Shaved heads and bare bottoms

On Thursday, most of the kiddies decided that they didn't need to come into school as they had finished their exams so it wasn't worth it. As a result there were only 70 children in school so the innocent and willing volunteers were given all the children to look after for the day whilst the employed teachers sat chatting and writing reports (in case you hadn't guessed from my tone, we were not best pleased). However, it was actually a pretty easy day. My first class of grade 3 + 4 combined were doing drawing and colouring and worksheets and when they finished them they taught me how to count to 10 in Hindi which phonetically is: aiche, do, teen, char, partch, che, sart, arth, no, das! They also taught me how to right my name in Hindi - it was nice to be taught rather than teach and they seemed to enjoy it too and have been constantly testing me since! We spent the rest of the day playing outside in the sunshine, most of the boys played football and I sat with the girls whilst they made the longest possible sentence out of little magnetic word tiles that I brought with me.
The same happened on Friday but there were more students and they had been threatened with having 10 marks deducted from their exam results if they didn't attend. Again, we just played outside with them and chatted to the ones who weren't so keen on playing. There was also a school vs village boys cricket match going on and I find it amazing how even really young Indian boys seem to have it in their blood to be able to throw ridiculously far and accurately!
At 2 we were collect by Chouto, our favourite Tuk Tuk man and went into Delhi to catch the train to the holy city of Varanasi. We had been warned by multiple people that the train from delhi to Varanasi is known for its pick pocketing and thieving so we had all taken as minimal things as possible and i had my valuables stashed in my bra because I figured I would notice if someone tried to steal it from there... I'm not that deep of a sleeper!
It was a 13 hour train and then arrived 2 hours late which we didn't actually mind because it meant we arrived at 7am rather than 5am and I had actually slept surprisingly well. We all made it to Varanasi with all our belongings too which was an added bonus.
Even at 7 in the morning it was already very warm so we predicted a sweltering day. We were right. We started by walking along the riverside watching men, women and children washing themselves and their clothes in the River Ganges. The men would strip down to the boxers or just a flimsy cloth to bathe so we saw lots of bare bums. Whereas, the women would go into the water fully dressed in their saree's and then have another saree on the side to change into after.
We found our hotel which, I'm not going to lie, looked pretty dodgy from the outside and was down a very dirty back road and even from the inside didn't look particularly special - fag burns on the sheets and mouldy bathrooms - but it was airconed, had WiFi in the lovely rooftop restaurant over looking the river and only cosy us £1.50 each for a night so it did the job perfectly.
After checking in and unpacking we ventured back out onto the river bank and got persuaded by an elderly man to go up to a house to look out over the burning ghats. It was an incredible view of the 'crematorium' and was supposedly a hospice for elderly people who go to Varanasi to die (lots of people do) as then you get a fast track to the Hindu heaven. The old man explained to us what was going on and the various rituals taking place as we watched some bodies be prepared to be burned. The most closely related male to the deceased has to have all their head hair and facial hair shaved off (so there are a lot of bald men walking around), then washes in the river before being wrapped in white cloths. He is the person who then lights the fire under the body (which has already been dunked in the Ganges whilst covered in red and orange cloths)
and the fire is brought from the nearby temple where a fire has been burning solidly, never going out, for the past 3500 years. Some people at exempt from being burned on the ghats when they die, these are; religious leaders, children under 12 due to their innocence, pregnant women because of the child, lepers, and people killed by a cobra bite. We saw one of said people (I don't know which) be put on a boat, rowed out into the middle of the river and then dropped over the side to sink to the body. I find it pretty gross to think of the number of bodies bobbing about in that water that people wash in and drink from everyday. Apparently in the monsoon and when the river dries up more there a bones and limbs scattered along the beach on the opposite side of the river - ewww!
As we left this 'hospice' the man tried to insist on us giving money as he said it costed 300 rupees for a kilo of wood - we later found out it is 5 rupees per kilo. However, no one really had any small money on them so we only gave 20 and then he followed us down the ricer bank, ranting to us about bad karma and how it would come back on us. We were later asked if someone had done such thing and were told it was all a scam to get money and the old ladies were actresses, so I'm glad we didn't give any more money. WE GOT SCAMMED!
