Finishing Up the Week

We’ve been here almost week, and in some ways it feels a lot longer. I guess that’s what happens when everything is new and you need to figure everything out all day long.

On Wednesday, the girls and I walked through Deer Park after our morning school session. It was so hot and humid! We took about a 20 minute walk through the park, looking at the trees, the reservoir and the outside of Hauz Khas Fort. The Hauz Khas Fort is known for its architecture. All that remains of it are the ruins of the medieval era (it was constructed during the reign of Alauddin Khalji in the 13th century). There is a royal water tank among the ruins, which was used to supply water to the inhabitants of the medieval city. We went from the park into Hauz Khas Village, a street filled with artsy shops, restaurants and bars alongside kiosks and the chaos of India. We looked around a bit but everyone was getting very hungry so we found an Italian place online. Steffen joined us and we found the small doorway and headed up. What we have noticed with restaurants here are usually up a few flights of stairs to get away from the loudness and craziness of the street. This place was tasty, calm and deliciously cool. The food was great and the staff was wonderful. And then we were treated to this beautiful sunset from the upper patio.

On Thursday, Luisa went to the Waldorf School for the first time. She stayed from 9:00am-2:00pm and was so tired when we picked her up! But happy and willing to go again the next day. Right when we dropped her off, her teacher said they were heading out to the farm. Then they did some math, some handiwork (weaving of a belt, I think) and some geography. Luisa didn’t share much either because she was so tired or because she didn’t really know what was going on. I think they speak more Hindi at the school than English which makes things even more challenging.

We are so proud of her for being willing to try this out, and glad she is getting a different glimpse into Indian culture. She went Thursday and Friday last week and will go again this coming week. We did ask the director if it would be possible for her to just stay until lunch because the full day is very tiring for her. And we will go to Jaipur Thursday-Sunday this week, so she will only go a few days anyways.

A small challenge with school is she needs to bring her own lunch. So we went on a mission to find a Tupperware she could use plus noodles I could cook and some cheese to top them off. Every morning I brave our scary kitchen (LOL) and make her a little lunch. It’s not great (and the first day the teacher said she really needed to have some vegetables, but we don’t want her to eat uncooked vegetables and don’t really have the tools to cook anything) but it’s something. And she eats two hard-boiled eggs in the morning to get her through most of the day.

While Luisa was at the Waldorf school, Steffen, the other girls and I went to a very different “school”: the Starbucks at the mall. We realised that that Starbucks was closer to Luisa’s school and had more space, so we decided to make it our co-working space. And it worked out very well! Plenty of space, the staff was very kind (asking me all kinds of questions about our plans this year in an interested and excited way), we can eat breakfast and the girls were very focused on their schoolwork. We are also so proud of them for their flexibility and ability to concentrate in any environment. After school we had a yummy meal at PF Chang’s for me. 🙂

Thursday evening we thought we would try out Connaught Place, a recommendation from Steffen’s friend. It was an intense experience! We made a mistake by not really having a plan when we arrived. I guess we were getting a bit too cocky! The Uber driver just dropped us off in the general area, and we were immediately overwhelmed. This area is close to the centre of New Delhi and is 10x more crazy and chaotic than the area we are staying in (about 20 minutes south). Right away someone approached me and told us that there was nothing interesting in the one direction. Instead, we should head to “Delhi Haat Cottage Emporium”. We thanked him and started heading in that direction. Then another person came up and mentioned the same place. We thought, well, it must be good if these two strangers recommend it. The second guy quickly convinced us to get in a Tuk Tuk (all 6 of us crammed in there!) which turned out to be a good decision (even if it slowly became clear that all these people were working together). We definitely did not want to walk the 1.3km since the streets were so crowded and chaotic and there were a lot of people begging, including young children and women carrying babies. At one point a little girl put her hand on Olivia’s arm as we drove off which was (understandingly) alarming for her.

We arrived at the Delhi Haat and realized that it was actually just a big store. There were a ton of different types of crafts from different areas of India, and the people working there were (thankfully) not too pushy. I think they quickly realized we were not going to be their next best customers. This man kindly showed us how they weave these gorgeous rugs, answering our questions and explaining the process. We spent some time wandering around the store and then knew it was time to look for a restaurant. When we exited the store, there was the Tuk Tuk driver sitting there waiting for us. LOL He then wanted to take us to a “great” restaurant but we had caught on by then. So we just asked him to take us back to Connaught Place, and we confidently walked straight towards an Italian restaurant we had found online. The food was delicious, especially the chocolate lasagna we all devoured. By then we were more than ready to head back to our (relatively) quiet neighborhood!