The first step of community service is observing how the people live. My first sights of Delhi, India were the things that could be seen late at night out the foggy window of a bus crowed with eager high school students. Men gathered at the sides of the dusty roads, laying on dirty sheets next to goats and dogs, giggling and making faces at the bus filled with thirty white faces speeding past their dwellings. Drivers in Delhi clearly did not attend the six-month Driver's Ed. course or do the six hours of driving with an instructor that all students at my school are required to do, because the New Jersey police would definitely pull these drivers over and question them for drunk driving. Even at midnight, there was never silence in the air - the drivers constantly honked their horns to warn the car in front of them that they are going to slow and they will now be swerving into oncoming traffic to move in front of them in order to quickly reach their destination. The rules of the road are as followed: the bigger your vehicle the more privileges you receive. Trucks are the kings of the road, they rule over the smaller cars, the rickshaws and the hoards of animals that crowd the streets. These vehicles wait for no man, pedestrian privileges are disregarded to these drivers - so are stoplights. I will never begin to understand the rules of these roads, but thankfully the drivers that we hired to drive us to our service locations do. All I can say is I am surprised and thankful I made it a month in India without getting into an accident on these chaotic streets.
