Learning the Language: Adventures in Bangalore

After a month of traveling through a variety of hot and humid cities, Bangalore is a welcome relief.  The climate is cool in comparison and the streets are so green! Everywhere I turn I see trees and parks, spaces full of people walking and chatting away.

Exploring the Busy Shopping Streets

Recently, Bangalore began operating a metro, one of the stops is conveniently located near by! Using the metro, we ventured out to MG Road to see some of the Murals and street art around the station.

Buckets of Children’s Stories

Why Limit the Stacks to Shelves?

A Stack of Classic Indian Stories

 

 

 

From there we went to Blossoms, a massive used bookstore.  With all of the books around me, I held back, buying only a few books.  Wandering the labyrinth of shelves, with books only mildly organized by genre, I found many familiar and even more unfamiliar authors and titles.  You can easily spend hours upon hours perusing the shelves and reading nestled among the stack of books.  In fact as we went to leave, there were a couple of books that caught my eye, and we once again ended up sitting and reading for sometime.

Finally, we managed to escape the lure of the bookshelves and wandered down a busy Brigade road, still decorated for Diwali.  It was a perfect way to end the adventure!

The Importance of Language

Bangalore is also a relief from a language standpoint.  Here I can understand what is happening around me, and I can even communicate using a few of the basic sentences ingrained in my memory.  Beyond this I find that I am able to piece together information and contribute to a conversation, since I understand the language.

You never realize how important language is, until you find yourself unable to communicate, or understand the chaos around you. Given additional time immersed in the language, I hope that I can pick up more of the language and improve my conversation skills.