Yes, I had a lecture of Hindi. Every week an hour on Thursdays. Well, of course nobody basically speaks Hindi here. All the main regions in India have their own languages which are all somewhat based on Hindi but people from different regions still don't even understand each others' languages. The only common language they have is Hindi, if even that. And, for some, English. It seems to be a big country.
But, something about my arrival in here. I left Helsinki at 23:35 Indian time (which is conveniently GMT+5.5) on Tuesday. Flight to Delhi took 6 hours. After that I had some 12 hours to kill in Delhi - I could've gone to the center and see some stuff but I didn't find any place to store my luggage and I didn't feel like carrying it around in +40 celcius the whole day. And, of course, I was worried that I would somehow miss the flight. So I stayed at the airport for the whole time. Having a book to read was a big plus in that situation.
Delhi airport, domestic flights terminal. 12 hours spent here.My flight from Delhi to Jaipur was about an hour late. But finally made it to Jaipur. In my emails I had kindly asked if there could be someone meeting me with a sign that says "Mr. Peltonen". For some reason I have always wanted to see that. And so there was the sign. Otherwise it would've just said "Idex". Happyhappy :) So I got a ride to my accomodation which appeared to be with a local family who are quite used to accomodating foreigners. Guess they get some little money for it.
The accomodation includes three meals a day. Breakfast and dinner are served at the apartment but I get the lunch with me in a cute little lunchbox. It looks somehow just so sweet :) The meals aren't too big, but it's so hot in here that I'm not especially hungry either. I guess I will lose some of my precious beer belly, unless I find some nice local beer bars ;)
I have tried to start it slowly with everything weird that could upset my stomach - only drinking bottled water, trying to avoid vegetables and asking for not-so-spicy food. At least yet. So far there haven't been any problems, but probably will get them later.
The transportations here have so far been easy - a guy picked me up from the airport, another this morning from the apartment and a third took me home from work. By a motorcycle. Which was a bit surprising and an...interesting experience. Without a helmet of course. I think you all have an idea of the Indian traffic culture. But, in the future I will have to manage to travel between home and work by my own, the distance is about 5km. I will have to try to ask my 'family' if they could help me with the crazy buses or have some other ideas.
As you can probably tell by the gap in my blog entries, I've had some problems getting access to Internet. There's a wireless network at the apartment but nobody here knows the password, they tell me to "wait for our son who returns in a few days". Well, I am writing this offline now and will publish tomorrow at work as their connection works at least somewhat.
There's also a lot of stuff about my work, but I think I will make a separate entry about that. This one seems to get too long anyway, already.
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