Day 1

At the start of Day 1, I've had about 5 hours of sleep in the last 41 hours.

Our apartments are furnished with beds, couches, wardrobes, dressers, a dining room table etc.  I am going to have some of it removed and buy some new pretty furniture :)  The Indian mattresses are as rock hard as they said they were going to be, but I slept pretty well on them.

My apartment is small, but nice.  Some people are complaining about the accommodations because they had such great apartments in Thailand, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc.  But you know me!  I am not the girly girl decorator type so I don’t car as much.  The kitchen has a small fridge, stove/oven, microwave, very few cabinets, and a washer/dryer.  Yep, you heard me!  The washer and dryer are in the kitchen!  Which I am happy with, because some people have theirs out on the balcony or in their bathroom – seems like a safety hazard to me.  The bathroom is going to take some getting used to.  Yes, Jerry Lee, I have flush toilets and toilet paper!  But I guess the bathrooms are more the European style where the whole bathroom is the shower.  So the toilet, sink, etc gets soaking wet when you take a shower.  I’m going to try to have them put up a shower curtain to keep the toilet part from getting wet.  Right now I am designating one bathroom just for showering so I can use the other one without falling on a wet floor!  We have window ACs in each room.  It actually isn’t that hot here this time of year.  It does rain A LOT because it is monsoon season.

At 11am Jane came by and talked to us some more about how certain things work in our apartments, then we met everyone else for lunch.  After lunch, we went to Croma – which is an electronics/appliance stores.  I got a hair dryer, iron, a surge protector, and some plug adapters.  Lots of people got coffee makers and toasters etc.  Then we went to Pali market.  It is a street filled with tiny market stores.  It is amazing how many goods they have stored in such tiny spaces!  And every place has a TON of workers to help you.  I got an ironing board, dryer rack(apparently the electric dryers don’t work well), some cleaning supplies and hangers.  You can get ANYTHING delivered here.  So you buy your stuff and tell them what time you will be home and they bring it to your door.  India has one of the most renown delivery systems in the world.  For a place so crowed, it is amazing everything gets to where it is supposed to be!

I had a few hours to rest before supper so I laid down to nap but kept getting interrupted by the internet guy and the delivery guys.  The internet guy has been here 6 times now! 

We all went to dinner at this amazing Indian restaurant.  I had a lot of dal, lamb, chicken, rice, paneer etc.  They just kept bring out plates for tables to share so I didn’t know the name of the foods I was eating!  Hopefully I will get better at that.

Lots of people speak English here, but it doesn’t always sound like it!!  I have to really concentrate and ask them to repeat sometimes J