Settled in!

Africa is incredible! Much more hardcore than India. We’re just outside Kampala (the capital, but you would believe it was a capital city, bit of a dive...but hey, the clubs and bars are pretty good, although last night was my lst night out here and I doubt ill get the chance again for ages). I'm currently planning my travels and stuff like that, so many things to do, so little time, so little money! Africa is more expensive than India - or it may be that because everything is in thousands it just sounds more expensive (roughly 3400 Ugandan shillings to the pound).
I’m really getting into the orphanage, at first it seemed like we weren’t making that much difference but after a week I realized how much we really are helping the kids (aside from giving tons of money!), they have much better English than all their classmates and this is a huge help because pretty much all teaching later and most now is done in English, which if they struggle with English they're not gunna be able to learn easily. health and hugs, increased opportunities for them to interact (i.e. Jess brought the break dancers to the orphanage to give them a class which they loved! It was so cute!), checking they get enough of the right foods, paying school fees ect...
My personal project is going to be redecorating, or possibly decorating in the first place! Their dorms, the dining room, the kitchen ect all desperately need painting. They look awful! So I’m going to make sure some of my donation money goes towards paints and hopefully I’ll be able to help paint as well - I really want to feel like I’m doing something!
I was told the orphanage was non-religious (neo-humanism something or other?) but it’s really Christian! The kids go to the local church on Sundays, which is in Luanda so I haven’t got a clue what’s being said. It’s crazy, members of the choir were genuinely doing butt dance in the aisle!! The main bloke who runs the orphanage started training to become a priest but didn’t finish it for some reason - I’m making use of one of his old text books on the synoptic gospels at the mo - really interesting but written in 1966 so possibly not the most up to date... I’m going to All Saints in an hour for an English service, should be interesting. It’s such an added bonus!

Uganda here I come!

I arrived all safe and sound - its a good job I left bangalore when I did, I only just got there in time beacause for some reason my plane left 45 mins early!!
Ok, the orphanage where I work and live has 23 kids, slightly more boys than girls, and links to 10 kids in foster care. Their mother tongue is Luanda but they all speak pretty good English. There are two boys’ dorms, one girls’ dorm, a large dining room, kitchen for cooking, kitchen for washing, a shower and toilet block, room for the uncles (Ugandan workers). Then there’s the volunteers building; you walk in and its a kind of art room/library with a table, this is where the kids (mainly the boys) come and draw or just muck about with us. On each side is a bedroom, one for me and the other for Marieke (Irish 27year old woman, really nice, she’s been here for a month and has another month left but she may stay in Uganda doing something else.) Mine has the medicine cabinet in and stuff like that, hers has the box of toys and clothes we haven’t given out yet (because they don’t need everything at once).

We have no running water and so the kids carry water from the well (about a five min walk away) to a large tank, which they fill up and the water is used for washing, boiled for cooking or filtered/ boiled for drinking. So no showers or taps!! Just a bucket for washing! There’s no electricity either except for the solar paneled batteries that are used for the light bulbs in each room.

Our main jobs are playing with the kids, checking on their health and hygiene (getting them all to brush there teeth, handing out multivitamins, cleansing and plastering up/ bandaging wounds, handing out paracetamol or other medicines they need, taking them to the doctor or dentist etc..), making afternoon snacks and drinks of squash, then when schools on we take reading lessons (which sound very similar to Christel house stuff, but its been Easter so I don’t really know) and PE. but in general the main help is really financial, its our money that pays for food, clothes, school fees etc... The item on uncle Ben’s wish list at the moment is a septic tank, so hopefully we'll raise enough for that.

In general Uganda is much more hard core than India! I was expecting it to be a lot more westernized in the capital but I think the effect of 80% unemployment in the country is that many things are in bad condition. The roads in particular are appalling!! They’re not even dirt tracks! In the area I live the roads are red dust but there’s not more than a metre width of proper flat road anywhere, they’re worn away by cars and rain. Our cars wouldn’t have a chance!! It’s also a lot cooler than I was expecting, it was hotter in India by far, particularly south India than it is here - which is great!! And I think that July is their winter - although it’s not a very noticeable change!