Once we had managed to shake off this man we found our way into shopping streets and visited a tea shop where he taught us how to make my new favourite drink, masala chai.
We then headed back to our hotel to hide from the midday heat and recoup so energy after the train journey. At 4.30 we went on our free sunset boat ride provided by the hotel. It was amazing to see the river side and all its accompanying activities from the river itself, and thankfully we didn't see any dead bodied floating along! The sunset behind the buildings was stunning, particularly with it reflected in the river. After 2 hours on the boat, kat and I walked to the main ghat to watch the nightly Puja (worship) ceremony which involved lots of waving about of flames and incense and chanting which I didn't really understand but it was good fun to see and there were LOADS of people there watching. Our dinner in the rooftop was perfectly accompanied by one of our fellow guests at the hotel strumming his guitar and singing along...it was perfect background music.
We had an early night before getting up at 5.30am the following morning and heading out on another (free) boat trip with the hotel to see sunrise on the river Ganges. I was amazed by how many people were up and about, washing in the river at that time and the sunset over the river was stunning! After an incredible pancake breakfast o headed back down to just sit on the ghats and watch the world go by. I made multiple friends whilst sat there as many men came up to me, completely harmlessly, for a chat. I love that everyones first reaction when I say I am from England is 'aaaahh cricket', even though we've already embarrassingly been knocked out of the World Cup, and they are all of course convinced that India will win. For lunch we found our way to a delicious bakery before wandering through the narrow street bazaars and making some purchases. After a couple of hours shopping we found our way back to the river to sit there for a bit and try and cool ourselves down after a very hot day. We then made the stupid mistake of attempting to walk to the train station. After about half an hour of walking and only 25 mins until our train we gave in and found a Tuk Tuk, it took another 15 mins by motor so we were very glad we gave up when we did.
The return journey was my last psleeper train in India and I have finally mastered sleeping on them, I managed to get at least 8 hours sleep. Even with random people coming and sitting on the end (as I was the bottom bunk) and at one point j woke up to find someone curled up asleep at my feet so I gently, and perfectly innocently wriggled about in my bed making it very clear
that they were not welcome there! The only problem with our journey home was that the train arrived in Delhi 6 hours late so it was 18 hours instead of 12 - not cool. By the end of it we were all very disgruntled, uncomfortable, dirty and starving as I hadn't eaten anything but a packet of crisps in 25 hours! So we treated ourselves to a Starbucks at the metro station to make up for it.
There is no proper school this week, just the kids coming in for their results and parent teacher meetings so we are not really required. Therefore I intend to take full advantage of the sunny weather and the pool at the house.
Only 6 days now until the family arrive, I AM SO EXCITED :D
Love to all xxxxx

Up into the hills

Spent last week doing last minute revision with my kiddies to try and get them to do alright in their exams. Although, I took advantage of my Wednesday afternoon off to fall asleep on the roof in the sunshine for 3 hours to recover from our ridiculously late night at the wedding, and got very burned on my face as it was cloudy when I fell asleep but sunny when I woke up.
On Thursday we headed off with our big bags to Delhi to catch a train up to Kalka and then onwards to Shimla. You cannot go directly to Shimla as it is right up high in the foothills of the Himalayas so we chose to take the 5 hour toy train up instead of the 2 hour bus around all the horrible hair pin bends. As a result of this decision we had to spend a night in Kalka which is a nothing town with only one decent, cheap hotel with a surprisingly nice attaching restaurant.
The toy train up to Shimla was absolutely stunning with incredible views over the valleys and surrounding hills, so I passed the entirety of the journey gazing out the window, or hanging out of the side of the train having to jump back when we went through one of the 103 tunnels.
We arrived in Shimla (the place where my grandparents dog is named after) at sunset and were amazed by the freshness of the air after Delhi and the lack of rickshaws :o thankfully there were plenty of taxis available to direct us to our hotel, which isn't actually available by car, only by taking the passenger lift up and walking up even more hills to reach it.
Its fun to stay at the YMCA, however, we always reached it completely out of breath as it was up a load of steps and I was also attacked by bed bugs 2 out of 3 of our nights there - but other than that it was perfect with great location and really nice staff.
