Off to India: The journey begins...

Ok, so the packing was way more difficult than I imagined. When I had everything stuffed in my suitcase last night at around 11 pm, I decided to check its weight. 27,5 kg - oh my god. I am allowed to have 23 kg max. So now I had to decide which clothes and other items were not absolutely necessary. Not quite easy when you have to take clothes and stuff for 4 Months with you. Fortunately the weather in India is so warm that I didn’t need any heavy jackets or boots. Finally after some difficult decisions my suitcase was at around 22,5 kg - still to much for running around at the airport if you ask me ;)

Now it was far beyond 12 pm what left me 3 hours of sleep at the time I was finally in bed as I had to get up at 4 am. Surprisingly I did sleep quite good in these 3 hours.

After taking a shower, having a cup of tea and doing a last check of my suitcase I was ready to go. My parents accompanied me to the airport and after the check-in and the safety control the adventure began^^

After a short flight I arrived in Paris at the airport Charles de Gaulle where I would have a connecting flight to Bangalore. Let me say one thing first: this airport is HUGE! The only thing I knew from my boarding card was that I had to go to some Terminal named Aerogate E2 (god thing they didn’t call it terminal, right?). After looking around for a bit I fortunately found a sing with saying Terminals E2, G2, etc. so I figured that “Aerogate” probably meant Terminal ;)

Now the fun began as I still had to find the right gate (no, not Aerogate-Terminal whatever, GATE). The airport Charles de Gaulle offered a variety of different gates, one for each letter of the alphabet. My flight was listed on the huge plate with the letters K and L behind it. So I took the chances and queued for boarding the Gates K, L and M.

It was obviously the right decision as a nice service lady assured me in french. But guess what: My flight wasn’t going at Gate K, not at gate L, but at gate M!

This meant I had to take a train to get there! Can you now imagine how huge this thing is? I mean, they have their own airport trains to get you from one gate to another.

After arriving at gate M everything went pretty easy, I enjoyed the awesome lounge for some time, admired the super-modern toilets where I had a Buddhist monk in a traditional robe standing next to me at the sink! It would have been an awesome picture but I refrained from taking one for obvious reason ;) Turned out, he and his fellow monk where sitting behind me on the plane :D

Before taking off the crew informed us that due to international regulations they had to spray some insecticide before every flight. Right after that two stewardesses hurried through the hallway, holding a heavily smoking can over their head. They did 2 rounds until it went quite foggy in the plane :D The insecticide had an awful peach scent and soon everybody held a scarf or a T-Shirt in front of his mouth. The crew insured us that the stuff wouldn’t be harmful at all - I decided to believe them ;)

The flight was nice and quit as the Indians on board (about 80% of all travelers) dozed away as soon as we took off. The food was pretty good, I even got a vegan menu! (see pictures below). The vegan coconut-chocolate-cake was just delicious!

Shortly after the meals were distributed, air turbulences began. I found it quite amusing especially as my orange juice flew above the cup for a moment :D

There was heavy rain in Bangalore as the plane arrived so we flew through a thunderstorm while landing - pretty impressive to see the lightning next to your window.

While waiting for my suitcase at the airport the power suddenly went out for 10 minutes which caused the luggage band to stop suddenly! As it went on again I got my suitcase right away, went to the exit and my first impression of India was: RAIN! Not really a surprise as it is monsoon season in India at the moment but you really couldn’t take a step away from the roof at the exit because you would be soaking wet in seconds. I was informed that a taxi driver with a sign saying “Shanti Bhavan” would wait for me at the exit. There were actually lots of people holding signs but none of them saying Shanti Bhavan :(

As I walked around there looking desperate other taxi drivers tried to convince me to go with them. After 40 minutes I got worried and tried to call the school but my phone didn’t work...

One taxi guy started following me everywhere as he figured I didn’t have a ride....pretty creepy. Meanwhile I was desperately trying to reach somebody and already thought about what to do if the driver didn’t come. As I walked past the row with the people holding signs once again THERE HE WAS!

I was so relieved that I asked him, joking, if he had to wait long. “No No Sir, I arrived here 3 Minutes ago” was his answer accompanied by such a friendly smile that all the stress went away in a second.

We walked to his car, a nice but ancient Chevy and I was finally on my way to Shanti Bahvan :)

It was during the 2-hour drive that I really realized that I was in India now, thousands of kilometers away from home. We were passing a few villages and everything just looked so different from anything I’ve ever seen. I tried to make a picture but it was pitch black outside with very few streetlights and it was still raining. It will be really interesting to take the same drive at daylight.

Upon arrival at Shanti Bhavan I was welcomed by Elisabeth Rainer, one of the two OSAs (On Site Administrators) who showed me my room and told me the most important things.

I then took a shower and went straight to bed as breakfast was at 7.30 am what left me 4 hours of sleep.

Breakfast was great, a spicy but delicious curry and Chai and Coffee to drink. After that Lizzy (Elisabeth) and Sachin (the other OSA) showed me around and gave me my schedule. Looks as I’m teaching mostly 9th grade History, Geography and Social Studies which is great!

I will be starting to teach next week but as the children have lots of exams in this week it will really start the week after that.

I sat in the 7th grade math class - as I will be teaching the same class in chemistry one student was so thoughtful he already made me a seating chart with all the names. They are so interesting but I will have a hard time remembering them all and pronouncing them right (e.g. Sabarinath, Devraj, Saranya, Soundanya...)

I also visited a pre-school group with Lizzy and another volunteer and these kids are just adorable! They were just listening to a story as we came but they were so excited that as soon as it was finished they started jumping around us, screaming and laughing :)^

I’m super excited and we’ll see how things are going. I might be going on an trip to Bangalore tomorrow but you should read about that in my next post :)

Until next time!