Internet connection here is abysmal so sorry if I don't keep in very good contact - it takes 15 mins to upload reading an email, let alone sending one!!

The end of India... :-(

I haven’t written in ages so I’ll just do a quick catch up and then write about Uganda. I think the only thing I didn’t write about was my last bout of traveling which was round south India again. I went with a friend I made in Bangalore, a girl called Faria from London who I love to bits!! (esp if she’s reading this!) We had a girls trip to Kochi with about 6 of us then the others had to return to work in Bangalore for Monday morning and Faria and I went round Kerela. The night they left we went to a Kerelan dance concert which happens every night, it was incredible to watch them. The makeup is applied on stage, starting a 6pm and the actual show starts at 8pm just after they’ve finished! It’s a work of art in itself! The faces a painted in huge bright colours, each of which have meanings (so green or red paint indicates evil characters etc…) – I’ll upload photos at some point, I even have videos of some of it. Then they reenact stories from the Hindu holy texts. After we went to dinner in an absolutely gorgeous restaurant on the water side (average 2 pounds per head!!), but the best part of the evening was the rain! We were sat out in the open eating and all of a sudden it started to properly rain, then there was thunder and huge bolts of lightening! We stayed outside eating, it was the first rain we’d had in 3 months of being out there and there was no way we were gunna miss it!

First stop Munnar, it’s a tea plantation area up in the hills and definitely one of the most gorgeous areas of India I saw. We took a package tour from Kochi which left at 6.30 am on Monday morning and took us to an elephant sanctuary where we got to help bath the elephants! I scrubbed behind an elephants ears! They were so docile and did exactly what their keepers instructed them. The most incredible thing was when the keeper scratched behind one of the elephants ears, he then promptly lifted his front foot for the keeper to stand on and climb up onto his back!! After we continued driving to Munnar, through the hills and valleys of Kerela, en route convincing our driver to come speed boating with us on the lake created by a dam (we saw wild elephants by the side of the lake baby!!). We arrived to find our hotel was one of the best we’d ever stayed at, complete with television, en suite, double bed and balcony overlooking the plantations and the sunrise (which Faria kicked me out of bed for, but I went back again 5 mins later, I really had seen sunrise practically everyday up north, I like my sleep!!). We walked through the plantations in the morning, then visited a really interesting tea museum where they showed you the whole process, and a spice garden on the way back to Kochi.

From Kochi we made our way to Varkala, a really touristy beach on the west coast, where we stayed for couple of days. On the first day we took a yoga class, but it was harder work than I’d expected and so I didn’t bother again! I got incredibly sunburnt in the sea, literally bright red, and so really enjoyed the full body massage we’d already booked for that evening!! Faria went back to Bangalore the next day to catch a flight back to London, and I stayed in Varkala for a few more days relaxing and meeting other tourists.

Then I wandered up further north to meet my Bangalore buddies in Gokarna, another beach area!! We stayed in little beach huts with no electricity, padlocks on the door or organization of any kind (they barely wrote down what food we ordered all weekend so trying to pay when we left was interesting to say the least!) But it was directly on the beach, you only had to walk 5 steps from the front of the cafe area to be in the sea!

India was an amazing experience, and I learnt a lot from it, but I don’t have time to go into detail about that! Some other time maybe. For now though I’m going to start writing about Uganda.