The other shock we got in Shimla was the considerably reduced temperature - it was blooming freezing after the warmth of Delhi. So to warm ourselves up on Saturday we did the 30 minute walk, directly upwards to the Jakhu monkey temple. On our walk we came across plenty of very sweet looking monkeys, however, when I took a picture of one, it turned savage and bared its teeth at me. Later on, another savage monkey stole Kat's scarf right from her grasp and then sat there holding it, snarling at her viciously - the scarf was never to be seen again but we did see the tatters of previous scarves scattered in the trees above our heads. The temple itself was a bit underwhelming but was accompanied by a massive (30 metres tall), orange statue of a monkey and plenty of scary real life monkeys attempting to steal assorted possessions, including cameras and glasses from a mans face.
After fleeing the temple we walked through the bazaars in the winding streets before returning to our hotel and reading in the slightly warm late afternoon sunshine and then hunting down a decent restaurant.
On Sunday, Nella, Laura and I got up early and went off to church which is the central point of Shimla as it is the massive Christchurch that can be seen from most of the city. It was nice to go back to church, particularly as it was mothers day but we were surprised by how empty the church was...there were only about 15 others there. As we left the church the heavens opened so we fled back to the hotel and took refuge there, 4 of us in one bed to keep dry, warm and away from the bed bugs.
Once it had dried up we ventured out for lunch (at dominoes, shhhh) and then walked the 3km up hill to the Viceral lodge which was basically an Indian style Downton Abbey and is where the channel 4 programme 'Indian Summer' was filmed.
On Monday we killed time before our train doing our favourite activities, eating and shopping and then wandered down hill to the station. The view from the toy train this time was slightly marred by the impending rain clouds but by the end there was a big lightening storm happening so that was fascinating to watch in the valley. However, the storm also meant rain so we found our previous restaurant
and dragged out time there for as long as possible without being a pain and then legged it through the now pouring rain back down to the station at 11pm. Cosied up in our bunks on the sleeper train and tried to get as much sleep as possible before reaching Delhi at 6am.
We treated ourselves to a starbucks breakfast and WiFi at the metro station on the way back before getting back to school at 9.30 on Tuesday morning.
The kids were all doing their assessments so we weren't needed to teach but we were required to mark their papers once completed which was a fairly harrowing task. Kat and I marked our joint grade 2 class and some of the answers were completely illegible, some had just copied out the question and some actually got the answers right. It was really rewarding seeing the kids who had actually taken in what a job was which I had been drilling the definition into them every lesson for the last couple of weeks...who knows what some of the others think a job is! To the question: describe the taste of curry (the answer being spicy) one child wrote; 'curry is softy and tasty and has many things in it like oil, tomatoes, potatoes and vegetables - this pleased both of us stupid amounts. For the afternoon I caught up on lost sleep from the night and then we headed up to see our friend Mr Kumar.
He, as ever, was pleased to see us and so welcoming...although there was a slightly embarrassing mishap when his dog came out of the blue and randomly bit Nella on the arm, pretty hard, but thankfully it is jabbed and a clean, healthy dog.
Wednesday was a much crazier day as we had to invigilate exams in the morning and also carry out our oral exams. It is hard enough keeping the kids quiet at the best of times let alone when they are doing an exam and trying their hardest to cheat by asking older siblings or other kids in the room what the answer is...and very unsubtly at that. Whilst invigilating, Nella and I took it in turns to take our students out for their oral exams which were pretty painful and most of them needed a lot of prompting, but they could have been worse. In the afternoon Kat and I faced the trauma of doing the dreaded Grade 2's oral exams, which involved all of them crowding us whilst we tried to test each individual and as a result there was a lot of cheating!
Having finished marking my 3 classes exam papers I am actually pretty pleased with how they have all done, there are some awful ones; for example my G6 boy who answered the question 'what is a pronoun?' with a poem of sorts saying 'pini is in the box, pini is in the box, stand in the light, pini is in the box' which I found hilarious. However, others had exceeded my expectations and my highest scoring pupil got 48/50 which I was rather chuffed with - shows I have managed to teach them something!
Cannot believe I only have a week left now in Tikli Bottom!!
Lots of love xxx

Holi holi holi

We had 2 days off for Holi festival because on the Thursday everyone fasts until they have been to the temple and then on Friday the paint throwing commences!
