Reverse Culture Shock

So I promised this a month ago. Now it's here. My final blog post about India. Well. Maybe.

A phrase that you hear a lot at Sangam when it comes close to your time to leave is "Reverse Culture Shock". Everyone knows about culture shock, about the feeling you experience when you go somewhere new, unfamiliar. Its that feeling that means you hate travelling round roundabouts the wrong way, that means sometimes you just crave a steak, and familiar features of the land you grew up in. When travelling to India, it's the smell, it's the traffic, it's the noise, it's a lot of things. There's a lot to be shocked by when you've grown up in a sheltered Western world. But this culture shock, it only lasts a couple of days, a week at the most, and then India is home, and those things that were shocking, they don't matter any more. You can quite happily stick your head out of a rickshaw to shout to the people behind you. You can walk out in front of motorbikes. You barely notice the constant honking, and the smell of India.

But what about the end of the trip? What about when you have to leave behind all of that? What about when what was the unfamiliar is now the familiar, and the familiar suddenly isn't so familiar any more?

Last time I travelled home from India, I experienced it in the form of returning to running tap water, constant electricity, and even semi detached houses. This time, surely, I knew what to expect, I knew about reverse culture shock, it wouldn't get me this time, surely?

I arrived home one weekend in December, landed in the cold world that is Heathrow, and was very quickly hit by this feeling, this reverse culture shock. For the first time in 3.5 months, I was confronted by Indians. Not so shocking you would think, after 3.5 months in India. But the difference was, these Indians all had British accents. They were my culture, they were my people, they were what joined two entirely different parts of my life together, and it was strange. I grew up, and in fact still live in, possibly the most ethnically diverse city in the UK, where ethnic minorities are the majority. I grew up in schools with kids from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, before you even begin to mention the other countries in Asia, or Africa, or the Middle East, or even the rest of Europe. And yet, the sound of Indians with a British accent shocked me. Thoughts raced through my mind. Here stepping off a flight from Mumbai, I was surrounded by Indians who actually might not understand me if I walked up to them and started to use my limited broken Hindi. Maybe these Indians only know English. I wasn't expecting that.

After a lovely night at my brother's house, with an open fire and sausage and mash, I woke up the next morning to my next hit. My brother and his wife had already left, and my mum and I were going to join them. My brother was running 5km cross country, and we were off to watch - the first time I've been able to! We got ready, and I set out to pack the car with all our stuff. I opened the door and I stopped. Outside, I was greeted by cold, white flakes falling from the sky. Not only was it 25 degrees lower than I was used to in India, it was snowing, and for some reason, for 30 seconds, I didn't understand what snow was. I just couldn't comprehend why white flakes would be coming down, and so fast and heavy. After what felt like an age, my mum snapped me from my daze, and pointed out to me that if I wasn't going to go outside, I could at least close the door and keep the heat in. I shook myself, came back to my British life, and headed out into the white.

My reverse culture shock didn't last much longer. (Although I still occasionally find myself wondering why mum isn't just driving around the traffic queue - i.e. driving down the opposite side of the road - because I'm sure that would be much quicker.) I don't think I'll ever forget those two surreal experiences though, and I think next time I see snow, I will appreciate it so much more for having forgotten what it was.

Oh, and it's been a month now that I've been home, a month and a bit. I don't miss India, not yet, I may do eventually, but I could never live permanently in such a noisy place, where there is no peace. I do miss my friends. I miss Sangam. I miss the crazy, made-up world that we all created there. I miss the work I did, and the fun I had. But I'm ready for the next challenge now.

India - the last two weeks

So, I'm home now, but I still have two blog posts left to write about this adventure, or at least two blog posts planned. Firstly, this one, about my last two weeks in India. Secondly, coming up soon, Reverse Culture Shock! 

Well the last two weeks were a bit of a blur, of final evaluations, leaving parties (mine and other people's). The event finished, life settled back down into a relatively normal routine of work and fun. I somehow seemed to keep picking up new jobs to do right until my final day, I'm not sure how that happened. When Sophie and Aleia were coming to the end of their term, their to do lists got shorter. I think mine got longer!! I didn't finish everything as I would have liked to, but I think I would have needed another month doing just my to do list to get everything sorted properly - I would have also needed the technology to work as I wanted it to, which is more difficult than adding an extra month into my life!!

I also managed to fit a lot of late nights into my last couple of weeks at Sangam. 

