Day 2 Oct 19 2009 - Meeting the Team & Orientation class

Monday was the day when the rest of the team arrived - Susanne and Rich from the US, Per from Denmark, Annamarie from Finland and Soon from Japan. Poor them arrived an 2:30 am and 3:30 am respectively and had to be wide awake for their intros and the orientation class.

It was nice finally seeing them in person, only having know their voices so far. Team Rangoli - named after an art form which uses sand to create colorful mosaic-like pictures - is finally complete!


The Team India 4 - aka Team Rangoli! From left to right:
Soon (Japan), Stefan + Dominik (Germany), Arjun (India), Mapje (Netherlands), Gavin (USA), Eva (Hungary), Rich (USA), Per (Denmark), Annamarie (Finland), Susanne (USA)

Gavin and Arjun belong to the CDC Solutions Team which helps us with the local logistics.




Gavin and Arjun tell us about Ahmedabad, the logistics, our assignments and have us all draw a chart picturing what were the important or decicive points in our lives so far. This little exercise helps us to get to know one another better and brings us closer as a team.

After all the theoretical stuff Arjun takes us to a great restaurant which serves really tasty Indian food.

We go - or better drive - by rikshaw of course. Annamarie, Dominik and me jump in one rikshaw, while the rest of team gets aboard two other rikshaws. The drive takes about 15 min and our drivers keep overtaking one another as if it were a race. Riding rikshaws is just plain fun for us.

After such an eventful day the team in the evening heads out to Law Garden where we take a stroll and have a look at all the street vendors. Close by we find the "Honest" restaurant and have dinner, once more a very tasty one. While some of us decide to go back to the hotel after dinner, the majority of the team decides to visit a fun fair on the way back to the hotel.

A decision which turned out to be a good one as we saw quite a few funny things along the way - an interesting spelling of bed sheets, the Rambo Circus an Bavarian-style dressed kids selling tomato and chocolate popcorn here in India.