year old boy. It's a small space but we work with it. You can see the water cooler in the back, which gives us filtered water to drink and make tea with.

THE FIRST FLOOR (note: this is where I live!)



This is the common area for the first floor. We have our own kitchen/refrigerator up here that we'll use on the nights that we cook, as well as another water cooler. The rest of the residents live up here, including me! You can see a bit of my room in the corner as well as my bed, which is predictably messy. If you'd like a better look, though ...


MY ROOM

This is the room that Beth and I share. It's small but pretty decent - the only things I'd complain about would be the hardness of the mattresses and the view outside of our window. We basically look out onto the backs of other buildings and a little alleyway that is sometimes filled with garbage. Also, fences. High fences with pointy tops and barbed wire. Mmmm security. I'll post a picture of it when it's light out.

Meanwhile, there's one more floor....

THE SECOND FLOOR/TERRACE

This is the top floor of the building, and is where Parul, our residence director, lives. (Her room is behind me in these pictures, so don't worry - she doesn't live out in the open air.) On the top floor though is a lovely terrace where the air is relatively fresh - for Delhi at least. It was night obviously when I took these photos (about 15 min. ago...), so you can't see it too well, but it's really quite large and pretty. The view from it is decent as well, as I'll show you when it's lighter.

Anyway, that's really all the time I'm willing to put into this particular entry - getting all the photos the way I want them in Blogger takes a bit longer than I had expected. Ah well. I'm feeling a lot better at this point although not 100%; a bit more sleep and careful eating will probably help even things out. Have to say though, if I could change/do away with any part of the body, I'd get rid of the digestive system. Seriously, there has got to be a better way to get nutrients. Tomorrow we'll be visiting Jawaharlal Nehru University which should be exciting. Gonna sleep now. Later!
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Listening to: Paul Cantelon - Tank Graveyard/Valse de Suzana/Dee-yed
via FoxyTunes