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Published: February 10th 2011
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Well hello!
My first blog from the subcontinent 😊
After waiting for about one month, last week we finally got our student visa (the Dutch Indian Ambassy Visa Office or whatever its called should be awarded for their lack of service), and last thursday we jumped onto a plane to Delhi 😊 We immediately took a bus, cab, bus, and tuktuk to our final destination, the campus of Haryana Agricultural University in Hisar! I should mention that Indian public transport is extremely cheap, and just as slow, 5-6 hours to travel 150 km...
Our accomodation is quite nice, not very cosy, but at least we have our own bathroom with a normal toilet 😊 😊 and a nice warm shower, which can now still be appreciated... The campus is nice, pretty green, spacious, and not as chaotic as the town centre which is on the other side of the road.
When we arrived Aafke and Ilse, two other Dutch students, were still here and they showed us around a little bit, and the next day they took us to the school were we will be working to coming months. The children are really nice, and some of
them already knew my name after one day (I still have to practise a bit more with almost 90 unfamiliar names and similar faces...).
On that day there was a goodbye tea party for the other girls, and so we were also invited to sit down and drink chai (this is a challange for someone who refused to drink anything milky ever since her mother stopped breastfeeding her) and eat somewhat strange snacks; a tiny sugary dough ball drenched in oil and something that looked like cake but really wasnt!
Ok, I really wanna keep it short but it is already getting out of hand, I'll try to summarize the highlights!
On saturday we met Kishan, int student from Nepal, and he invited us over for some drinks in the evening were we met some other int students, boys only. The girls are locked up in a prison, although they call it hostel, but it has those iron bars in front of the windows, two fences, guards, and they have to be inside from 6 p.m. onwards, so I say prison full stop.
Sunday we were invited for dinner by friends from Kishan, such a lovely family! We
even danced in de living room, Andries was hating that part haha, but I enjoyed it, even the 70 year old grandpa was dancing on Justin Bieber 😊
Sunday night and monday we were both ill so not much happened that day, although I did continue our quest for a simcard + internet access. What you mainly need for that is: your passport, 4 pictures, an official proof of residance, a local friend, and a lot of patience! In the end it took me 3 days, but it works 😊
Our supervisor from the NL was also here for a couple of days this week and yesterday we had a nice dinner with the whole TELFUN (this is the project we work for) group, which ended in a disco. Haha this was hilarious, they opened a little disco just for our group, the music was way too load, lights psychedelic, songs changed every 30 sec, and half of the group was over 50 yrs old. So they were all sitting and Varsha (the phd student we work with) me and some others were dancing a bit while everyone else was staring. Later I asked someone whether this was normal in
India, "nooo this is not normal, but whithin TELFUN sometimes weird things happen". Completely random.
I will round up. Today I bought my first fabrics so I can have some clothes made in Indian style! This weekend we will be going to Delhi, and another phd student is going to show us around so we are really looking forward!
Next time I will try to write something about the Indian food, monkeys, and our driver...
x Annemarie
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Carline
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:)
Sounds great!! Enjoy! XX