Welcome to India!

I feel a bit obliged now to say couple of positive things about India and especially Indians. The truth is there are some shocking things which I find hard to live with, but there are also a lot of things which I consider great and which I respect.

First of all, they are really nice here. Most of the time they just smile at you, even if they don't know you. It happens quite frequently that they come to speak to you in a shop or in the street, just to know where are you from. In these cases, you can always hear the sentence  'Welcome to India!' (-:

Also, the people are very respectful and everybody wants to help me. Sometimes I feel bad what attention I am causing as a foreigner and European and I can really feel they treat me much differently than all the locals. For example, they say 'sir' after every sentence they say to me in the school, or in various other occassions. I am not used to that... These people here have, in my thoughts, very strong sence of authority and they are not used to question it. For me this is a bit sad. Like when I see a woman doing really bad work and she assumes like it's the way it should be. It is hard to think this way for me. It's hard to imagine that you cannot change much it your life. But these people here look like they can live with this feeling.

Well, but a great thing is I feel safe here. Even though the local environment with all the mess, poverty and everything might look frightening, I really do feel safe, not any less than at home.

Another good thing - up to now I have to say that commuting here is quite easy, I find it easier than for example in Ireland. You just take riksha, or there is always a bus and there you go. On the other hand, distance of 100km might takes you 4 hours easily (-:

Also, one would say in developing country some things would not be present. Wrong. There are mobiles, internet, you can search and get any information quite easily. You can get here almost everything you need and people are not shocked when they see Ipod. Though, I am a bit suspicious that this is not truth for a big part of population...