Riding the public bus

Our welcome to ASB involved having a garland (mala) placed round our
necks and a tikka placed on our foreheads for good luck

Our Superintendent told us that we are the only foreigners in this neighbourhood and that's certainly true.  The only Westerners who we have seen here have been those in the ISB community.  As we walk down the street we are often stared at - not in a hostile way but in a curious one.

Today I was running a little late.  Outside my apartment block I saw a bus and someone running for it (so it seemed it was just about to set off).  I've never ridden a public bus here but I got on anyway.  The driver looked at me as if I was VERY foreign (alien, really) and pointed me down the bus where a conductor took my 5 rupee fair.  There wasn't a bus stop for where I wanted to get off, but the bus stopped for me anyway.

I went and had a pedicure today too.  As I was sitting down next to an Indian woman she asked me if I was staying at the Kohinoor hotel.  I told her I was living here now.  Again she was very surprised.

It won't be long though.  This area is going to totally change in the next 6 months or so now that the school has moved in here.  I'm excited that I'm right at the start of it, in the first wave of the change.  That I experience what it is like to live here as an alien being!