Jam-packed week!!!!

Whew! I finally found a free minute to add an entry about the last two days. I definitely hit the ground running! My first day in the office was Tuesday. I left the hotel at 5:15am with a couple of other US expats on rotation from the Los Angeles office. Yes, it was still very dark. Luckily, the commute is only about 5-10 minutes. We entered "Hi Tech City" (this is the name of the area where the Deloitte office is) through a big gate that had this name overhead. I wish I had gotten a picture of it...there is a "map" (really it's just some big arrows) of the area directing you towards the different companies' buildings that are there. Dell, Motorola, Oracle, and Deloitte were the headlines. Ha! I thought I was in India! Deloitte has 4 buildings (A, B, C, & D Block), each about 5 stories tall. Our group is in A Block. Here is a picture - outside and inside.

Once inside, I was in the elevator and recognized 2 girls that are assigned to the San Diego office - Shruti and Sudeepthi. I was thrilled to finally meet some of the faces that I had only seen pictures of. I was shown to my assigned cubicle and met Soumya (someone I have been working with a lot over the last year) and also Nikhil and Dinesh (two guys that have been a great help to me for a while now). We were very excited to finally shake hands and put faces with voices and emails.
The rest of the day at the office was a bit of blur. Soumya showed me around and helped me get settled in. I had breakfast with Nikhil at the cafeteria (see picture below).

There was a lunch meeting with the tax executives from our region. I was pretty adventurous and tried a lot of the spicy food, and it made me suffer the rest of the day. But, I finally made it back to the hotel room about 5:30pm and had time for a power nap of 20 mins until I had to meet everyone to go to dinner. Gotta love the power naps! I woke up feeling a little better, but still exhausted. I met everyone in the lobby to caravan to the dinner that was across town. Since we left during rush hour, the 10-15 mile trek took us about 50 minutes. Man, is there A LOT of people and no traffic organization whatsoever. I think we only saw 1 traffic light the whole time (and these are very crowded roads!). The ride was adventurous, to say the least. Rickshaws (like a covered 3-wheel moped), motorcycles and cars battle it out constantly. Beeping is constant.
I was very glad to finally see the hotel where we were having dinner. Dinner was great -- chinese food in India, who knew??

After dinner, we enjoyed more drinks with the tax execs.

I FINALLY stumbled into bed around 12:30am. I was SO happy to see my bed (although it's pretty hard)!
Today (Wednesday) was easier. Even though I only had less than 4 hours of sleep, I woke up even before my wake up call at 4:15am. I felt great! And, I even figured out how to get warm water in the shower. (yes, I'm an idiot and couldn't figure it out, so I took cold showers for 3 days).
We had another big meeting today - our CEO, Chet Wood spoke to the entire Region 10 office (which is about 1,000 employees!).

Now I am back in the hotel room (it's 6:10pm) and getting ready to leave again for another tax executive dinner. Thank goodness this is the last one! They (the execs) all leave tonight. WHEW!