Of homes and schools

Let's see, I am getting lost in time now. The jet lag seems to be wearing off, I finally slept in till the alarm went off for the first time this week. I guess that means we must be close to leaving--well not quite, but we are half way through the trip to Bangalore.

So there are several days to catch up on. Starting with Monday, we met with Murali who described the Expat system to us here in India, and then we went for a tour of some houses in the Whitefield area. Very "posh" area, but very sterile looking. We saw two "Projects", no not projects like those done in the US for low income people, these are developments. They both had a lot of amenities, like pool, gym, shopping, etc. But they were very cookie cutter and looked like a street in suburban San Jose. The other problem with Whitefield is that it is on the opposite side of Bangalore from where we expect Anna will go to school. We saw a 3rd project which was a little better, but still not very much to our liking. Apparently these locations are very much in demand for Expats because they do have so many amenities, they are gated communities and there is an additional sense of safety and more other Expats. Oh well, maybe not for us though.


Off to check on schools

Tuesday morning we went to see the Canadian International School. It seemed like a nice school, and I think we were all prepared for Anna to decide that this was it. She gave it the thumbs up. The admissions director is a very bubbly person. She was very nice and gave us some advise about living locations in Bangalore and offered to even ask questions if we found something and wanted to know if it was a good location or "near to the fish market" or ... She also commented that it is good to live close to school because if you have hired help driving, or being the guard for the house, they may just not show up one day without notice "father died" (for the third time this year), and if you are far away from school and have to make quick other travel arrangements, it can be a problem.

They are located out in the countryside, here you can see the road in, it is about a 1/4 mile from the main road, and about 45 minutes from downtown in the morning traffic. Everything is measured in time, not distance here. More Photos

After visiting the school, we were supposed to meet the real estate agent, Shankar, again. There was some confusion, we waited around 45 mins, then the driver took the wrong turn in getting to the meeting point, and finally we met him. From there we went to another house in in a nice neighborhood, and saw it.

3 BR, family room, dining and living rooms, plus a patio "for parties" on the roof. We didn't really get many good pictures of the house, but it does have a lovely tree out front as seen from the rooftop.

Then we saw two apartments, one of them was like a cave, the other was nicer, but had an orange color scheme and a brand new cement structure being built in front of the main window--not a very nice view. The real estate agent didn't like either building and suggested that when we return we could look at something better. We told him we liked the house and he is looking into whether it can be "reserved" for us.

Today I stayed in the hotel for various meetings and Anna and Cindy went to see 2 more schools. You'll have to check Cindy's blog about that as I don't have much to say. That's all for now...