Bonjour Bangalore?

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while...it's been an interesting two months between slowly readjusting to life in the U.S. and then off to India. I've been here for one month now so I figured it was time for a little bit of reflection. The distance has been harder to manage than when I was in France, between the 12 hour time difference and my schedule here. I'm still dealing with not being home for my grandpa's death a few weeks ago, something that is hard to understand anywhere but maybe even harder to accept when you're an ocean away. And yesterday there were 7 bomb blasts in the city of Bangalore. 2 people died and 20 people were injured, though we were removed from danger here at the Infosys compound. That distance makes me realize how different my life is here from the rest of India. We lived in an ordered, protected world that most people will never see. Aside from those two somber notes, my time here is passing quickly and relatively happily.

The "campus" has an oddly collegiate feel, with more people than Midd will ever have, the interns' "dorm" and various dining halls. It's a strange corporate environment with the buildings open 24/7, meant to offer a flexible work schedule but you never really leave work behind. There's a building that looks like the pyramid at the Louvre, and one that looks like the Sydney opera house. There are bamboo and palm trees all over campus, and a fountain in the center that lights up at night and the Indians all come out with cameras and take pictures. The campus changes completely on the weekends, though, with almost no one around except for Indian tourist with cameras taking pictures. Lots of pictures.

The world of campus and the world of India come to a shocking intersection just outside the gates. While we show our badges and have our bags inspected, there's a whole world out there with dogs and cows roaming free, auto-rickshaws, little road-side stands and millions of people. The interns often go into town in the evenings, though this is more complicated then it sounds. Traffic in Bangalore is notoriously horrible, and it can take up to two hours to reach anywhere. But we've discovered some nice restaurants and interesting places, and it's always a welcome break to the sometimes sterile world of Infosys. My favorite time on campus is late at night when almost no one is around and the temperature is more reasonable (or at least the humidity has dropped). But just when you think you'll get some peace and quiet, the night shift crowd appears and the campus seems even more crowded than during the day.

Driving in India probably deserves its own paragraph. I realized as I got in the cab at the airport that Indians drive on the left side of the road. Which is shocking in its own right. But even that is negotiable, as long as you put your emergency lights on. There is no concept of lane usage, turning signals or speed limits. Stop lights are jokes, often officiated by a traffic officer but really just a free-for-all. Horns replace any non-verbal forms of communication on the road, and the musical horns are my favorite. Entire families squeeze onto motorcycles and fly past our cabs.

I think I've adjusted shockingly well to the Indian prices. I've almost given up Diet Coke because it costs about twice as much as my whole lunch usually does (which, for the record, is about 50 cents). We are outraged at paying 3 dollars for something that we'd pay 20 for in the U.S. because we know that we could find it for 50 cents. I've replaced Diet Coke with fresh fruit juice, however, sold in every dining hall for about 25 cents. The mango, papaya, watermelon, etc. juice is addicting, and the orange juice from concentrate at Midd just isn't going to cut it next year. I've stuck with the whole vegetarian thing, and have happily not yet been sick from Indian food or water. It's shocking to me how many choices I have every time I eat somewhere. The weirdest is when there are separate veg and non-veg dining rooms in restaurants, which complicates eating arrangements, but I'm always impressed at how little meat even non-veg Indians eat. The veg food here doesn't center around substituting meatless options in normally meat dishes, but instead is an entirely separate cuisine. I eat piles of cauliflower, potatoes, chickpeas and lentils covered in the spiciest sauces of my life and completed by a pile of naan. Though the Indian flatbreads are delicious, I'm still craving baguettes...

Everyone has started talking about all the American foods they're missing. I don't tend to be very sympathetic but I guess I'm missing two cultures. I often slip up and say Bordeaux when I mean Bangalore (though I blame the alliteration). Many of the other interns just finished their sophmore years and are talking about their study abroad plans for next year. It just makes me sad and jealous to think about everyone who still has that ahead of them. After a year of French food, I still can't believe that people can live without bread, cheese and wine as a staple, but now those long-forgotten American favorites are starting to make me excited about being back. Maybe. I think that after a full calendar year away from "home," the transition back to Midd will be pretty shocking. Going through my third level of culture shock at the New England prep-school environment and second reverse culture shock over India with France still in the back of my mind will be an interesting way to start my senior year.

The colors here always suprise me. I could sit outside and study the womens' sarees for hours, with their rainbow of colors and patterns that are even more shocking after a year in the land of earth tones (preferably black).

My project isn't exactly thrilling, but I'm getting to do some translation which at least keeps the French around me. I'm learning a whole new vocabulary in both languages, considering I have no knowledge of business terms. I throw in words like "sector" and "market share" just to sound like I understand anything about how this business actually runs. But more than anything I'm learning that it just doesn't appeal to me. I also often feel terribly underqualified as there are at least three native french speaking interns, and nearly everyone seems to have studied french here. I also feel terribly boring, as I am one of the few interns who is boring enough to have learned english as my native language. Between Spanish, Russian and Chinese, I'm living in a little U.N. world. If only my mom had taught me Swedish...

I wish I knew Hindi...though most Indians know English, there are hundreds of languages and dialects spoken here. My Hindi vocabulary is pretty limited to Lagaan song lyrics, though strangely the word "chalo" from one of my favorite songs is used all the time as "let's go." I'm always surprised even walking around campus at how few people speak english outside of the business environment or when they are talking to me.

There's probably a million other things that I'm forgetting but I'll try to be better about posting so I don't have to cram a month's worth of details into one entry.