North India completed

I've been so busy I haven't had time to write this blog for ages!! Probably should fill it with what I spent some of the last two weeks doing...
After Pushkar Sara and I set off to Dehli, via a night bus... it was a joy!!...but we got there in one piece. We arrived at 4am and caught an auto to a cafe where we sat playing canasta and drinking cup after cup of chai (indian tea, a dozen cups each!!) until it was late enough to call on a contact we had in Dehli to drop our stuff off. Spent the day sight seeing and went to a mosque in the evening. A friend had told us there was this place where they sang and the atmosphere was buzzing and we just had to visit it, he forgot to mention it was a mosque. The next day we took a local bus to Agra, we are such cheapskates!! The tourist bus would have got there quicker but it would probably have cost 100 extra rupees (1.20 pounds), it's very strange thinking in Indian rupees! I agree over 5 or 10 rupees (6-15p) when I wouldn't even notice if I lost that much in England.
We spent the evening in the poshest hotel I have ever seen, let alone been in. It had gold on the walls and ceilings, smart waiters and doormen who bowed, the cleanest toilets in the whole of India (after 2 months of terrible toilets I was scared to use them!) and a view over the taj mahal which was just unbeatable. We watched the sunset from the balcony drinking expensive cocktails and eating the free nibbles (that they replaced as soon as we finished each bowl, 4 bowls in total!). Then left to find a hotel for one two-hundreth of the price!
Sunrise at the Taj Mahal the next morning (of course!) was amazing. We tagged along with someone else's tour for the tombs and wandered leisurely around the rest. Took far too many photos and were in far too many photos (random Indian and Chinese tourists kept asking to take our photo, as if the taj wasn't enough!). But you know the taj is amazing so I wont try and put it into words.
Back to Dehli and we flew from the airport. Me to Bangalore and Sara eventually got to Vietnam.
I had some time in Bangalore and now I'm in Varkala, Kerela again, and off to have an Ayurvedic massage on a cliff overlooking a stunning beach!

Tourist God

Sat in an internet cafe in Pushkar now, its a really holy city for hindus - they are about 400-1000 temples (depending on who you listen to) in this small city alone. We arrived on the bus from Jaisalmer at about 4am and walked up a mountain (really steep hill is a more accurate description) to watch the sunrise. I have seen more sunrises over the last few weeks than in the rest of my life put together! We were amongst the first up there, we met 3 tourists from Bristol at the top who had been planning to stay in Pushkar for 4 days and now are staying for a month! It really is a gorgeous little town, but so aimed at tourists these days - basically sara and I are going to be shopping all day before we take the bus to Dehli this evening!
Jaisalmer, where we were before, was incredible! We went on a one night, two day camel safari in the desert about 40km froom the town. Rocky, my camel, KNEW it was mating season and when he saw a female camel he would start making this gargaling noise, puff up his cheeks and start walking towards her when I (and often the camel driver) had to steer him back round! We slept on top of a sand dune, singing to the stars, tucked up in our sleeping bags! You have no idea how difficult it was to walk after that!
Gotta go do more shopping and catch a bus! xx

Kerela

I'm sat in Mumbai airport after a crazily busy few days! Sara and I went to Kerela, one of the most gorgeous parts of India for a grand total of one and a half days! We took a 12 hr night train on Monday, a later train than expected because we missed the first by two minutes and had to change our tickets - TWO MINUTES!! I saw it pull away from the station as we were running across the bridge. Various bus journeys later we arrived in Alleppey, and took a 5 hr canoe journey around the Kerelan backwaters. There are miles and miles of natural canals, surrounded by palm trees which make an inchanting rustling sound in the wind that I could (and did) listen to for hours! Birds frequent the backwaters, and we saw heron, eagles and even a kingfisher!!
After we rushed back to the bus station in order to catch bus after bus to the wildlife park. We spent 7 hrs on buses that night and finally reached Kumily, the wildlife sanctuary, at 2.30 am. The bus driver on the last bus was an absolute mentalist!! He must have been driving at over 50mph down country lanes, with millions of tight bends, huge holes in the roads and in the pitch black. Sara and I had to grab hold of the seat in front the whole time in order to not fall off the seat!.
In the morning we went round a spice garden at 8am (never new pepper grew on vines, and the smell of cloves is amazing in the morning!!) and then a boat trip round the sanctury's lake for a couple of hours. For a wildlife sanctury it had surprisingly few animals! We saw one stag, a couple of otters, three wild boar and cows! The promise of elephants was completely unfounded, but the scenery was incredible anyway.
At midday we caught a 6 hr bus back to Kochi, it went on the most gorgeous roundabout route through the Western Ghats. I have never seen such incredible views! My time in the internet cafe has run out! Write again soon xx