We spent Thursday by the pool up at the guest house doing a combination of swimming and attempted sunbathing which was swiftly interrupted by the little kids that live there entertaining themselves by slapping our stomachs, flying on my feet, splashing about in the pool naked and imitating us sunbathing. I snuck in having a full body massage from the lovely Munnar (the very bossy and motherly housekeeper) as a break from the sun before playing games and having dinner. It was great to have such a chilled day doing nothing!
On Friday we woke up early and dressed in our clothes that we were most willing to get ruined and walked up to the house. As we arrived at the farm we were greeted by the old gardener who marked us with a gentle red paint blob on each cheek...this was the calm before the storm. We ate breakfast with Annie, Martin and the guests and then went out to find the kids. Yogesh and Yogita were first up and running about with their bags of dry paint powder and we went with them into the quarters of the rest of the staff. Most of them were not quite ready yet but that didn't stop us smearing their faces with colour. The puppies that live there also got attacked by paint, most notably the one which started white and ended the day green, pink, purple and yellow! Once the others were ready the proper paint throwing started and there weren't many parts of my body that escaped the attack! As the teachers/white people we were a prime target, particularly when some of the boys from the school came up so I was constantly under fire. The little ones particularly loved throwing it in my eyes and my mouth so I dread to think how much powder I swallowed. After most of the paint had been used up the water pistols and buckets came out so that the colour then ran everywhere. By the end of it my white top was unrecognisable, as was my face for that matter - a combination of purple, pink, green, yellow, orange and red all smooshed together. My hair was also no longer blonde but a mixture of pink and purple (of which one streak is still visible in my hair). I think the newly arrived guests were a bit horrified by our appearance although it was very strange for me because I kept forgetting that my face was multicoloured.
After lunch we went back down to the school to wash off our technicolour and you would not believe the colour of the water, or how hard I had to scrub at my arms to get the paint, that seemed to be ingrained into my skin, off. Once we were restored to our (almost) normal colour we went back up to the farm for dinner and it felt like we were remeeting the guests as they could now see what we actually looked like. Overall, it was such a fun day and I am so glad I got to experience it in true Indian, village style.
On the Saturday morning we headed into Delhi, driving through paint splattered streets, past men with bright purple faces and multicoloured donkeys, pigs and dogs. We dropped our bags off at the flat in Delhi and drew names out of the hat as to who slept on the floor (me) and then headed out to Chandni Chowk market. This was a covered market within a block of buildings. It was all tiny, winding, smelly passageways lined with shops selling salwa suits, sarees and shawls. Out on the main street there were more stalls selling pretty much anything you wanted; whether it be knock off Iphones, patterned trousers or plastic sandals...! We got the metro to another market but as we left the station we found it was chucking it down with rain so we just turned around and holed up in the flat for a couple of hours while the dark sky rained itself out. Using our trusty Lonely Planet guide book we found an amazing canteen where you got 4 different curries, chapatti, rice and lassi and it was all unlimited so there were men wandering around
waiting to top up your plate with more delicious food. Oh and it all cost the equivalent of £1.10 - we were 4 very happy girlies :D
The next day we visited Akshaman temple which is a beautiful, fairly modern temple with very high tech security. We were all appalled by the fact that they were making us leave our bags with our cameras and mobiles (some of our most valuable possessions) at a cloakroom whilst we went into the temple - thankfully they were still there when we got back! Because the temple was only built about 50 years ago it almost looked fake because it was constructed by machines rather than the old fashioned style of using elephants, so it was all perfectly symmetrical and wasn't half falling down. Before we headed back to Tikli Bottom we stopped off at the infamous Sarojini Nagar market where you can buy any clothing you want (including 'asos' and 'abercrombie') at very low prices, as long as you can haggle well enough.
