Tomorrow is only a month away

Do you know the song "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, it's only a day away"? Well we changed it in "it's only a month away". Because here when they say tomorrow they mean in a few months... When you ask Indian to do something for you and they say 'tomorrow', donc expect it within the month. Now when they ask me to do something that I really don't want to do, I always say "tomorrow, tomorrow"...

And when the international trainees meet somewhere, and say at that time, we always ask: "Indian time or normal time?" So when we meet at 8:00 Indian time it means that me meet at 9:00 - 9:30...

First English song

In my English class today, with the young marketing guys, I let them listen to some English music (I also gave them a printout of the lyrics) and they had so much problems. Suddenly one of them said: it's the first time we hear English music. I let them listen to Rock Around the Clock from Elvis Presley, and they have never heard of Elvis!!

Men are close but not gay

It' quite funny, men here are physically very close. They walk hand in hand, arms around eachother... When I arrived here I thought everybody was gay! But between man and woman there's no contact at all. And woman have to cover their shoulders and knees... All my decollete-tops and short skirts are waiting in my closet to come out!!

"Take me away" - song

Together with the Polish girl we made a song on the melody of "take me away" from Four Strings....

Take me away, from all these guys who call all day
Take me away, I want to wear my decollete
Take me away, I want to show my knees again
Take me away, from the 24 hour sweating
Take me away, from this Indian English I hardly understand
Take me away, I want to take a normal shower (our shower isn't working so we use a tap (usually used to fill buckets), and this tap is at the belly level, ik bedoel dus dat we douchen onder een kraan die op buikhoogte is, zeer praktisch...)

Changing questions

When you ask a "yes or no question" to in Indian, you will always get the answer "yes". That's why I started to change my questions and stopped asking "yes or no questions". For example, in stead of asking "Is the restaurant that way?" I will ask "Where is the restaurant?". When you take a rickshaw and you ask him: "Do you know the way?", he will always say yes, but then he will have to stop ten times to ask the way to someone. With the international trainees we have a joke and always say this conversation between an Indian and us:

Me: Can you bring me there?

Indian: Yes

Me: Do you know the way?

Indian: Yes

Me: Did you understand me?

Indian: Yes

Me: What did I just say?

Indian: Yes

Jaipur Zoo

They told me Jaipur has a zoo. I wonder what animals they have there, because the street already is a zoo! On the streets you can find cows, dogs, pigs, oxen, camels, elephants, donkeys, horses...

Belgium as a developping country

At work one of my main jobs is to teach English. I have a class of 6 young guys that are working in the marketing department. They all graduated as an MBA. In the first class they asked me about Belgium: "Is it a developping country?". I was shocked! I wonder what the level of an MBA is here...

Birthday cake

Yesterday I had a birthday party from one of my colleagues. They start with the (very creamy) birthday cake, eat it, throw it in the face of the birthday girl, and then they start with the rest of the food (main course).

Body language

In the beginning I had some problems understanding the Indian body language. When they want to say 'yes', they turn their head as if they were saying 'no'. Very confusing! Now I also do that with my head...

Phone number

Never give your phone number to an Indian guy. He will call you every day every 2 hours even if you never give any sign of life! All the foreign girls here have experienced the same problem. Another annoying thing is the provider, called Hutch, they call every day with stupid advertisement and songs...

Nutella

I found a pot of Nutella in a shop!!! The same shop also sells Ferrero Rochers. Heaven... Although I must say that the chocolate here doesn't taste that well because it's a different chocolate (that doesn't melt). I tried some 'Toblerone' here and it's disgusting... (usually I love it!)

Mouse in our room

Last week we met a our new roommate, mister mouse! I share my room with Marysia, a really nice Polish girl. There are 2 other rooms with a girl from Germany, a girl from Slovakia and a guy from Indonesia. Funny thing about the mouse is that he leaves his 'droppings' on our beds! Gratis muizestrontjes elke morgen :-)

Facts of India

I'm not good at writing long stories so I'll just make a simple blog and tell you some interesting facts of India once in a while! I''ll write them in English because I don't want to make a Dutch, French and German version!!