We have been in New Delhi for three days now, and it has been a bit of a wild ride. When we arrived on early Sunday morning, we all fell asleep right away and slept for a couple of hours. But we didn’t want to sleep the whole day for fear of not being able to sleep that night. So we woke up around noon and had some breakfast. The apartment we are staying at has breakfast included, which means that the house assistant, Nirmal, will make us breakfast. He doesn’t speak English so, via google translate, we tried to explain we’d like eggs, toast, maybe some yogurt. He whipped up an omelette with a slice of white bread in the middle! I don’t know if that was a miscommunication or an Indian specialty but I think it was the former. LOL It took us a couple of days to clear that up but yesterday we had the eggs and the toast separately. 🙂

After we ate a bit and rested some more, we decided we needed to shower and venture out. We wanted to figure out the SIM card situation, grab some more food (everyone was starving and the kids especially hadn’t eaten much since our delicious dinner in Athens Friday night) and maybe find a grocery store. As soon as we exited the apartment building, we were hit with the stifling, hot, humid, stinky air. Sweat started dripping down our backs immediately. But we were determined. So, with Steffen leading the charge, we crossed the street (cars, tuk tuks, motorbikes, bicycles, carts whizzing by) and made our way to a strip of stores and restaurants called “Green Park Market”. We found a cell phone store where they were very helpful and then headed to a nearby Pizza Hut where we all filled our bellies with delicious (and cheap) pizza. Everyone was feeling a bit better after that. We then walked over to a grocery store that turned out to have some of our favorite American treats, including a €11 box of Cheerios, Skittles and chips. Some snacks to make the kids feel a bit more comfortable. We also bought a lot of bottled water that we did not want to carry home, so we tried out Uber for the first time here. And it was great! Super easy and cheap. And we can always find a car for the six of us. Since then we have been relying exclusively on Uber to get around which has been really nice. Because those first few 15-20 minute walks were painful with the heat, humidity and chaos. It is much nicer to watch the chaos from inside an air conditioned car!

On Monday we headed out on an adventure as a family–to visit a local Waldorf School that we thought might be a place Luisa could go to while we are here. We had an 11am appointment, so hopped in our Uber around 10:35am and were off. We arrived at little after 11am and it took us awhile to figure out how to get in. The school is in a neighborhood of large houses (farms?) with huge gates and high hedges so you can’t see anything. And the school doesn’t have any signage, but the director explained all that in her email and around 11:15am we were let in to the school grounds. The director greeted us and told us to look around while she finished up her meeting. The school is very basic with a couple of rusty play structures, a paved area where the kids were playing games, a basic two-story structure for classes and then a huge farm area. It was recess for the elementary school when we arrived, so most of the kids were playing in the yard. The Indian children were curious but remained at a distance. After a while, one came up and asked us where we are from and what Luisa’s name is. When she told him, he said, “Oh! What a pretty name!” They have a few dogs at the school which Luisa loved, though we later learned that the people aren’t supposed to interact with the dogs since they are more to protect the farm rather than pets.

Then it was time to meet with the director who was so kind and curious and welcoming and calm and patient, just a lovely person right from get go. She wanted to hear more about our trip and about Waldorf education for older children (their school goes through 5th grade only) and pointedly asked the girls directly rather than relying on Steffen and I. I loved that! We saw some familiar things–the creation of textbooks by the students through writing and drawing as they move through the main lesson, use of chalk boards, weaving and other handiwork, and a very child-centered approach. And we also saw many unfamiliar things–kids making do with very few material items and the play things they did have were old and run down, the vegetation is very tropical, the floors in the classrooms are cement and the whole building is cobbled together with whatever they could find. Luisa loved it right away and is eager to attend. She will start tomorrow at 9:00am and we will see how she feels at the end of the day. There are 5 other students in her class and while they are bilingual (Hindi-English), the geography lesson they are currently working on is in Hindi. The teacher said they will help with translation and Luisa is not worried at all!

By the time we left the school, we were all getting pretty “hangry” (Luisa taught the director that word) so we asked her for a recommendation, and she suggested a place called Fabcafe in a Fabindia store. So we got another Uber (loving the ease of that app!) and headed over. Unfortunately we got into a ton of traffic as it was right when most of the schools dismissed, so there were big school buses and small vans full of kids and then regular traffic all bunched up together. It took us an hour to go 4.5 km!! And our Uber driver fell asleep twice and had two small run-ins with other vehicles–he side swiped a car but we were all going so slowly that it just flipped the side mirror inwards and he wedged a motorcycle between him and the truck in front of him so tightly that he had to reserve so the motorcycle could continue on. Mind you, the motorcycle was cutting across traffic so was sideways but he still wasn’t happy with the situation! Eventually we made it and we enjoyed our meal. We did get to squeeze into the smallest elevator ever (and that’s saying something after traveling Europe for 10 years!).

Something else that we’ve noticed is that there are often quite a few employees in every store or restaurant, standing around ready to help. They aren’t pushy but they are there and will offer their help. When we walked into this restaurant, there were 4 or 5 men standing around, ready to assist. One brought us menus, another turned the air conditioning up, another brought us water and then other showed the girls the bathroom. It is actually a nice balance between the “European” way of completely leaving you alone to the point of having to beg for service and the “American” way of being way too pushy and in your face the whole time.

This got very long! I hope it’s all interesting. It is hard to believe it’s only been a couple of days since we’ve arrived since we’ve experienced so much! I’ll post a few more videos on Instagram to give you a better idea because it’s so hard to capture things in still photos. Even videos can’t quite capture it….