Jeff and I are delighted to have arrived in Chennai last night. We've had a good night's sleep, got to catch up with Jeff Weaver (one of our good friends from Swarthmore who is also a JPAL RA in India), and have started the various registration processes.
However, our four suitcases appear to not have fared as well. It turns out that we had a somewhat more complicated journey than we thought we would when I wrote the first post. This was our final itinerary:
- Leave Boston at 10:55pm on June 20
- Arrive Paris 11:35am on June 21
- Leave Paris 1:25pm
- Arrive London 1:45pm
- Leave London 10pm
- Arrive Delhi 11am on June 22
- Leave Delhi 1:30pm
- Arrive Mumbai 4pm
- Leave Mumbai 5:30pm
- Arrive Chennai 7pm
Shockingly enough, we actually arrived only 8 hours later than we had originally planned, which is a complete miracle. However, we changed our flight to London three times (once because of technical issues, which we mentioned in the previous post, and the second time because the flight we were told we had been booked on was oversold, so we had to get a different one), which caused us to change our flight from Mumbai to Chennai three times also.
So it's no small surprise that our bags, possessing (hopefully) less intelligence than ourselves, didn't make the journey. Jeff just spoke with a representative from Virgin, who informed him that two of our bags will be sent to Chennai later today, but the other two will be held in Mumbai for unspecified reasons. The Virgin agent said that we have to go to Mumbai to get them, but we're going to see if we can convince them otherwise (since there are a dozen flights between Mumbai and Chennai every day).
But hey, we're incredibly relieved to be in Chennai. And soon enough we'll have our belongings and will be able to give back to Jeff Weaver the clothing he has very generously loaned us.
So we got in last night about 9pm, after dinner had ended, so we met up with Jeff Weaver and after receiving and misunderstanding directions to a restaurant nearby, we ended up buying snacks at a convenience store - Mad Angels chips and Special cookies (the big winner - chocolate with chocolate filling) and some other kind of simple biscuit that was also tasty. When we're back in the hostel, I'll write again to give you the names, b/c they're hysterical. I'll also write more about the hostel itself.
We had our first Indian breakfast this morning at our hostel, which was super yummy, and then caught an auto rickshaw (a rickshaw with a motorcycle built in, instead of a bicycle) to the IMFR/JPAL offices. We were very nervous about having to negotiate with the rickshaw driver for the first time, but very luckily, two nice women who will be participants in our training but are from a different organization walked by just as we started, so they did the talking and we just hopped in. Our driver didn't actually know how to get to the offices, however, so he ended up taking a lot of backstreets and asking a lot of other rickshaw drivers, but we left 2 hours early, so I didn't mind the extra sightseeing.
When we arrived at the office, we met the lead staff, who were all really nice and helpful. Since we had American rather than Indian passport photos, we were taken to a photo store (called FastPort) to get our photos taken (the guy there asked if we wanted to use a mirror first, and I laughed - I'm grateful to have bathed, and my requirements stop there). While we were waiting for the photos to print, the staff member who was with us asked if we wanted anything, so we went across the street for some fruit juice.
We had tender coconut, which I believe is just young, softer coconut, that hasn't developed the strong flavor that we associate with coconut. It was a really cool experience - the stall was just a simple table piled high with green tender coconuts, and the guy behind the table sliced off the top with a machete and stuck a straw in it, which we drank right out of. It had a much more diluted and less sweet flavor, but it was definitely refreshing. Then once we'd finished off the coconut water inside, we handed the coconuts back and the guy used his machete to slice them in half and carve out the meat, which we scooped out with a chunk of the harder shell. And then we crossed the street and stepped back inside the high tech photo store - just the beginning of a year-long cognitive dissonance we'll be experiencing.
So now we're in the office (which is really nice and air conditioned), waiting to register as employees, which we need to do in order to receive income and pay taxes.
We'll keep you posted on our bags and all of the other antics we get up to...
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