Husband Dan is in Bangalore for 10 days. While he misses his girls, he seems to be adjusting really well. I hope he doesn’t mind, but I would like to share some of the things I have heard from him over the phone since he arrived in Bengaluru on Saturday. This is his second trip to the city where his goals are to start working and to get the villa set up for when we arrive in 4 weeks.

First phone call from Bengaluru to Brooklyn:

“It’s 4am here and I am walking around. The weather is great, and it’s really calm. There are monkeys climbing in the trees. Oh wow, that guy just dropped his pants and is going to the bathroom on the side of the road.”

Frantic phone call to me 6:00 am my time on Sunday:

“There are so many people in this city!” and “I have been trying to get basic stuff for the house for 2 entire days and have literally not gotten one thing yet. They don’t have anything plain in this country! I cannot find plain white dishes or plain sheets and there are salespeople following me all over the store. They are following me right now.” Dan, they are there to help. Ask them for help. “I ask them for plain white sheets and they instead show me 50 different kinds of purple with Mickey Mouse.”

Dan on starting work, which he is really enjoying:

“Working here is pretty much the same as working in my office in NYC, expect that every 5 minutes one of the construction workers uses the wall outside of my window as a place to urinate.”

Other conversations:

“Today I went to pick up the key for the villa which I thought would take the usual 5 minutes. It took 4 hours. Guess how many people were there? I took a picture! There were 20 people—the owner, the relocation coordinator, the broker, the caretaker of the house, some other people—I don’t know who they were—the cleaning person and her mother. We went through and recorded every scratch on every surface, every mark on the walls. Afterwards the broker offered me a ride to my office. When I went outside to look for the car, there was a moped instead. He wanted me to ride on the back.”

“I’m going to be sick.” Do you have any pepto or antibiotics on you? “No, I’m meeting someone for dinner, and there’s nothing around here. I need to go back to the hotel, but it’s so far. I thought it would be helpful to talk on the phone, but it’s making it worse—I need to go. Love you, bye!”

Okay, good luck, Dan!