First Day at Shanti Bhavan

I arrived in Bangalore at midnight where a driver picked me up. Luckily, all my baggage made its way back to me. The airport is very new and modern and the initial roads to the city were nicely paved and well-lit. Once you leave the city center, it's a different story. The village roads have lots of speed bumps, potholes, and wildlife. There's tons of beeping too. The driver played Indian music from the radio and I noticed that Indian music has a lot of female/male duets.

I finally arrived at the school around 2 am where I was greeted by a school administrator and shown to my new room where I crawled into my metal-framed twin bed only to enjoy a massive amount of jetlag.

This morning I met some of the other volunteers and Mrs Beena, the vice principal, at breakfast. All are very nice and really excited to be at Shanti Bhavan. The kids are cute and seem too shy to come up to me. The food is good so far - rice and curries. It's spicy though so I have to bring a tissue to the dining hall at every meal (I look like a wuss in front of the children!) We're headed into Hosur (the closest town to Shanti Bhavan) this afternoon to get calling cards, sundries, and use the internet (a luxury in these parts)!