I've discovered something about myself on this trip... I'm a terrible blogger! We are so busy and everything is such a whirlwind of new sights, smells, and sounds that we end each day by collapsing gratefully into our hard beds with the hard pillows. Only one person in our group has had an upset tummy but she is doing better, so everyone is happy and healthy but very tired.
The Kingdom of Dreams I mentioned in my last post was fun. It's definitely designed for the tourists, but there were foods from many areas of India, as well as shops. Several of us surprised the servers at the restaurants and our Indian friends by ordering the hottest and most unusual foods we could find, and actually enjoying them! The show was amazing. Try to picture a high-tech stage with many layers of HUGE computer screens across the stage that provide the visual landscape, combined with the color and flare of a Las Vegas show, the gymnastics and theatrics of a Cirque du Soleil show, and the storylines, dances and songs of a Bollywood movie, and you might get close. One of our student coordinators used to dance in the show we saw, so she arranged for us to meet the lead actor who is a friend of hers. He spent about half an hour answering questions and taking pictures with us. What a rare treat!
On the weekend, we toured the city including some of the most famous landmarks in New Delhi and Old Delhi. The large market was closed since it was Sunday morning, but we took rickshaw rides through the area. Some of the shops were open selling food (which of course we couldn't eat!) and there were still many people around. We've had lectures on international marketing, Indian history, and globalization of businesses, as well as one from a very famous fashion designer, Anuradha Raman, who started by weaving and dying her own fabrics and grew to become a designer for celebrities. She demonstrated wrapping a sari on one of our male students. Last night we went to a more upscale market and had a lot of fun bartering for our shawls, jewelry, shirts, and trinkets. Someone discovered a stall with very thick knitted socks and I think the students must have cleared out her inventory!
On tap for today is Jerry's lecture on professional selling and the sales competitions, another on international economics, and a final one on multiculturalism. In the afternoon, we are scheduled to tour a business. We were scheduled to tour Neilsen yesterday, but that got cancelled. They decided to take us to a local charity organization for children, but the buses got stuck in the traffic from some sort of procession so they were over an hour late in picking us up, so that got cancelled as well. We were warned that one of the hardest adjustments for Americans is their flexible time schedules, and that has indeed been the case. We just go with the flow and use the time to talk more with our new Indian friends. The students are getting along so well. It's fun to hear them laughing and joking, discussing classes, politics, music, and life.
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