We had to head back early because we were going to one of our friends, Lalit's, wedding. He is the brother in law of a former teacher at our school and has befriended many of the volunteers so he comes to visit us at the school about once a week. Fenella and I had both bought saree's for the occasion and Kat and Laura had bought salwa suits (knee length tops with baggy trousers, worn by all Indian women). We went up to the farm and Dipsy (one of the oldest students at the school who is also one of the staffs children) wrapped me up in my saree and did my make up and hair Indian style! My saree was a lovely turquoise colour with gold embroidered flowers on it. I felt very Indian and elegant although I did feel weirdly exposed with the crop top on and my tummy on show, especially as most of the time we have to dress so modestly to at least try to reduce the stares we get (although I'm not sure it makes a difference). Once we were all beautified and ready to go we had a chat with the newest arrivals at the house and in this time the heavens opened and there was an enormous hail storm. I have never seen such massive hail stones, they were the size of 2p coins and were falling incredibly hard. By the time we left for the wedding, there were no leaves left on any of the trees and everything was completely washed out. There was barely anyone at the wedding and we decided not to stay very long because there was only a very small, hard ground area and the rest was an icy lake from the hail - thankfully this was only part 1 of the function so we still had the main event to look forward to.
On Tuesday we got dressed up again (minus the makeup) for the main part of the wedding where we were chaperoned by Yogita who is Lalit, the groom's, sister in law. We first went to his house where we met all his elderly relatives, before he mounted a beautifully decorated horse, along with his adorable 4 year old nephew - both had large, matching turban/hat things on too. We followed the horse through the village accompanied by a loud speaker system and some very strange looking he she dancers who really creeped us out as they were Indian men who had really pink faces and badly put on makeup, dressed in saree's and skirts and dancing very provocatively. Once we eventually made it to the temple, an hour later, having intermittently danced,we were piled into a car and drove 2 hours through rush hour traffic to the brides home where the party was happening.
We firstly met the bride who looked absolutely terrified and extremely uncomfortable. She was in a beautifully fancy red saree with masses of jewellery (including a massive nose ring attached to her ear) and heaps of makeup caked on her face. PShe looked pretty miserable but can you blame the woman; she was about to marry a man she had only met twice and move into his home, away from her family...its such a crazy culture - I know I couldn't do it!
Our first port of call was the food counters where there were a variety of different curries and freshly made chapattis.
We then moved over to the dance floor where we boogied for a while to an interesting mix of upbeat Indian pop. A rather large crowd gathered around to watch the white girls in their saree's strut their stuff ;) once the drunken men moved onto the floor we vacated leaving them plenty of room to flail about ridiculously!
The bride and groom then officially arrived and a series of rituals were performed including placing garlands of flowers around each others necks, sitting on a 'love seat', being blessed with money circled around their heads and of course trillions of photos.
After all this taking place and still no physical or eye contact between the couple we moved to Pooja's (the bride) house for the official ceremony where again there were strange rituals with more money circling, throwing of rice and pouring food onto a fire. Throughout the whole thing, poor Lalit had the smoke from the fire straight in his face so had permanently streaming eyes, bless him. By this point it was nearly 2am and after they were officially bound together in marriage they went off for their first meal as a couple (how they survived until 2 I do not know!). At this point we were really starting to wilt so sat indoors trying to keep our eyes open, however, we couldn't leave until the bride and groom left which ended up being 3.30am. We finally were dropped back at school, exhausted, at 5am and begrudgingly set the alarm for 3 hours later to get up to teach!
It was my chance to shine the following morning as it was my turn to tell a story in the teachers meeting and assembly. For the teachers I told the story of 'Teddy's old coat' which seemed to go down well and they found it very funny, even though it wasn't meant to be humerous. For the kids I told an old favourite of mine; 'The Bear Hunt' with all the swish-swashing, squelch-squelching actions which they seemed to love and thankfully I managed to muster enough energy to act it out!
There are only 2 weeks left at the school now! I find it absolutely crazy how the last 2 months have flown past and next week the kids have their assessments so only time will tell whether I have actually managed to drill anything into the children.