Quick update

Sorry I haven't written in a while, I've been busy! I finished work at Christel House on Friday and I start travelling for a couple of weeks on Tuesday. We're taking a flight to Kerela and then on to Mumbai, Jaipur, Agra and Dehli. Then I come back to Bangalore and Sara, the friend I'm travelling with, heads off to Thailand (pretty good huh?).
I move out of Bishop Cotton's when I get back, I've got a place lined up in Cooke Town, directly opposite to a friend of mine! It's fantastic luck, and I owe it to Raj, a friend out here who sorted it out for me. It's on the 3rd floor, with a terrace, for the bargin price of about 50 pounds a month. It has no kitchen, but I don't even enter the kitchen I have at the moment anyway, and no hot water (which is slightly more of an inconvienience, but I'll just call Ellie and she'll let me use her shower...although she doesn't know this yet!). Pictures will follow!
Got to go and book flights now! Write soon! xx

Hampiness!

We went for a long weekend up in Hampi, it's a gorgeous ruined Hindu city that had it's glory days about 400-500 years ago. The city had canals, long bazaars, temples and lots of roses! But when the Sultan got involved with muslims nearby they invaded and a 6 month siege signaled the end of the city. It's not one of the seve wonders of the world but it should be! Hampi is now a small village, FULL of guest houses, restaurants and shops selling items for tourists. As an estimate, tourism accounts for about 95% of the villages economy! But even so there still aren't hideous numbers of tourists, we went out of peak season thankfully!
We took a train through the night both ways, 10 hours (express train)there 16 hours back, which wasn't too bad (especially since we had bunks each or nearly each). The guest house we found was fantastically cheap! The guide book said 150 Rupees (Rs) per room but we got them for 100 Rs (50 Rs each, that's about 60p per night and cheap even by Indian standards!). We befriended the man who worked there and found out that the other guests were paying 350 Rs per night!! We can bargin baby!! He was a great bloke, and offered to take us to a great place to see the sunrise, an offer we accepted and it was a good choice! It was on top of a mountain of boulders, topped by a temple to Shiva (hindu creator goddess). About 600 steps, although steps is probably the wrong word and stone planks in a reasonably random order would better describe some of it! Slightly scary at times, especially climbing up in the pitch black, and I'm gutted I didn't take a photo of the route! We had an amazing view of the temple complex we walked round the day before and the village (and of course the surrounding area). If anyone could tell me how Hampi's rocky landscape was created I'd be really grateful, it's so Flintstonesque!
We went cycling for part of a day, down to a nearby village with kids that loved showing us their spinning top toys ad having their photos taken! They were so friendly! On the last day, much to Miles' disgust, we had a 'designated shopping time' (he went off climbing again instead!). I bought 3 gorgeous skirts for the equivalent of 8 pounds, loving Indian prices still, and made friends with the bloke who runs the shop. He's got 7 shops one of which is in London (Portabella, i think it's called Topic and I've promised to visit it!).
But anyhow, I'm now back in Bangalore safe and sound, waiting to go to Mysore next weekend!
School is going well, I've got classes everyday with standards 2 and 4, they're great kids. We're doing a project on extinct and endangered animals, so far we've only done the dinosaurs. They drew the cutest pictures for it! I'll write again soon and add hotos later xx

Christel House

I've been at Christel House for about a week now, and have only just got my timetable today. For the rest of the time I've been observing to see how they teach and what level the kids are at, which as you may imagine can be quite boring. I've got standard 2 and 4 kids for reading and standard 4 kids for remedial maths, which I'm relatively pleased with. So I start following the timetable this afternoon, and will let you know how it goes!

Night life!!

