Arriving in Chennai

So we have arrived in India... At last! took us 2 days to get here and 4 flights but it was worth it. John and Michael our sponsors here picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel. Which apparently isn't a hotel after all, its just open for people doing volunteer work or some kind of social work, founded by some priest.

The area we are staying in is also the main place for famous people and so on so it's quite ''nice'', but there's still rubbish every where you look and people sleeping right next to all the trash and stuff... but still... quite nice.

So we are in Chennai and our first project starts tomorrow after a 12 hour train ride which we will be taking this evening.

If I had to describe India in one word it would be Chaos followed buy Dirty! but the weather is great and the people are... weird but nice. The traffic here is utter chaos. There don't seem to be any rules and every one is constantly honking their horn. We were getting very annoyed by this so we asked John what the deal was and he said because the traffic was so chaotic they did it to keep each other alert and aware. Then we had to take one of those buggee things on three wheels, which are called autos. We had to go three and three in each auto and it was amazingly terrifying but we got to our destination unharmed, thank god. But men and car are as one here. There are no pavements so people are just walking along with the cars like it's the safest place in the world. I have not seen one person look to either side before crossing a road here. They just some how dive in to the traffic and come out the other side unharmed. But they never run! oh no, they would never take a risk like that.

Otherwise, besides the traffic I am quite liking it here. Believe it or not I have not yet done my business in a hole. I have managed to get to western type toilets every time, but I'm afraid that is going to change as soon as I get to the project tomorrow.

The food here is amazing so far. It's so good, which surprised me because I usually don't like Indian food. But this is nothing like the Indian food you get at restaurants at home. It's waay better!

I have only had one traumatic incident here so far and that was last night. I had drunk a huge bottle of water just before going to bed and woke up in the middle of the night bursting for a pee. As I opened the bathroom door and turned the light on I saw a huge lizard run up the wall beside the toilet. It was seriously about the size of my arm. If you can imagine it's nose starting at my fingertips and the tail ending at my elbow, that's about how big it was.  Of course I just jumped out of the bathroom and slammed the door waking up Solveig my room mate. She was way to tired to help me out so I just climbed back in to bed and held it in until morning. The when she woke up we made it our mission to go in to the bathroom to see if we could see it but it was long gone. We came to the conclusion that it had come in and gone out through the drain in the floor, even though we were on the third floor nota bene.

Other wise every thing is going really well and John is helping us like crazy. We would probably still be at the airport trying to find our way to the hotel if it wasn't for him. We took him out to dinner last night and we all dressed up in Indian dresses, but being Icelanders we of course managed to find the only Italian restaurant in the city or something! But Indian/Italian food is really good too.

I am going to have to sign off now seeing as I'm in a tiny internet shop in the corner of a really shabby mall and there are people waiting (it was b.t.w. incredibly hard to find an internet cafe).

I'll try to put in another blog soon!

-C