Lots of love xxx

Rain rain go away

Last weekend, Kat and Laura headed off to Agra to see the Taj for the first time and Nella and I set off up north to Ludhiana in Punjab. We were going up to visit a hospital and connected teaching college which was originally started up by Fenella's great aunts in 1880. The train up there was delightfully luxurious as we were in chair class so we had large, comfortable seats and we were provided with food throughout the journey. We were met on the platform by our friend, Kumar's, brother who kindly chauffeured us to our fancy hotel. We had had a bit of trouble sorting out accommodation because Ludhiana is not a tourist spot so it is difficult to find both cheap and safe hotels, so Kumar found us this hotel, at a slightly larger price but it was very nice. We were upgraded to an executive room and treated ourselves to hot and powerful showers, tea in bed and watching some very weird and surprisingly provocative Indian music videos on the television! We had a lazy morning and breakfasted in the hotel restaurant before being picked up by a couple of professors from the college to be shown around. We were first taken to the spot where the aunts set up the original dispensary in a church, which is now lots of shops, and then to the actual college. There are 5 different colleges; nursing, medicine, physiotherapy, dentistry and psychiatry and then a large, fully functioning hospital attached. We were presented with flowers and shawls on arrival and given a tour around the nursing college and the hospital. I was amazed by how like a British hospital it was, especially compared to my experiences in Uganda. It was very clean, and smelt sterile, with all the necessary equipment such as monitoring and ECG machines and everything. I don't think it would have looked that out of place in the UK! After lunch we were taken to the sports field where the students from each different college were competing in a sports day, and we (mainly fenella) were presented to the congregation! Just before we left Ludhiana we went searching through a graveyard to try and find the graves of the aunts, sadly we were unsuccessful but we did find another unknown Greenfield, which is Nella's surname.
Our return journey was not quite so luxurious as we were in 'second seating' class which is almost the lowest of the low with hard bench seats and we had a mouse running up and down the carriage at our feet - making my skin crawl continuously. However, the train arrived in Delhi 5 minutes earlier than scheduled which is unheard of!!
On Sunday morning we awoke to pissing rain which immediately put our plans of a day by the pool out the window. We wove our way through the puddles up to the farm and spent the day chatting with the assorted guests and entertaining the children, finished off with a mini party and dance show to celebrate Annie and Christina's (one of the staffs children) joint birthdays. The kids were hilarious dancing, particularly the younger ones who were taking it very seriously and had clearly learned their moves from the TV.
At some point during the night Laura and Kat returned from Agra, although I slept through it and we woke to yet more rain and a lake for a playing field. As was the case in January, rain is the perfect excuse for the kids not to come to school. Subsequently only 50 of 250 kids showed up so they were pushed into classes together: Grades 1,2,3 in one, Grades 4,5,6 in another, advanced A and B together, Adv C and Grade 7 and finally Grade 8 and Adv D. We were given new and not-so-improved timetables for the day where Kat and I had a single period of 1,2,3, a double of 4,5,6 and then a double of 1,2,3 again. It was absolutely exhausting and trying to fill an hour and 20 is so much harder than filling 40 mins, particularly with 7 year olds with poor English but somehow we got through it, finishing with a paper aeroplane race when it dried up.
Thankfully it was no longer raining - just very foggy - on Sunday so there was almost 100% attendance again at school and it was back to normal lessons again for us teachers. There has been a bit of a mad rush recently because the end of year assessments had to be written and submitted by the end of February so our free periods were filled with writing them - and yes they have got 4, 18 year old girls to write the end of year exams, certainly not something that would happen at home ;). On Tuesday night we were invited to Mr Kumar's house for a cooking lesson, dinner and rum! We started by drinking chai in the garden and then settled down to watch the enormous block of butter melt and the onions sizzle in the pan (on an outside fire) for hours whilst we sipped on our rum and coke. Eventually the mutton was added to the dish and again left to stew whilst we put the world to rights. After the delicious and much anticipated meal we retired to the veranda to drunkenly dance to a mixture of 80's pop.
Getting up the following morning was a little difficult after going to bed at 1am but the beauty of Indian 'old monk' rum is apparently its lack of hangovers which we were all very grateful for. Having said that, Wednesday was a very chilled day at school as it was the school picnic so all the kids brought in a contribution and the older children spent the morning preparing the food. The Montessori classes were given their food first as they go home at lunch time. They were all made to give in their chapattis brought from home (to many of their disgust) and then they were handed back out again to them all sat in an enormous circle.
After we had our lunch, the children were all making kites out of sticks, tissue paper and thread and very successfully flying them so our services were not required and we all took the opportunity to go and have a nap in the sunshine. Re-energised we went to judge the spelling competition before sending them all home for a 4 day weekend due to it being the Hindu festival of colour, Holi, on Friday which I am very, very excited about!
Lots of love xxxx