As I suspected, it's not at all like I expected. I landed in Bangalore, got off the airplane, and got through the passport check and customs with no problems. Then I spent a good 40 minutes to an hour waiting for someone to pick me up. When the clock struck 12:00 a.m. I decided to give Dr. Christo (my contact in India) a call. It took me a little while to be able to use the pay phone since I had to get change and have the lady at the information desk tell me how to dial phone numbers in India (apparently you have to dial 0 when there is a +91 in front of the number? - still doesn't make any sense to me). Once I finally did get the call through, however, Dr. Christo picked up and said in what I now realize was probably a sleepy voice, "Hello?"

"Hi, is this Dr. Christo?" I replied.

"Yes."

"Hey, this is Steven Oxley, I'm at the airport."

"Has the driver picked you up?"

"No."

"OK, if you go outside there will be a person standing there with your name on a sign."

Outside - of course, it was so simple; why hadn't I thought of it before instead of deciding to call up someone who was obviously enjoying sleeping at this late hour? "Oh great, thanks, bye," I said to the sound of the click on the other end of the line.

So, now that I had completely humiliated myself, I stepped outside and about the third sign I saw had my name on it. The driver (Joyle - spelling? (edit: I think it's actually Joel now, he just pronounced it weird)) packed up my stuff and then I found out that there was supposed to be one Dr. Bob Robinson coming in as well who we were supposed to pick up when his plane came in at 12:40 a.m. So, we waited outside the airport. When 2:40 a.m. rolled around and there was still no Bob Robinson, I said to Joyle, "I don't think he's coming." To which Joyle replied by insisting that I go to sleep in the vehicle. I'm not sure exactly what happened after that as I was in and out of slumber, but I don't think we stayed at the airport for too much longer before we headed out to the Division office. This was probably the main surprise for me: the division office isn't in Bangalore. It is not even in the same state as Bangalore. It is a good one and a half hour drive to get to the division office in Hosur from the airport.

On the way to the division office I got my first taste of Indian road etiquette - the main principle I believe must be called "beep it and blast it" or something similar because the horn is a very highly used driving tool in this country. It is used for passing, for going around blind corners, for telling pedestrians to get out of the way - even in place of stop signs. Oh, and there are also speed bumps everywhere - which may or may not be slowed down for (depending on whether or not a pass is in the process). Two of the scariest experiences were when we threaded the needle between two large trucks (one was about to pass the other, but before it could pull up alongside the other one we squeezed through) and when we blasted through an intersection after blasting the horn, cutting off a very large truck. Another peculiar road habit is that apparently any driver can act as a taxi. We picked up some random guy who was walking along the road and when we dropped him off, he reached into his pocket and pulled out some rupees to give to Doyle (I didn't see how much). I thought this was quite interesting indeed.

Fortunately, I escaped the hands of certain doom which gripped the steering wheel of the vehicle and made it to the division office at about 6:30 a.m. I was quite tired as I had not slept very much (we stopped for tea at one point so that could have something to do with it - also, tea with milk and sugar is pretty rockin'). I was really expecting to be in the city, but I guess that's not what is going down (although I still haven't talked to anyone to find out exactly what is happening). The division office campus looks really nice and the guest room they put me up in is decent as well. I guess I will find out more today.