Letters From Delhi: Housing Update!

In the last couple of days, a lot of things have worked out for the better regarding my housing situation from before. Instead of moving out on Wednesday night, we worked out a compromise between my landlord and I where I would stay a full two weeks (until next Thursday) and move out after that. That way, I've basically given him my 1 week's notice to find someone else for his paying guest room and myself time to find another place to stay in the meantime.

Which...I have successfully done! Meron and I met on Wednesday night after work to go apartment hunting in neighborhoods around my office. I got a chance to meet one of his friends, who asked me to call her Dr. Mandi, and we checked out a place in a nearby neighborhood called Gautam Nagar. They showed me a room that is much more bare bones than where I'm staying right now: single room with a bathroom, a bed, a dresser, and a table with a tv on it. It would start getting crowded if more than four people were standing in the room at one time. There's no kitchen or anything, but rent is going to end up being about 1/4 of what I'm paying right now. I decided to take the room in anticipation of starting afresh for life in Delhi. It will definitely be different - no housekeeper to bring coffee and biscuits in the morning, no king sized bed to pass out on, and no posh neighborhood to walk through. The area is actually completely different, there are a lot of shops and stands to walk by, so I'll definitely be interacting with a lot more people hopefully. I'm looking to check out the local Chinese joint that's right next to my apartment, "Spicy."

Last night, I got a chance to eat dinner with Dr. Mandi. She works at a local hospital that provides free care to all of its patients. I was very intrigued by this because my research topic at the Public Health Foundation of India is to investigate the equity and access of healthcare in India's population as well as the effects of having to make healthcare payments out of one's own pocket on everyday life. Dr. Mandi works in the triage center of the hospital so the realities of patients coming in will be even more relevant for the topics that I'm looking into at work. I'm going to shadow her at work sometime next week during one of her night shifts - it'll be cool to see up close and personal some of the things that I saw in my high school anatomy class trauma videos.

Tomorrow, one of my friends who's also interning at PHFI invited a bunch of us over to her house - the US embassy. The embassy is throwing a private Fourth of July bash for American citizens tomorrow night. I gotta say, I'm not sure what the expect at this, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be pretty interesting. Fireworks? A whole lot of red, white, and blue? Juicy Angus burgers? I just gotta remember to bring my passport and 150 rupees to find out!