Time flies...

Written 19th July

Time passes by so quickly...About month ago hosted a lovely corporate event for our partners at Marriott Hotel, and had an awesome rooftop party, where a lot of people showed up, and the rooftop was looking better than in long long time…whilst cleaning the rooftop though encountered some cultural taboos, as was wearing a top, and went to the street with trash, and got told off, as it is inappropriate to wear such clothes and carry trash, so now won’t venture out on the street without my dupata (scarf placed on shoulders)…there are so many subtle cultural norms for women in Pakistan, whereby the men don’t need to adhere to such rules, which is tough sometimes for a Nordic girl!

Pakistan is a country with many cultural norms that you could never think about before coming here, and also a country of such contracts that you could never imagine…in my neighbourhood there are a lot of fancy shops, nice cafes and restaurants as well as beautiful, big mansions, but then few hundred metres away there are street children, unpaved roads, donkeys carrying fruit carts, goats eating trash and tiny shops lined up next to another selling meat, furniture,metal scrap etc in haphazard way…so the contrasts are immense! I do feel for the people living in the streets, but not all actual poor people are allowed to beg here, as in many areas criminals control who begs and who doesn’t. Many children are forcefully taken, and they end up begging and giving their money to the criminal gangs, so by giving money to the beggars you might be contributing to the growth of organised crime…and the worst part is that some children purposefully hurt themselves to get more pity and thus money.

Two of my Finnish friends came to Pakistan about 3 weeks ago for AIESEC internships, and we were celebrating the a birthday of our common friend the last weekend of June, and we went crabbing together, but unfortunately got heat stroke, and fever the next day. However, I still managed to go with them to a lovely family dinner with our mutual friend’s (lives in Finland) family, and the dinner took over 4 hours with many courses of food…here the dinners start late and last for many many hours! The next day I went to work, but straight after work felt extremely ill, and had to be taken to a hospital, as had 39.2 fever, very high pulse etc, as had been apparently suffering from fever already for 2 days and got some sort of infection, so had to stay home for 2 days. Fortunately my friend from Finland came that day, and she was keeping my company during my sick leave. After that I had my first official day at office on 1st July, which was pretty chaotic, and after work was going to dance practices for friend’s wedding which I then missed, as I fell ill with fever again!

Despite my illness, I have been going to work, and started acting classes, and we are practicing for a play in August, funny thing is that classes are in urdu, so someone is all the time translating for me, and will be acting in that play in urdu, which should be fun! We had our first AIESEC seminar, which went really well, and enjoyed my time at the beach! I really love it here, just hoping that my body will get fully adjusted to the heat and food here so that I can really enjoy my time here!