First three days!

OKAY...... So it has been three days in Chennai and I have a lot to tell!

Where I am living: Up until now I am staying with a friend of the bosses grand dad. He is an 80n year old man who looks like Gandhi and has already show me how to meditate, giving me amazing food to eat, read my palm(i will have a long life and a good job, but sometimes job is more important than love, ha), had his Friends over for drinks (a doctor and his accountant), taken about 10 million picture of me and with us together to show his family, i even taught him some things of the computer. it actually really reminds me of living with my grandmother for that summer. He is gone now for the night to go fetch his wife up north and will return soon. However tomorrow i will be moving to my own flat, i get to see it tomorrow to make sure it is okay and then move in. it is five mins walk tot eh office and near where other people my age live.

Work: I went into the office on Thursday and meet some of the people and was only there for 20 mins, then i went to look at flats with one of the guys there that is my age. we went to his friends house to hang out and they invited me to a concert on the 22nd...really excited.

Then today the hole office(80 people) went on a training day outing. we travel 2 hours south and i took some good pictures. we took two huge buses and for the south Africa girls it was just like going on the Zululand trip again. We eat breakfast going there and finally arr rived at an orphanage for mentally disabled children. we spent 2 hours on work things and presentations and at one point each group had to act out a scenario and have a quote for the lesson of the story. my teams involved a bank robbery and i was the robber, with a bandanna around my face and sunglasses on. Then you had lunch, after that we split into three groups. one played cricket with children, one taught them English and my group did yard work. i painted, which was actually fun. Everyone there was really nice and i think i will love working there. they really have fun!

I start Monday!

Chennai: the city is chaos and nothing like i thought it would be. the tallest building is 5 floors but there are nice places and big named companies. everything is on a smaller scale. so everyone can fit!! The roads are crazy and i have already almost got hit with a car, good thing i can run backwards fast. the people are amazing. so kind and helpful, i have never felt so safe in a foreign city. ever! you can walk at night with friends. it can be dirty and dusty, but i guess you get used to it. everyone honks and beeps to indicate that they want to change lanes or turn, no bleankers are used and there are no lines for certain lanes. the majority of people are on two wheelers(motorcycles) and that cause chaos.

On V-day i went to dinner with there German girls i meet and we all noticed family eating together and figured out the v-day is more of a family thing!

what i have learned:
- no health care
- high literacy rate(even in rural areas)
- women can't wear tank tops and long skirt are the best thing to wear
- some words: sari-the dress for women but also means OK, viacom- hello and good bye, sugama?- how are you?, Im fine- suga, podu- enough (for food and such)

one interesting thing that i will write about more later was that one man i spoke to said India was better off when the Brits ruled "it was safer and you had freedom, Gandhi gave power over too quickly and to the wrong people now there is corruption"

I think that is it for now but I'm sure i will think of other things to add....love you all and look out for an email for pictures!-- Kelly McCabe