There was the night that Jess, Phlip, Ellen and I sat up til 2am putting the world to rights. Then there was the night that we had a laptop party in the staff lounge, everyone else ended up going to bed by midnight, Jess and I were still in there at 2am! There was the night I went to Parvarti Hill with Em, and then crashed out in front of the TV with her. There was the night we sat in the dining room chattering away and making flapjack (English version!). There was my last night, where we went out to Malaka Spice, and then Ellen and I came back to talk to Jen for a bit, and then everyone ended up in our room til 1am. There was Love Actually night -Emily hadn't seen Love Actually before, can you believe it! She loves it now, obviously!! 

There was also a bit of swimming, a bit of shopping, a bit of baking, a bit of posting parcels, and a lot of laughing!

There were far more things that happened during my last two weeks, but as I said at the start, it was such a blur, I'm not sure what happened! They were incredible though, and made me realise what fantastic friends I have there, and how much I love the Sangam family, and my Indian home. 

As I said, the last night, we all went out, it was so good to see everyone there, 17 people came out to say goodbye to us! Then lots of people came and sat in mine and Ellen's bedroom afterwards, chatting, falling asleep, not really wanting to go back to their own rooms, which was awesome. Then I left at 6am, and everyone was there to say goodbye. Jessica, Philippa and Ellen were crying their eyes out, which was very funny for me :P I love you guys! 

The journey back was very boring and long, and England is very cold. I will adjust soon enough! As I said, there'll be another blog post in a couple of days, but for now - just know that I'm home safe!

It's the little things in life...

I haven't really got a lot to say about the big things in my life right now. Since I last blogged, I have been working on my evaluations, and final presenation, and generally finishing off bits of work - updating manuals, writing guidelines, that kind of stuff - so that this place can run without me, however difficult that might be.

I have still had lots of time for fun however, and this blog is dedicated to those silly moments in life that just have you rolling around on the floor (literally in some cases!). These are my top 8 things that I found amusing, in reverse order!

Number 8 - The Sweet Shop Expedition

Last night, Phlip, Emily and I decided to head to the sweet shop. We'd had a hard day at work, and so we were all in our PJs at 9pm when we decided this sweet shop trip would be in order. So... we headed off in our PJs. This may be a normal occurence to some of you at home, but we're in India - I'm fairly sure if people had realised that they were our PJs they would have been horrified. Maybe some people were. But they look just like the "modern" style of trousers that people are starting to wear in India these days (the youngsters anyway!) that we like to call awesome pants - or wowsers, a shortening of  "WOW, check out your trousers!". I do of course own a pair, and I'm looking forward to England being warm enough that I can wear them. I'm not expecting this to happen anytime soon!

Number 7 - The Breath Experiment

This morning I have been sat at reception. As part of reception duty, you're meant to start work at 8am. This is fine. I was here just before 8 and ready to go. But then I noticed something. My breath. It has now got so cold here in the mornings that I can actually see my own breath. I AM IN INDIA. Crazy.

Number 6 - The Clay Crushing Afternoon

Yesterday afternoon was spent crushing clay. As part of Sangam's 45th Birthday, Sophie started a project of creating clay tiles. However, the staff didn't get a chance to make theirs, the event was too busy, so we're going to make them on Saturday, when we have our staff picnic (yes you're jealous!). BUT, this requires having clay. We had left over dry clay from before, but the problem was, it was in rather large chunks. When you fire clay tiles made out of large chunks, they break. We needed small, very fine clay particles. So. Yesterday afternoon, Philippa, Jessica, Emily, Aarti and I sat down on the floor in front of the programme room, armed with dandier sticks (sticks to do a type of Indian dancing), a hammer, a spice roll (a big stone they use to crush spices into fine powder), a sieve and a couple of buckets - oh and Christmas music, of course. We spent 4 hours rolling, banging, crushing, sieving clay until we had enough for all the staff to create their tiles. There is still some clay that is too large to use. We gave up at 6 when our hands were cramping, our legs had been dead for hours, and the music ran out. This is why we were in our PJs by 9pm! It was fun though :P

Number 5 - The Photo Deleting Issue

So, I have spent the past month attempting to clear some photos from the drive on the network. It's very full, and some of the photos are unfocussed, and just generally bad photos. There's no point in keeping them. However, for the past month, when I have tried to delete them, an error has popped up. I asked the computer guys, they told me there wasn't a problem. I asked the computer guys again yesterday. Guessed what the issue was yet? Oh yes, they had changed our settings so that we couldn't accidentally delete photos. I wanted to delete photos on purpose! Bless them, they were only trying to help!

Number 4 - The Narnia Incident

Last night, after we had been to the sweet shop, Phlip, Emily and I crashed out in front of the TV. We watched Masterchef USA, and then the second half of the new Narnia. The fact that this is not as good a version as the original Narnia, and the fact we were tired, resulted in many amusing comments from us... 

