New friends, new places, new experiences...

Well, well, well, here I am again after almost 3 weeks! In fact not that much happened during those three weeks (at least no suicidal trips to the holiest and most crowded places of Tamil Nadu or new fantastic adventures with elephants and monkeys ;o)). But still I feel like I should give you some updated information about my stay in Chennai, right?

Hm, where to start...You can see already in the title that I have met some new people together with whom I've been to some new places and have new experiences.

First there was an IndiaMike meetup. IndiaMike is a website where Indians, expats living in India or people travelling in India discuss a lot of stuff...btw, this website helped me to solve almost all my worries before I came to India. From time to time some of people who are discussing on the website meet in a pub or restaurant to chat in person as well. This was the first (and so far last as well) time I joined them and it was really good. Firstly, it was in a great restaurant called Barbeque Nation which is quite an expensive but very nice place where you first prepare your own little barbeque on your table (they have special tables for this purpose) and then there is a buffet mostly with Indian meals but pasta, salads and sweets as well. And since it's "all you can eat", you can imagine how much I ate ;o) Secondly, I met Jeannie (Indonesia) and Melanie (France) there.















Griled banana...yummy yummy ;o)

Melanie and Jeannie are really nice and we hope we will travel together a little bit, especially with Melanie (but I'll tell you more about this later). Girls have introduced me to their friends: Anna (UK) and Indian guys Kavitha, Adit, Deepak, Chaitali etc. They're all very nice. We went for a movie (not an Indian one, it was an Lebanese movie given by French institute) together and then to a restaurant. It was a rooftop of one hotel and it was just gorgeous!!! Meat there was like a heaven (especially mutton) and so once again (although this time it was not "all you can eat") I ate A LOT ;o) Moreofer, these people are very talkative and sparkling with wit so we laughed a lot and had a wonderful evening.















Anna, Jeannie, Kavitha enjoying the lovely food

Thanks to these people I was also able to see the luxurious face of Chennai for the first time. Anna and Chaitali are working at a big NGO Banyan. There is one guy (he's a big boss in Hindustan newspaper) volunteering at this NGO for many years and since it was his B-day, the directrice of Banyan organized a posh B-day party for this guy in her house. I even wasn't sure how it happened that I was invited to the party (I hardly knew Anna and Chaitali and didn't know neither the guy nor the Bayan directrice) but I didn't care that much ;o) And the party was just awesome! The house is in a residential area not far away from my place. You just turn from the main road full of beggars sleeping on sidewalks and suddenly you're in a paradise. All these huge white houses with big cars parked in front of them and uniformed guards standing at the entrance gates. The interior was even more breathtaking! Huge, wonderful appartment with a big terrace where the party was held. There was a bar with uniformed servant ready to make us drinks (I had French red vine and it was soooo goooood!!!) and other servants were serving starters (barbecued chicken, cheese, vegetables). And then the dinner itself started. It was a buffet with all possible Indian dishes and it was soooo goooood again ;o) Well, although for me it was rather a culinar and cultural experience (or better shock ;o)) than a social event (almost all guests were frineds and colleagues from Banyan and thus were mostly discussing their activities), I really enjoyed it because it was for the first time that I met people from higher class and experienced the Indian diversity.

Another important person I met in Chennai is Vimarshan. As a member of IndiaMike this guy helped me a lot already before I came to India (especially when some people were telling me that 17500 rupees was not enough for a white girl to survive in Chennai). Now he's mostly helping me to plan my crazy trips, chill out after stressing and irritating trainings and arguments with my colleague, and discover new places in Chennai. We went to play bowling and "virtual tennis". I would never say that you can find bowling in Chennai!!! Even after almost two months in Chennai, I'm still living in a big stereotype portraying India as a poor developing country full of poor, illiterate people. Thank you, Shibu, for opening my eyes ;o) I really enjoyed the tennis game. First I just sucked but then I got used to the fact that I don't have a bat but just a remote control in my hand and finally I WON!!! And imagine: next day my left arm hurted like a hell!!! So I gues it was a good exercise as well ;o) Vimarshan also invited me to his B-day party and again it was very nice. I met his colleagues and friends (I was the only girl there with 10 guys and Vim's mum!!!), I ate A LOT (it seems that I'm only eating in India ;o)) and I laughed even more because especially one of Vim's friends Sujay is such a great storyteller!!! Well, now I'm planning to join Vim and his colleagues on their trip to Bangalore (they're invited for a wedding and I was offered to join them!!!) and around at the end of April. Hopefully I'll get a leave from job because I'm so much looking forward to this trip!!! And if everything goes well, we'll go for some more trips together. Well, but enough of praising Vimarshan because he's carefully reading my blog and I don't want to feed up his ego too much, right Shibu? ;o)

Next nice experience was a muslim wedding. Our friend Abdul (I'm not sure if I've already told you about him) is muslim and he was invited by his neighbours to a wedding. He was told that he could take friends as well and so whole my flat (since we all are Abdul's friends ;o)) was happy to join him. Weddings here normally last for 3-4 days. This was the last day and a final reception. It was just a small wedding and we came quite late but still it was great to see the traditional wedding dresses and to taste wedding dish. It was fun because as soon as we entered the hall, everybody was looking at us and they were no more interested in bride and groom. They were so happy to have us there. They were taking pictures of us (alone or with newly-weds), we were taking pictures of them and everybody was happy ;o) The dinner itself was quite simple (compared to what we're used to in Czech Republic) but for Indian standards (it was a middle class family) it was really good and very tasty (especially mutton biryani). And since it was wedding and Indian people are very hospitable, whenever we finished our plate, they hurried up to give us some more food...Thus again again I ate A LOT ;o)

Don't they look really happy?















Wedding dish - mutton biryani















Wedding hall ;o)

Ouch, I've already written much more than I wanted to! I will thus just briefly add some more news:

• Pierre (French flatmate) and Lynn (Chinese flatmate) left but we have new Chinese girl Fish (it's not a mistake, English version of her name is really Fish ;o)) and Turkish guy Cagdas. Both are really nice.
• My company is delivering another training. This time it's Report Writing for MBA students. We already did one 2-day long training for the first batch and three more batches are ahead of us. The first batch was really good (compared to my first training experience). Students were smart, quiet, they followed our instructions and were very friendly. Hopefully the next batches will be alike ;o)
• I'm planning a big trip to Kodaikanal with Melanie on April 10-14. We already have our train tickets (it was quite challenging to get them and we were really lucky) and I'm now trying to find some nice and cheap accommodation which is chellanging as well becuase it's going to be a long weekend (it's public holiday on April 10 and 14) and Kodaikanal is a very popular hill station.