Day 2 -- my first day at work...

Ok, jet-lag is really starting to hit me but I wanted to post some pictures before I go to bed.

Here I am sitting at my desk in my new office (it already looks messy). This is the desk in a room I'll share with my producer. One producer/correspondent (Ram) is leaving the bureau and another producer (Tess) will be coming out here from Atlanta in mid-June. If I didn't feel like a foreign correspondent before -- now I certainly do as this office reminds me of ABC and BBC bureaus I've toured in Iraq, Iran etc.

The bureau itself is in a "leafy residential" neighborhood near the Chinese, Sri Lankan and U-S embassy's.

Here is a picture of the bureau. CNN is actually located in this large townhouse. The senior correspondent (not me) lives with his family right next to the bureau.

Although CNN has been located here for a long time -- this will be a relatively temporary setting for me as we're looking at moving to a new location. The plans are still in the works but my hope is that the new office will still be in central Delhi.

This is our guard... I can't remember his name at the moment. The office side of the bureau is on the right-hand side (under the satellite dish).






And here is our newsroom... quite a different setting from the hustle and bustle of the CNN newsrooms I visited last week in Atlanta, New York and DC.

One of the guys in the office ordered lunch for us today. Different people in the office order lunch "in" and the guy in our office puts the lunch on a plate and makes tea etc. I ordered 'dal' but ended up getting something else. He explained to me that he was concerned that 'dal' was too "wet"... and that I better ease my way into Indian food slowly. I thought it was quite sweet of him to look out for me.

Lunch was 30 rupees -- that's just under $1.

From $1 lunches at work... to $40 dollar dinners at my hotel...

I wanted to include this picture of the new flower bouquets in our hotel... they are all over the hotel and they are beautiful. The people in the background give a sense of scale. They are Dendrobian (sp?) orchids all tied together.

Aunt Barb asked me how long I'll be here at this hotel... my guess is for about a month. I've got to start to look for places. Everything is so expensive and I'll have to buy my own a/c units (it was around 100 degrees today with 80% humidity) and I'm not looking forward to the whole ordeal.

On that note -- here's my new "home". This is my room before I unpacked my FIVE bags..

I had a full day today -- my first day at the office. Along with meeting the staff I chatted about story ideas and even started working to set one up. I think we'll shoot something tomorrow afternoon.

It's making me even more tired just thinking about it...

More later...