it's official... March 16, 2006 we depart for Delhi

Hi all, welcome to the first installment of Dan and Courtney's India blog. In the spirit of my brother's electronic coverage of Addy's now well-documented entry into this world (see Life at the Intersection), we will use this blog to provide the details of our adventure in Asia.

For those of you that do not know why we are going to India, specifically Gurgaon (pronounced Gurr-gow), here is your answer. I am being sent to India to train and coach our programmers (batch associates) who have been hired within the past seven months. In the past two years Hewitt has begun moving some of our multi-process HRO (Human Resources Outsourcing) work to the Gurgaon and Chennai offices. As some of you may be opposed to the practice of international outsourcing (Customer Service language barriers much?), I assure you that I know as little about the future of Hewitt as my boss, and that I'm not one to miss out on such an opportunity. It could be that I am essentially training my replacements, as some here at Hewitt call it, or it could be that our restructuring will allow for more efficient growth while maintaining our ability to offer competitive rates to our clients (more on this subject in later posts). Either way, Court and I are young, and traveling to India on Hewitt's dollar to have one of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of our lives is certainly not a bad thing. : )

So enough about the corporate nitty gritty... the good stuff is that we will be staying in a 4-5 star hotel, complete with fitness facility, pool, restaurant, etc. We will be provided with plenty of fresh water and will be given a per diem (cash for each day) to handle the costs of living, in addition to my regular salary. So we will be well cared for, worry not ye mothers out there. Courtney will probably be taking an internet college course towards her credit as a teacher as well as possible volunteering locally. We will have freedom to travel on the weekends, and travel we will. I think that the most exciting posts will results from our weekend excursions to... more to come on that.

More details are known, and I will be adding posts as new information comes to me. Please share with us your thoughts, suggestions, and concerns as we will miss you all during this experience. We will be in America until March 15th, so we will be available for at least the next 3 and a half weeks for calls and visits, which are much appreciated.