Bangalore is where it's at!!...if you don't mind being kicked out of the club at 11:30! The laws are old and it's illegal to sell alcohol or keep the music playing after 11:30, some clubs will ignore this every now and then but most will turn the lights on and kick you out. We have been out nearly every night since last Wednesday; 5 different clubs (twice on the guestlist!!), complete range of music from English usual (Oh my hips don't lie...') to every kind of Indian dance ('salame isch isch isch, salame isch...' and the peugot song which was amazing!). Alcohol is pretty much the only thing that's not heavily discounted, which is probably a good thing because it means I haven't been and hopefully wont get even close to drunk. In reality it's only the same price as England but I think in Indian prices now and seeing 300 Rupees for a cocktail seems like such a rip off when you can get an all-you-can-eat buffet for 9 rupees! Even though the cocktails just under 4 pounds, which is normal.
Last night was Barbara's last night as well as Ellie's birthday so we celebrated in cultural style! We went to a piano recital, a lot more upmarket than our usual night out, followed by the most gorgeous bar called Pebble. It had the whole sophisticated beach hut thing going as well as beanbags!! We danced the night away and when the music stopped we kept singing until they turned it back on ("na nana na na nana na na nana na nana na...." very persistent!). A drunk Barbara decided that we had to go for ice cream and chocolate brownies at Corner House, the sober rest of us knew there was no chance it was still open and after trapsing all across town we were proved right! Ah, twas a good night!
Most weekend nights when the club shuts there's an after party at some random person's house, they go round everyone in the club handing out the address. The sense of community is amazing!

Goa baby!!

When I visited Christel House I met Barbara, one of the other volunteers there, we got talking and within 10 mins she had invited me to go to Goa with her and her friends that weekend! I had to pack my bags and get ready to leave for 8pm that night, it was already 2pm and my lift home got me there for 6pm. I rushed about like a headless chicken packing, going out for supper and then catching an autorickshaw to the other side of town.
I had been told we were going in a taxi, umm quite a long way but it doesnt look that far on the map - oh wait that's a zoomed out map...What was suppose to be 12hours by taxi was actually 18hours!! ouch!! Not only that but we didn't go on a single road that resembled a motorway and quite a few that didn't even resemble roads! I felt so sorry for the driver who drove straight through the night. Out taxi would have held 6 people including the driver in comfort, we had 9 people plus luggage - tight squeeze doessn't even come close to describing it! We had 3 people in each row, including front row which was the worst place to sit by far. We played musical chairs at every stop, to make it fair on the people in the front. The person in the middle at the front didn't even have room to sit straight, they had to have one leg up on the dash board and even then the gear stick vibrated against your arse! But even though the most uncomfortable moments of my life were in that car it didn't feel like 18hours.
The group I went with were fantastic, they're all here with Gap Guru (a student travel company, who charge for finding you accomodation and volunteer placements or adventure trips, but you still have to pay for them! they literally just find it for you and act as a safety net for you, and they give you a T-shirt!). I've met most of them but I think there are still a few people I haven't met who didn't go to Goa. They're mostly UK and US gappers, really friendly and open.
We spent the whole weekend on the beach, gorgoues sand, palm trees, not a cloud in the sky, warm sea....ah beautiful! Because it's not really Indian tourist season yet, the beaches weren't overly packed. There were cute little huts with restaurants or cafes all along the beach with sun loungers in front for customers use. All selling Kingfishers, India main beer (and cheapest drink you can buy in any club! ie my drink)
I may have spent quite a bit of money....we went to a market and there were these gorgeous embroidered rugs/wallhangings and I could only think uni accomodation and bought two. They each took about a month to hand-embroider with beads, sequins and thread.
The best night was when we went for pizza at a local restaurant (only customers!) and then went to the beach. We made a campfire on the rocks by the sea and sang songs around it! Our Lion King renditions were a joy to the ears - particulary since one of the girls has been accepted to Cambridge with a coral scholarship and did loads of harmonizing! Palm leaves burn well.
A good weekend!

Christel House

I think I wrote before that I was going to visit the school that I found through the daughter of the doctor I had lunch with. Well I visited last Thursday and it was fantastic!! It's called Christel House, after Christel Dehann (I think I spelt the secong name wrong) who set it up in 2001. They work with kids from the slum and deprived areas and aim to break the poverty cycle.

