Wow! That kind of sums up my feelings towards Bangalore and everything I have been exposed to so far!
I arrived at Manchester
Airport on Monday at about 12.15pm, the other guys were already in the
check in queue. I had neither met nor seen the faces of the other
volunteers from Leeds Met so far, so I was a bit apprehensive that I
might waste time trying to search Terminal 1 for them! Luckily for me,
they had my passport, and spotted me from the queue. After check in we
moved pretty swiftly through the rest of the airport process and I met
as many people as I could, although out of 20 I remembered about 3
people's names!
The flight was
impressive, with a huge selection of in flight entertainment which kept
me occupied. We arrived at Dubai for our transfer early, which gave us
along time to marvel at the insane airport; with it's hugely excessive
terminal building featuring a surplus of large water features. Before I
knew it though we were on the next plane, soon to touch down in
Bangalore.
Once everyone had
collected their luggage we met the guys from Gapguru (who organise and
run the programme) and got a car to our homestay. The ride there was an
instant showcase of Bangalore culture: we were in awe of the crazy
traffic (none stop beeping, complete lack of any sort of lanes, auto
rickshaws,and cows crossing of course!), the beautiful temples and
buildings juxtaposed next to slums, the shops, the people going about
their lives; a kind of preview of the city.
Arriving finally at
Spartan Heights, we unloaded the car and went to meet Rene, our homestay
owner, cook and carer for the next month. Her apartment is beautiful
and she is so friendly and helpful, it is a joy to be living here for
the next month! I'll have to get some pictures to post here and show
you. The location is great, at first we thought it was a little far from
our placements (around 9km away), but I am now glad of where we are as
it is so close to the centre of the city, perfect for shopping and
nightlife. It is about a 20 minute auto rickshaw ride to our placements,
and costs about 60 rupees, so about 90 pence!
We met Rene's nephew
Vipul, who was born in Mumbai but has lived in San Francisco since he
was young, he's really friendly and me, Maciej and Anton (who I'm living
with) get on really well with him. Vipul took us out to show us around
the Brigade Road area, where all the big international stores and bars
are based, before Rene took us by car to reconvene with the other
volunteers at Hema's house. Hema is the Bangalore Representative for
Gapguru, and is so warm and nice. She explained the differences in
culture that we should remember (such as use your right hand for
things,and don't point to things with your feet) and then we listened to
a talk by a guy called Colin. He spoke about his background; he came
from poverty but successfully began a business from 50 rupees, and today
he helps create micro-businesses, to help people out of poverty. His
talk was so engaging and he was so wise! After asking questions we had a
beautiful buffet laid on by Hema.
It was here that I
first met Karen, the director of the business that I'm working at. She
was excited for me to begin working on Wednesday, to see how I can help
the business develop and how we can work together to grow the business.
Wow! Again! I promise
the next entry won't be so long, but I hope you've enjoyed reading so
far as much as I've enjoyed the experiences I talked about and writing
about them.
I'll hopefully write an update over the next day or two, thanks for reading! Bye for now! :D