Back in Line

So, I arrived back in India on June 15th. Things did not go smoothly right away. I was supposed to have an airport pickup, but when I walked out of the airport I could not find my name on any of the many hotel signs waving around. I finally went to the hotel desk and they supposedly called my hotel for me, but reported back that my room had been booked for the previous night and now the hotel was full! There had been some confusion about the date of my arrival at the Fulbright office in Mumbai, so I thought there may have been a misunderstanding. I decided to go to the hotel anyway, since they were holding an air ticket for me, so I booked a prepaid taxi. When I got into the taxi I realized the prepaid people had ripped me off - I had prepaid about three times what I should have. Anyway, when I did arrive at the hotel they told me they had a room for me and asked why I didn't come in their car. Don't know where that airport pickup guy was. Maybe he had the wrong name on his sign.

I flew to Pune on Wednesday. The flight is really funny - it's about ten minutes of actual flight time. They take off, and then ten minutes later they say "Please prepare for landing." The guy next to me wouldn't stop talking on his cellphone as we were taking off and the man across the aisle got into an argument with him over it.

My facilitator in Pune is a law student named Nupur. She took me to my hotel, then to a cafe, then to a friend's 21st birthday party. There was quite a funny assortment of people there: another lawyer, a woman who works in graphic design but wants to become a chef, an engineer who's about to get married to a man in Jacksonville, FL, a man who soups up cars for a living and left early because he's a "serious gamer" and had just bought a new game. This computer programmer guy pulled me aside and said he had a question for me: it was "Indians think Americans are dumb. Why is that?" Couldn't really answer that.

After dinner the birthday boy drove us home in his souped up car. It's a compact car that has a very, very loud engine and neon lights everywhere. He doesn't need to honk - he says it's because of the lights, but I realized later, once he had dropped me off, that you can hear the engine from a block away, so maybe that serves as a horn and a threat at the same time.

Meanwhile, Gilles has been trapped in Paris waiting for his research visa. We should have known, right? Anyway, there was good news yesterday - the ministry in Delhi came through and he is allowed to get his visa today. So hopefully he will arrive next week. I have been going through my own bureaucratic nightmares - Nupur took me to the Police Registration Office, but they said they couldn't register me without a proof of residence. I tried to add my two cents' worth but the ugly and annoying man at the counter told me "Either she talks to me, or you talk to me. Which one of you will talk to me?" Nupur thought he was hoping for a bribe. Anyway, we'll see if they give it to me tomorrow.