The only criteria for entry to the school is that you're parents must earn under 2500 rupees per month (someone told me they though it was per year but I think that's probable not true) which is equivalent to just over 30 pounds, and they should have siblings (the more siblings, the higher the chance of getting in, particulary if you aldready have a sibling at the school). At the moment they have girls and boys up to 8th standard, and each year they add a year group until yr12 when they graduate.

Because these students haven't had any education previously, and neither have their parents, it's hard work. They cant set the kind of homework you get in other schools because not only can the parents not help them, but they have to do it before 6pm when the sun sets because most the houses (slums) have no lighting. The kids are doing really well though, by standard 2 they all speak really quite good English and most of the lessons are taught in English. However if some of the children fall behind it's difficult, because there are 40 kids per class the teacher cant do one-to-one and the parents cant help. This is where the volunteers come in, they teach remedial maths and english classes to small groups of struggling kids who are taken out of their lessons for this purpose. The volunteers also help the kids with their reading and in some of the classes they have particular interest in (eg music, art, PE, IT) but they are not teachers.

The school not only provides for the educational needs of the kids but through working with dieticians they offer a full balanced diet. The kids get breakfast, juice at break and a large lunch, this covers 82% of their dietry requirements and means that if they don't eat at home, they are still healthy.

I start there on Monday!!

If anyone is interested in donating to Christel House, which has schools in many other developing countries as well, or learning more about it, the website is www.christelhouse.org I'd like to point out that Christel Dehann pays for all the admin and staff wages, so every penny of donation does actually go to the children.

Comments

I'm changing the way people write comments, I had it set to no anonymous comments because I wanted to know who had wriiten what but too many people are saying they cant work it out so I'm gunna change it. You will no longer need to sign in with a google account but PLEASE write your name by your comment!! I really want to know who I'm reading stuff from!
So remember to WRITE YOUR NAME BY YOUR COMMENT!!!

Lunch

I'm very fed up of the dining room curry now, it's this thick yellow-orange-brown water with floating random vegatable like things in it, and it's too spicy to ignore it while you eat it. So I'm starting to eat in the small restaurants across the street from the school whenever I can. In particular Ice+Spice is a nice little restaurant that sells the most delicious lamb burgers! I was there for lunch a couple of days ago and when there wasn't a spare table I offered an elderly gentleman and his daughter the other half of mine. We got talking and got on really well, it turns out he is a very successful retired doctor who used to work for the Sultan of Bruni for 11 or 18 years (I cant remember which). For those of you who don't know the Sultan of Bruni is the richest man in the world!! - and for Cheltonians amongst you, he's also the one with all the horses.
They offered to give me a lift to the main high street because it was en route for them, and on the way they showed me the gentleman's house so that if I needed anything I'd know where to go. Showing me his house turned into a tour around it, and tea with the daughter and some of her friends! I spent the whole afternoon with them!
I was talking to her about Bishop Cotton's school and she gave me the number of a different school in Bangalore. As a few of you will know BC's wasn't the type of school I came to volunteer in, it's an Indian version of the Cheltenham Ladies College! Private kids who usually do very well in exams, and they are great kids but they don't really need me around to help them. So while my lessons might be a fun novelty I don't really feel like I'm adding anything. This other school is for deprived children, I would be able to help teach English and other lessons, and hopefully actually add to the project. I'm going to call them later today. We'll see what happens.

You can call me Mrs Kumar!

I went to church as normal on Sunday morning, it's practically the same service as St.Nic's including most of the hymns but the sermons are so much longer!! At the end of the service I was talking to two of the girls from school when one of the men in the choir came up to me,
"I have a son, do you want to meet him?"
"Umm...ok?" -ah he knows I'm new and wants to help me make friends
"He lives in Dehli"
"OH?!?" - that's not a friend he's after!...I really hope he doesn't come down from Dehli to meet me!
(addressing the school girls I'm with) "She's nice, isn't she?"
The girls giggle that yes I am nice and then he asks how long I'm going to be in Bangalore, he looked very disappointed when I said only 3 months. Clearly 3 months isn't long enough for a wedding to be arranged! When he left the girls broke into hysterics, particulary after I told them I'd never met him before, and said that they wouldn't marry his son! If only I was in Bangalore for 6 months!

