First 24 hours (longest entry there will ever be, just stick with it)

Alright, so bear with me cuz this could be a longer entry seeing as I just got here and the whole experience is a bit overwhelming. I'll start from the beginning:

The longest travel day of my life. I left Milwaukee at 2:05 PM on Tuesday and arrived in Bangalore at 7:00 AM on Thursday. Taking away the time change it's like traveling from 1:30 AM Tuesday till 7:00 AM Thursday. Close to 30 hours of travel! All in all, not too bad. I sat next to this mother and son, Usha and Janesh, from Chicago all the way to Mumbai (Bombay). Really nice people. Usha talked to me about India and the changes I would have to make. Janesh, a really cute 7 year old, really took a liking to me and asked me maybe a billion questions on the ride. No matter if I was reading, listening to music, sleeping, eating... "Nate, have you tasted Indian food before? Nate, do you have any brothers? Nate, do your brothers ever get on your nerves? Really?! What do they do to annoy you?" The transfer at the Bombay airport was nuts. Indian soldiers with various automatic riffles checking you through security, clearly talking about you in a language you can't understand. I slept a good amount and arrived in one piece with all of my luggage.

There were these guys at the baggage claim who assign themselves to you and grab all the luggage you point to and put it on your cart. I exchanged my money into rupees, $65 into 2,695 rps! Keep in mind that 15 rps. will buy you a nice dinner. The driver was outside the terminal with a card with "IndiaIT" and my name on it. I pointed to the driver and the baggage people and the driver coordinated how they would get my luggage in/on the car. At least, I’m assuming, cuz I don’t speak Hindi. Maybe they were saying "How can we rip this American out of all his cash?" They did, cuz they pressured me into tipping them, which I wasn’t supposed to do. What can I say, I’m spineless. I’ll get better, I promise.

When I decided to move to India my friends made fun of me about there being cows and elephants in the road, which is completely absurd!!! There are only cows in the street. Seriously, we almost rear-ended one. Well, it would’ve been a rear-end if the cow wasn’t walking towards oncoming traffic. Traffic is insane! I put on my seatbelt right away but my driver never wore one. I had joked about buying a motorcycle… well, not anymore.

Nothing looks real in this country. The astounding poverty is juxtaposed to these huge, beautiful temples and office buildings with guards out front. There are people living in little huts made of tarps and bricks. Many of them are construction workers who just set up their home on the construction site. Like nothing I’ve ever seen.

We got to my building, safely, and there were 3 guards, with guns, at the gate. I showed them my contract and they let me through. I went to meet a man who was supposed to give me my room, but he didn’t even seem to know I was coming. I could barely understand what he said. Basically, I was about to start crying. "What the FUCK am I doing here?! Wasn’t someone supposed to talk me out of this?!" I finally got in my apartment and met my roommate, and his girlfriend, who had just woken up. Turns out this guy, Josh, was one of the guys who interviewed me. Nice guy. That part was fine.

I basically sat around all day doing nothing, looking outside whenever I could muster up the courage. I found this cyberhouse near by, which is where I’m writing you now. I’ll be doing this from work when I start on Monday.

I’ll end this now because it’s already WAY too long. If you’ve made it this far, kudos to you. If not, then you’re not even reading this. I’m going to head to the "IndiaIT" campus this afternoon to meet another one of the guys from my program. He’ll show me around the campus and then around the city of Bangalore, which I haven’t really seen yet. Things are still very tough, but are getting better everyday.

Sorry for the long entry, this will be the longest there will ever be.

-Nate