I feel much better mentally, today, than I did yesterday. I think I just needed to rest a bit and settle in. We only got a few hours of sleep last night, so tonight will be an early night.
We were greeted by Mr. Ganesh (the man who met us at security last night and showed us to our room) at about 9am this morning, and told that our breakfast would arrive between 9:30 and 10am. We were under the impression that
Mr. Ganesh was a helper of some kind at SPASTN, but it turns out he is actually their orthotist! He explained a little bit about all of the buildings at the centre, and then Priyanka and I decided to take a walk outside the complex for a little while and see if we could find a phone to call our families.
We walked out to a nearby bus terminal, but there were no phone booths that could make international calls. Eventually we found someone who spoke English (English speaking people don’t seem to be as common here as we were told) who directed us to an area where there were more shops. Getting there was a little bit overwhelming, and definitely eye-opening. There is a huge amount of traffic everywhere, and you really have to keep a close eye on the cars, because they definitely do not keep a close eye out for you. We had one close call with a bus, and were much more cautious after that. Generally there was just a lot of hustle and bustle, which seems to be the general theme everywhere here. We also discovered that you have to be really careful where you step, as there are “landmines” (as we’ve taken to calling them) all over the place, that have been left by stray dogs and even the occasional cow. We were only able to find one international phone in our journey, and the man wanted to charge us 11 INR per minute to use it. Now, granted that is only about 25 Canadian cents per minute, but we had the distinct feeling that we were being ripped off. We were both really hot, hungry and kind of frustrated, so we decided to head back to SPASTN for the time being to eat breakfast.
When we got back to the centre at about 10:10am, our food hadn’t arrived yet, so we just relaxed in our room. At about 10:30 we heard somebody calling into our room – it was the woman bringing our food. When we planned this trip, we had been under the impression that this would be a much bigger center, and we would be eating in a cafeteria and staying in a building with lots of other people. As it turns out, we’re pretty sure we’re the only occupants (aside from geckos and ants) in our building, and our food is cooked specially for us, for each meal.
The woman was eagerly chatting away at us in Tamil, and was incredulous when we tried to explain that we only spoke English and couldn’t understand her. It was really funny, because she kept looking at me like I could understand her, and I kept thinking to myself “of the two of us, do you really think I’M more likely to be able to understand you?” (Priyanka is Indian, but only speaks Bengali). Eventually we sorted out that she wanted us to come to the dining area in our residence, where she’d left us some coffee, dosas and sambar. It was very tasty!
After “brunch” we decided to head back into town to continue the quest for the phone, and also to see about getting SIM card for my cell phone, and buying some bottled water (the stuff we purified with our tablets tastes really terrible). We finally found a place where we could call home for 2 INR per minute, which seemed like a much better deal to me. Unfortunately it was about Noon, Chennai time, which is about 1:30 am at home, so I woke my parents up. They were happy to hear from me though, so it was okay. I ended up paying 11 INR TOTAL for my phone call, a much better bargain than the 11 INR per minute that the other guy was charging.
Getting a hold of a SIM card was a bit of a challenge. Apparently in years past it was so easy (and cheap) to get a cell phone in India that it was causing trouble in terms of terrorism, so now they’ve tightened the rules for who can buy a SIM card. Basically they needed a copy of my passport, a proof of address and then a passport photo before I could get the card. Getting the passport photo taken was a fun experience! The man took me into a little (air-conditioned!) room, and set up all of these fancy lights and then took my photo. Its probably the best quality passport photo I’ve ever had taken, and managed to get 8 of them for 80 INR, or $2 Canadian. I won’t be able to use them for a passport application of anything like that at home (because I smiled) but who knows when they will come in handy! We ended up paying about 175 INR for our SIM card and some air time – less than 5 bucks Canadian can get you a cell phone here if you have the right documents! We also got some information about mobile internet while we were in the cell phone store, an we will probably go back for that tomorrow (and then I can finally post all of these blog updates!)
After getting the phone set up, we headed over to a pharmacy and bought 8 bottles of mineral water, so that we could stop drinking our gross, chlorinated water. Priyanka also tried to bargain for some flip flops, but the salesman wouldn’t budge.
On the way home it started to pour. This was also when Priyanka’s umbrella decided to give out. We tried to use it anyways, but the long and short of it was that we got soaked on the way home. It was kind of refreshing though, because we were both pretty hot!
We got home and changed our clothing, and got set to relax for a while. It started to thunder, and the rain was coming down even harder than before! All of a sudden our power went out! Hmmm…we were kind of in suspense as to whether it would come on again, but we decided to wait it out and take a nap. We slept until about 4:30pm, when we were awakened by a loud knock at the door. We were surprised to see a man there, who turned out to be the secretary of a business associate of Priyanka’s father! Apparently Mr. Banerjee got worried after he talked to Priyanka on the phone earlier (we were telling him that we didn’t have any water yet and that our accommodations were pretty basic), and mobilized half of India to help us out! The man at the door was fully prepared to move us into a different place. We explained that we were doing okay here, that we’d found water and that there was no big emergency. It was nice to know that if we ever do get into any trouble, there will be people to help us out! We exchanged phone numbers with the man (now that we had a phone!) and thanked him profusely, and he was on his way.
Mr. Ganesh came over with Mr. Banerjee’s friend, so we asked him to help us with the power situation. They worked on it for a while, and got it back on. We asked for some candles and matches just in case.
Priyanka and I both talked to our parents again on the cell phone (free incoming calls! I managed to wake mine up again for the second time that day – on my Mom’s birthday no less), and then we decided to eat dinner.
Dinner was a yummy dahl concoction, with rice, chapatti and pappadams. It was really tasty! Just as we were finishing up we got another visiter! It was Priya, one of the physiotherapists at the center. We talked to her for a while, and she gave us some ideas on hanging our mosquito nets. She also gave us some safety tips (like don’t walk behind the buildings at night because there are poisonous snakes). At this point the rain started coming down hard again, and our power went out for a second time. Priya got security to come in, and we had them show us where the breakers are, in case it happens again. Thank goodness we had the candles (and my trusty pump action flashlight) because it gets dark around 6pm here in Chennai.
Tomorrow we are going to be spending most of the day with a friend of Priyanka’s family. They are going to show us around the city, and help us get a case of water and some other things that we need. It will be nice to be a little bit oriented to the city! (Right now we don’t know how to get anywhere except for the section that we were at today)
Now we are just settling in for the night, hoping to get a good night’s sleep. This is pretty intense jet lag, that’s for sure! We’ve got our mosquito nets up on the wall (still not ideal, but at least they are off our faces now), and the power is back on, so our celing fan is blowing hard.
I still miss you all at home, but I’m doing well, settling in, and excited to continue this adventure J
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