The naughty class!!

I have finally found a naughty class! They're not amazingly naughty but naughty enough for me to need to shout quite a lot! For some reason they love coming to the front of the class, I can not for the life of me work out why they need to come to the front and try to talk into my ear 20 kids at a time. They seem to hate sitting in their places and even when at their place will stand. They are also the noiseiest class I have ever come across; after much research I have found from the children and other members of staff that, yes, they are genuinely the noisiest class and noisy for all teachers. It's not just me - thankfully!
Yet at the same time they're so friendly and I have never got more gifts in my life than from these girls. Yesterday I got a good luck charm, keyring and letters telling me how nice and pretty I was, today I got a pen, pencil, keyring, necklace, star, troll and yet more letters!! I have no idea why they like to do this. At breaktime I have to walk out reasonable quickly or I will be surrounded by 60 girls all trying to give me a portion of their tuck, the only sensible response is to not eat any because if I've eaten some of one girls then I cannot refuse the others!!
It's so cute to hear them all when I walk into class, "Good morning, Miss Clare" (and of course the occasional "Mrs Clare"), that I don't really mind that I have to ask them 100 times to be quiet.
By the way, please post comments! I like to know who's reading my ramblings!

Pictures of my apartment

My mother has been pestering me ever since I arrived to put some photos on the blog, so here is the first installment! It was a holiday while I took them though, so I'll take some more of the lessons and playground when the girls are here.



As a quick preview though, this is the main playground, it's basically a huge sand pitt! It's surrounded by centuries old rain trees, probably called that because when their leaves fall down the sound they make as the are blown about on the ground is exactly like rain.





This is my living room, I'm not great at keeping it tidy!













My bedroom, appreciate the time I spent making it presentable for a photograph! It's a double bed so there's plenty of room to keep things on the edge I might need, ie books, insect repellent, biscuit tin...


My bathroom, it took two days to work out how to use the hot water!

This is the kitchen I dont go in much! Not because of a dead rat because I no longer think there is one, and not because I had to kill two cochroaches the last time I went in there, but because all my cooking is done for me. Although I think I'm going to have to start doing a bit more myself, the canteen food is good but I CANNOT cope with curry for breakfast anymore - IT'S JUST PLAIN WRONG!!
This is the family of pigeons that live in my extractor fan or ventilation (I dont know what it's called!). They're all called Arnold.






The view from my balcony.
I suspect one of the people living in this building of playing loud club music between the hours of 10pm and 12pm - every night!!
In a way I don't mind, it reminds me of going out in England with friends, but there are times you dont want to hear "She's a maneater..." and those are the times you just want to sleep!

Pictures of the school, lessons ect will follow!

Holiday!!

I don't like doxycycline!! I think that's what was giving me a stomach upset. It's better today than it was yesterday though, so I'm not too worried. I was supose to be going to Mysore today to visit a friend of one of the English teachers but I dont think I'm up to it. I want to try visit him another time because he runs a program for street kids out in Mysore and I'd like to find out more about it and if I could possibly volunteer there sometime during my 3 months out here.
I taught a few more English classes, but after the physics class the other day I want to teach more science! We'll see.
We've got a holiday on Monday, which was an unepected bonus. There are so many religions in India, each with their own holidays, and so there are a lot of days like this. I think this Monday has something to do with harvest, it's a family meal.

I'm a proper teacher!!

I'm in such a good mood today!! Nothing could possibly ruin it! I've just taken my second and third class and they went really well!
The first was English with the equivalent of yr6/7, we were going through an extract of 'The Call of the Wild'; the kids enjoyed it so much that they asked if they could make the single lesson a double lesson, and asked their art teacher if they could be excused! I promise I'm not making it up! And just in case you were wondering, no it wasn't because they could walk all over me! I kept good discipline!
The second was a physics class for yr8/9, as any one who knows me will attest I am not a physicist (I can barely spell it!) but I agreed to take the class because the teacher said I could teach anything I wanted. I chose 'How do planes fly?' (the very basics: weight, drag, thrust and lift). I explained the four forces and gave examples, drew diagrams ect... then we did the important part...making paper planes for a competition at the end of the lesson! It was great fun, Claire Love would have been proud of me! They cheered me at the end (no joke!) and I felt quite guilty that we might have been disturbing other classes. I just hope they realize I'm not going to be allowed to teach lessons like that all the time.

