Red fort (with visible jetlag for the three of us, I just noticed)
Purana Qila (delhicious sunday afternoon)
February 17, 2010
Some pictures from Delhi
These are a couple of pictures. Internet is very slow right now, so I won't upload many.
Our room
February 15, 2010
Delhicious
Wow, my first blog entry. I'll be writing in English because some people speak French, Spanish,Italian or what not. Please forgive me my lack of vocabulary, grammar and possibly content. I'll try my best. By the way, I'm typing on a keyboard with letters written in tipp-ex.
Belgium wouldn't let me go too easily. Visa problems had already forced my to postpone my flight ten days. And then, just the morning of my departure, winter decided to launch just another offensive. A thin but problematic layer of snow had come to cover my beloved, but not-so-well-organized (this is VERY relative,cfr infra) country. Traffic jams over a total of 1000 km were the unpleasant result. Luckily, I was to go by train from Leuven, so I arrived at the airport on time. My parents, who wanted to come to say goodbye, were less fortunate; they had to give up after needing 30 minutes to advance 30 meters. Not only Belgium was paralysed, numerous flights to other European countries were cancelled. Luckily again, my flight to Helsinki, where I had to transfer, left with only a tiny delay of two hours. Belgium finally let me go.
After an eventless flight I arrived in Delhi right on time. Someone picked me up at the airport, which is, as I found out later, kind of a miracle. I arrived with a Russian girl who is on the same project as me, so it was good to have someone to rely on. We were brought to our room, which is kind of a dorm, where Indian students and young workers reside as well. A Russian guy had arrived a couple of days earlier. He welcomed us with a lot of cynical remarks about not expecting too much from our project, nor from the local AIESEC people. Then he rushed of to work. Not a very good start...
It's wednesday, which means it's my fifth day in Delhi. Everything turned out to be fine, though not as expected. I share a room with the Russian guy (which turned out to be a great guy) and a hilarious Japanese guy. The rest of our flat is inhabited by Indians, some of who have become good friends in a short period of time. I love the neighbourhood, it's not very close to the center but it's quite (very relatively!) calm, and there's a lot of shops and a big marked nearby. We usually eat in one of the numerous little "restaurants" here, where the food is good and cheap. We've been told our project would start "in the middle of this week", but we know people who've been waiting for 3 weeks. So for now we just fill our days by visiting stuff in Delhi. There's a lot of things worth seeing. My personal favourite until now is Purana Qila, an old fort with a lot of green. A lot of families and couples come to spend their Sunday afternoon there. Climbing up the old walls gives a great view of parts of the city. The weather is really nice right now, comparable to a (rare) nice belgian summer. At night, either we hang out with the Indians from our flat, or we go to a party with other foreign AIESEC people. The small AIESEC community is comparable to an Erasmus community; people are friendly and friendships are easily made.
To sum up (while people are yelling and on the verge of a fight here behind me), things are fine right now, quite comfortable. It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's no use trying to change it; I might as well enjoy it.
Belgium wouldn't let me go too easily. Visa problems had already forced my to postpone my flight ten days. And then, just the morning of my departure, winter decided to launch just another offensive. A thin but problematic layer of snow had come to cover my beloved, but not-so-well-organized (this is VERY relative,cfr infra) country. Traffic jams over a total of 1000 km were the unpleasant result. Luckily, I was to go by train from Leuven, so I arrived at the airport on time. My parents, who wanted to come to say goodbye, were less fortunate; they had to give up after needing 30 minutes to advance 30 meters. Not only Belgium was paralysed, numerous flights to other European countries were cancelled. Luckily again, my flight to Helsinki, where I had to transfer, left with only a tiny delay of two hours. Belgium finally let me go.
After an eventless flight I arrived in Delhi right on time. Someone picked me up at the airport, which is, as I found out later, kind of a miracle. I arrived with a Russian girl who is on the same project as me, so it was good to have someone to rely on. We were brought to our room, which is kind of a dorm, where Indian students and young workers reside as well. A Russian guy had arrived a couple of days earlier. He welcomed us with a lot of cynical remarks about not expecting too much from our project, nor from the local AIESEC people. Then he rushed of to work. Not a very good start...
It's wednesday, which means it's my fifth day in Delhi. Everything turned out to be fine, though not as expected. I share a room with the Russian guy (which turned out to be a great guy) and a hilarious Japanese guy. The rest of our flat is inhabited by Indians, some of who have become good friends in a short period of time. I love the neighbourhood, it's not very close to the center but it's quite (very relatively!) calm, and there's a lot of shops and a big marked nearby. We usually eat in one of the numerous little "restaurants" here, where the food is good and cheap. We've been told our project would start "in the middle of this week", but we know people who've been waiting for 3 weeks. So for now we just fill our days by visiting stuff in Delhi. There's a lot of things worth seeing. My personal favourite until now is Purana Qila, an old fort with a lot of green. A lot of families and couples come to spend their Sunday afternoon there. Climbing up the old walls gives a great view of parts of the city. The weather is really nice right now, comparable to a (rare) nice belgian summer. At night, either we hang out with the Indians from our flat, or we go to a party with other foreign AIESEC people. The small AIESEC community is comparable to an Erasmus community; people are friendly and friendships are easily made.
To sum up (while people are yelling and on the verge of a fight here behind me), things are fine right now, quite comfortable. It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's no use trying to change it; I might as well enjoy it.
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