Pictures are hung

The carpenter came round today and started to hang the pictures.  Now the walls are painted and things are going up on them this apartment is feeling more and more like home.

Opening Day Minus 7

Just one week to go and we will have students walking through the front doors of the school.  It seems incredible to think of this as the building still doesn't seem finished, but every day more and more gets done.  Here are a few pictures showing what is is like with a week to go.  No doubt there will be a big contrast with these photos next week.

The scaffolding is gone from the outside, but parts of the inside still
look like this.  This is the Atrium, taken from the 3rd floor.

Furniture is starting to arrive and is being placed in the learning spaces.

Each floor has an iCommons area - with a techie in each.

My first tech meeting took place on these yellow and blue cushions.

Unpacking and getting settled

Our boxes have arrived and about 140 of them have been unpacked, though not much is in its "final" place yet.  I need to do a lot of organizing.  However I've been doing the nice things, choosing colours for the rooms, deciding where to put furniture, hang lamps and eventually put up our pictures.  Our bare apartment is being transformed into something that resembles a home!

Our dining room

Bedroom is looking good.

Rachel has set up her bedroom and here she is with new glasses!

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!

Paint!

OK, the balconies are stuffed full of plants, now it's time for the walls.  Yesterday I asked if I could have my walls painted.  Yesterday evening a painter came round to ask me what colours I wanted.  Today 6 painters came around and painted almost the entire place.  Our lounge/dining room is green and red, my bedroom is blue and Rachel's is lilac and purple.  Yes, 3 rooms completely decorated in just one day.

Tomorrow the shipping arrives.  The place will soon feel like home.

Plants!

The apartment is still bare, but as of tomorrow our 4 balconies are going to be stuffed full with plants.  Rachel and I went to a nursery today and ordered more than 20 which are being delivered tomorrow.  Our pots will arrive in the shipment, hopefully on Saturday.  By next week the place should start to look and feel more like home.

A visit to an Akanksha Foundation school

One of the things I love about ASB is that there is a big committment to service education and yesterday a group of new teachers went to visit a school for slum children that is being run by the Akanksha Foundation. The school is doing good work - the students are delightful and very smart.  The teachers are very dedicated and it's great to think that ASB is getting us involved in such a life-changing project.