First Lesson

I've just taken my first class! It went quite well, the girls were friendly and responsive. Although, the normal teacher was still in the room and she is really quite annoying (I hope she doesn't read this!). We were reading through 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' and pausing at phrases, hard words and anything that needed explaining; nice and easy (especially since I managed to read the book yesterday afternoon and now know what I'm talking about). However the teacher kept interupting to say that not enough people were putting up their hands and moaning about how their parents would be asking her why they were getting such bad grades in English. These girls are fantastic at English, it's the marking that's harsh! If they forget one comma or mispell one letter they loose a mark - I know they need to get it right but there's no way they'd be losing marks for those mistakes in England! She complains that the girls think she's strict 5 times a minute! Argh - I don't want to be told again!! But other than that she's lovely. I'm going to be taking their next class and I'm hoping to teach them a bit about the French Revolution, to help them put it into context. Also tomorrow I'm taking two year 6 English Classes, I need to prepare them tonight, lots of fun!!

Arrival

Emirites is the best airline EVER!! The food is good, there's enough leg room and they even give you a cosy blanket so you can go to sleep. I arrived in Bangalore at 5am in the morning and took an eventful taxi ride to my contact in India's house, eventful because the taxi driver had no idea where he was going and the driving in Bangalore is manic. They have no concept of lanes or only driving on one side of the road. Motorcycles and scooters zip between the cars, buses and autorickshaws. When they stop at the traffic lights on the far left they are more than happy to drive in straight in front of everyone in order to turn right. As you can imagine horns NEVER stop going, all day and all night!
Patricia set me up working in a school, I arrived on Friday had lunch with the headmistress and settled in over the weekend. I've got my own apartment in the teacher's block with living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and balcony(although I never go in the Kitchen because I think I can smell a dead rat!! lol -really should get that checked out). Despite the rat, noise (including car horns and club music which is nearly all English, ie Maneater!) and all my bedding having the words 'sick room' written on them, my room is great, I wasn't expecting anything like this good.
I've been observing classes for the past day and a half and learning about the school. It's Bishop Cotton's Girls School; there's 3500 girls here ranging from age 4-18 and with 60 per class. Nearly all of them speak really good English, and all teaching is done in English. They work scarily hard, during years 11 and 12 (our equivalent of 12 and 13) they take 6 A-level equivalents! Their exams are in March and between now and then the year 12 girls will have at least one mock exam per day which they need to get a good mark in, or they will be punished - I'm not quite sure what this punishment is. The boarders are woken up at 6am to study before school and then they have to study after school and after supper. The teachers are often incredibly strict and expect perfect behaviour at all times. The pressure here is enormous for the girls, because it is so hard to get a job your qualifications need to be good, and this school is ensuring that they are. However it is a private school and so it may well be very different in a rural or state school.
Tomorrow I'm going to be teaching a yr8 linguistics class, we're reading through the Scarlet Pimpernel (I've never read it before!) and I think the day after I'm suppose to be teaching a History class (on Indian Architectutre - ie my subject of specialism...!). It could be an interesting lesson...or at least a short one! I'm hoping to go and working in a more rural school soon, where they may actually need someone to teach english or other basic subjects. It's also possible that I could go and work in a hospital or program for female street children. It's a case of wait and see at the moment. But all is going well and I'm enjoying myself!

Argh!!

OK I leave for the airport in 3hrs, my bag is still not packed properly (ie it's far too heavy for me to lift and gives me backache after 5mins of wearing it) and I haven't loaded all my music onto my Creative Zen yet, it's midnight and I want to go to bed!! argh! Who thought travelling was a good idea?