Sunday, July 23 Apartment shopping, orientation that lasted unto eternity

I woke up and had some good food, and then Vijay took six of us to see our future house: the palace, as we like to call it. It’s in Civil Lines, which is adjacent to DU campus, and is a 5-minute walk from campus, 5-minute walk from the subway station, 5-minute walk from the EAP study center. Perfect location. It’s also in a really posh, safe gated community neighborhood. For example, there is an armed guard outside the gate to the neighborhood, then another guard to the street, and then another guard outside the house. If one of us manages to get attacked by an outsider, that’s pretty impressive, aka that’s the person who Bush hires to infiltrate Latin American government buildings to assassinate their leaders. The house is really awesome. It’s separated from the landlord’s half of the house. You walk in and you can wear shoes, and there are marble floors throughout the whole thing. You walk up a common stairway to the second and third floors. The second floor will be the guys’ floor (because it’s a buffer between the girls and the landlord). The rooms are spacious and each have a connected bathroom, which have glass shower curtains, bathtubs, nice western toilets, and nice stainless steel sinks. Then there is a common room on each floor. The second floor one has a TV and couches, and the upstairs one has a kitchen and a dining room table. Then, we went in his oak and marble living room to negotiate. There are balconies attached to each room. And there is a roof terrace, which has a view of Jami Masjid and of the rest of the sprawling city. The place, Rahul Jain the landlord explained, comes with a washerman who comes every day, two live-in servants who will clean our rooms and fill up water bottles of filtered water for us every day (a huge expense avoided). It also includes water and high-speed internet. Vijay took care of all the negotiations. He got him to reduce the rent from 100,000R to 60,000R, and we have to pay starting in August. It’s a really good deal; I only end up paying 7500R ($150) per month. For living in a palace with servants that’s amazing, and probably the only time in my life I can afford to live in an extravagant palatial home with servants. He only has one rule; we can’t bring meat into the house. But he said he doesn’t care if we play loud music, drink, or smoke. It’s like a family, he says, and wants to party with us. He seems really cool and chill; plus, he goes to the US a lot and so he knows what to expect from us. After seeing the house, we all ate and were bussed to the India Habitat Center, a huge upscale exhibition center, for our orientation. We had three chai breaks and dinner. The food was all really good and fresh and not sketchy. The talk took forever, and it was excruciatingly painful to sit through Bob-Ji explaining to us what we had already heard three times before. They basically told us to watch out and be careful (in other words, so EAP doesn’t have to deal with our problems). Women are not supposed to go out at night alone or even in groups. They didn’t really condone men going out alone at night, but that’s honestly just Americans being scared…as usual. The room was like a UN Conference room, with microphones, speakers, and long desks. I couldn’t resist the open mic, so I got up and did a Dinker impression in front of everyone. After that we were bussed out of there, and I went to bed.