The One Year Report Card

Its been 1 year since we moved to India. We miss you all KVites more than anything else. Its been an interesting ride with the expected ups and downs. The first 6 months were a bit uphill while we started things from scratch here in Pune and getting used to the “indian” way of doing things. Some of the services like getting internet were fast and some others like opening a bank account took more than a month.

Here is a brief one year report card from my side:

Ups:
1) Kids get to play in the apt. complex park every evening and many other kids come down to play at the same time.
2) Kids education is bit more advanced than at the same level in USA (for the intial grades)
3) Kids getting exposed to Indian Culture and Hindi.
4) With problems like no Electricity sometimes, no water sometimes and other such small issues, Kids are learning not to take anything for granted,
5) Kids spending some time with grandparents (grandparents are in Mumbai, we are in pune)
6) Us being able to spend some time with parents
7) Pune seems better than Mumbai in terms of weather, traffic, and facilities that you get in your apartment complex compared to the money that you pay.

Downs:
1) Driving etiquette is non existent here. If you have driven in USA, driving in India can be frustrating initially.
2) Hard to put trust in some people. People make false promises and dont live upto them (be it plumbers, contractors, brokers, etc)
3) Spending time over basic issues like electricity not being there sometimes, Cooking Gas getting over and refill taking followups, Water scarcity sometimes, etc.
4) Missing KV and all things KV did. Social life not as active as in Bay Area.
5) India getting expensive and expensive
6) Garbage getting thrown around by people leading to loose garbage at many places.
7) Hard to see the conditions that some people live here in India and their daily struggle for daily food and wages.

And then there are other things for which you will need to personally talk to me. 🙂 . As you can see there are equal number of ups and downs that I listed above and that is in summary the report card after 1 year.