Culture Shock

It's been a slightly difficult couple of days, and I'm just about realising that I'm in this for the long haul. That's not such a bad thing, to be honest. I really enjoy work, I'm excited about travelling and I'm glad I had the opportunity to come here.

However, I hate where we're staying, I'm feeling a bit homesick and had a massive knock to my confidence on Monday. We live just off Mysore Road, quite isolated from the rest of Bangalore and I need to get a rickshaw to work becuase the roads are pretty crazy. This means I need to wait for a rickshaw to come along empty so I can go to BEML Layout (quite a nice residential area) for work.

Three guys (two passengers and a driver) pulled up in a rickshaw and started shouting that they wanted a photo of me (is collecting photos of scared white people a hobby here?). I tried to walk away, heading in the general direction of work and away from shouting asshats. No joy, they followed me in the rickshaw, and when I kept ignoring them, actually got out of it, surrounded me and started shoving me, all the while demanding a fucking photo. Who does that? Who chases a crying, obviously foreign female down a busy road? Who thinks they have the right to hound someone like that? The only parallel I can think of is school-yard bullying, and I suppose that sums up their mentality in that situation.

Unfortunately, I'm now desperate to leave the ISI. I don't want to be harrassed, ripped off and stressed everytime I try to go food shopping. I want to feel at home, safe and happy, and sitting in a bare, basic room alone (work finished yesterday for Dusserha, Ollie's at work and there's no where else to go thanks to the rain) is not making me feel any of those things. We're looking at apartments, and I can't get out of here soon enough. I'm glad to be in India, but staying at the ISI is miserable, lonely and isolated.

Ironically, for all that I feel lonely, I genuinely don't have any privacy. For the sake of ventilation the designers have put large windows in the wall facing the corridor, the windows are barred and only covered with mozzie-screens and no glass. I'm regularly woken up by people shouting, or more charmingly, hawking up a greenie to flob on the floor. It's just delightful.

I know it'll get better, but I'm struggling at the moment.