Vanderwerf is not alone. Bangalore is said to grow by almost 4,000 residents every day, the majority working for multinational technology companies, from Infosys to Sun, IBM, and Google. Over the course of the next five years, U.S. businesses will relocate an estimated three million jobs to India.

The media is filled with cautionary news stories about outsourcing. Politicians berate each other over the sucking sound of jobs lost overseas. For Americans caught in this global economy crossfire, moving to Bangalore could be a bittersweet experience. But it's not. Life in Bangalore is just different.

ON FIRST IMPRESSION, the city of more than seven million can be overwhelming. But for IT workers, this is the land of opportunity.

Cecilia Villalon works as a content production engineer for Intel Technology India Pvt. Ltd. Her first few months here were very different from her previous life in Portland, Oregon. "I was extremely nerv­ous and scared," she recalls. "I remember my hand shaking as I reached to get breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I couldn't believe that I was actually in India and this was to be my home for the next year."

Electricity would go out at least once a week, and she spent the time sitting in her darkened apartment playing with her puppy. She eventually bought a power inverter to back up electrical devices,
and she learned to use VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) to make cheap phone calls to friends and family back in the U.S. Within a few months, she'd adjusted to her new life.

None of the Americans interviewed for this story know each other. Expats in Bangalore tend to meet and socialize most easily with expats from other countries. It takes longer to befriend Indian people, but the connections can eventually turn into solid relationships. And there is no language barrier: Thanks to the legacy of British colonization, everybody speaks English. The atmosphere is relaxed and polite, but assimilating into another culture is always an ongoing process.