New Delhi-Trip and Day 1

Julie,

Well I guess here we go again huh? I won't bore you with the details of the trip, but needless to say it was LONG! I jumped on the shuttle at 5am on Thursday the 28th. My flight left from Vegas at 8:45am Utah time. I landed in Atlanta and only had enough time to buy lunch and board my next plane to Paris at 1:35pm Utah time. I landed in Paris 8 hours later and had a 3 1/2 hour layover. It was then another 8 hours to New Delhi. We arrived here at about 12:30 am and by the time we went through customs, got our bags, exchanged money, and headed to the hotel it was about 2am. That is about 130p on Friday Utah time, so yes if you are keeping track that is about 32 1/2 hours of traveling. Ugh! Exhausted!

My room in Delhi

Check out the flat screen

Bathroom

Day 1

Well we jumped right into it today. I finally went to bed about 3:15am and set my wake up call for 7am. I got ready and we had orientation at 8am. Then we started our classes. Today it was just GMI, luckily it was actually a very interesting class and the time passed really quickly. I was nervous with my lack of sleep that it would be a struggle, but it wasn't. 

Then we had lunch and changed our clothes to go on a tour of Old Delhi. It was an awesome experience, kind of a sensory overload. There were so many things going on it was hard to take it all in. I've included a few of my pictures below and hopefully when you get this it will also have videos. I am sitll working on uploading them.

Just one of the pics I took on our drive

Streets are not just for cars. They are for rickshaws, pedestrians, buses, motorcycles, or anything else that moves--including elephants.

WOW!

The Red Fort

This line up of cute kids is school children going either to or from school. They were just walking out into the crazy street with their teacher leading the way. They were all very happy kids and constantly wanted us to speak back to them in English. It was pretty cute.

Inside the Red Fort

More craziness on the streets. It is amazing how much they manage to get onto their bikes.

Me and Brett on our rickshaw ride

You can imagine we caused quite a scene when roughly 120 students got onto these rickshaws in pairs of two and rode through the streets of Delhi.

I have a better video but it had trouble loading.

I took this picture for Spencer. I thought he could take some marketing tips from these guys. :)

The streets of Old Delhi

I was a little nervous being here, until I found this.

Yep, that's right, my home away from home.

There are so many cute kids all over the streets, it is sad. They are either being carried by their moms or running around trying to sell or beg themselves. We had one lady carrying her 1 year old run after us while we were in our rickshaw for about a block and a half. It was astonishing.

More amazing hauls. This time... chickens.

These are like the "cheap" taxis. They are like a motorized rickshaw. They are tiny, but they drivers have no fear weaving them through traffic and cutting off huge trucks and cars. The driving here is amazing.

Some of my impressions throughout the day?
Sensory overload-so much going on, so different from home, so hard to take it all in.
Amazement- We saw a funeral procession where they carried a wrapped body down the street through the track over their heads and nobody takes notice. Also, I watched all sorts of raw meat, fish, and the sorts being laid out on the street for those passing. Then I saw some of that raw meat being thrown into a deep fryer and put on a platter for sale... zero sanitary measures.
Exhaustion- I am so tired... I need to get myself on schedule or its going to be a REALLY long week.

Well I love you and miss you! Can't wait to talk to you and the boys on skype!

Love ya,

Brock