"Aslan: if lions were in l'oreal ads" - Emily 

"I knew not to sleep next to a dead lion when I was 12!" - Emily

Both of these quotes were put on facebook, one by me and one by Phlip, without us even discussing it! Very funny! I also accidentally called Aslan Alan... whoops!

--- Just to confuse you, I stopped writing this blog, and I am now starting again the next day - so I started it on 9th Dec, and now it's 10th Dec, so any "today" "last night" or "yesterday"s are different from the ones I was referring to before... keep up! ---

Number 3 - The Fairground

Today (10th Dec) is Datta's birthday. Datta is one of the Hindu gods, the one with the three faces. There is a temple for Datta literally a minute down the road from Sangam. It's the temple that most of the local staff go to. For Datta's birthday, they brought in a fairground. It's excellent! We headed down sometime last week, I can't remember what day now. I went on two rides and survived. On the ferris wheel, someone threw up on Jessica (I hope you weren't eating while reading this :P ). It was hilarious! We came home after that, but the whole experience was just immense - I never expected to get to go to an Indian fairground!! 

Number 2 - The Moonwalking Cat

Sonu is Jen's cat. She is now nearly 6 months old, and she is so cute! On Tuesday, she had the operation, you know which one I mean. She is feeling very sorry for herself now as she has to stay in Jen's room for a bit and isn't allowed to prowl around Sangam. She also has to wear a cone so that she doesn't play with the stitches. This makes me laugh a lot. she can't quite work out how big the cone is, so she keeps walking into things. She's also taken to walking backwards, we think this is because she's trying to walk out of the cone, but it's brilliant! There'll be a video at some point! 

Number 1 -The Mystery of the Shoes

This is the funniest thing that has happened at Sangam while I've been here, seriously! Philippa lost her shoes at the beginning of November. She was very ill, and lost track of three days, and her shoes. She was pretty annoyed/upset about this, as they were good shoes, and her flip flops were rubbing her feet, which meant she had to wear proper trainers all day, instead of her nice comfy sandaltrainer things. She e-mailed people to ask if they'd seen it, she asked in the 9am meeting, she wrote it on the whiteboard. No one had seen her shoes. We checked everywhere, we even checked in the doctors! We could not find her shoes. Eventually, at the end of November, she had gained some new flip flops, and had given up on her shoes. Well. Last week, we were in the dining room messing around on our laptops. Philippa was in the kitchen making flapjack (of the English variety), when she comes into the dining room, and tells us she's found her shoes. We celebrate, obviously, and ask her where... Lets pause there for a moment and think where could she have found them? under the cupboard? In the pantry? on top of a shelf? By the fridge? They're all fairly reasonable suggestions yes? Well, our Philippa had in fact found her shoes... wait for it... on the nightwatchman's FEET. Manik was stood in the kitchen doing some washing up, when Philippa had walked past, and done a double take. Yes, there he was, wearing Philippa's shoes!! 

She did not ask for them back, she is letting Manik keep the shoes, she has her new flip flops that don't rub, and now she has closure! All is well with the world! 

So that's the end...

BUT WAIT. There's more! Oh yes, there are two extra things that I would like to add to this blog, and they both revolve around Christmas!

1. We put the Christmas decorations up in Sangam yesterday. It was very exciting! Aarti and Sayali were a little confused as to why we were QUITE so excited - I mean, there are festivals every month right?! Well my little Indian sisters, no, festivals of this scale only come around once a year in my world. There are Christmas trees all over the place, tinsel, stars, it's awesome. Jen and Ellen seem to think the dining room is tacky - I wonder what they would think if they saw my house if they think that's tacky! I'll take photos and send them to Sangam :P 

It is very strange to be starting to celebrate Christmas here at Sangam. It's still warm when you go outside (although it's VERY COLD in the mornings!). We were decorating trees yesterday whilst 50 screaming girls were jumping around the pool. I think it feels like we're having a fake Christmas in June - which isn't unheard of for me, so I'll cope! It will be strange coming back to winter though. 

2. This is just a video for you all to enjoy, after reading my epically long blog: 

You might have seen it already, as I'm guessing it may have been on UK TV, but I love it. I have it on repeat! 

Now I'll end, and go finish my final presentation and generally enjoy my day off :D

The Beginning of The End.

So I haven't updated for a while. If you'd like to know what's been going on in my world then I suggest you check out Jessica's blog and these links:

Are there rickshaws like this in your country?

Advocacy in Action

She's much better at writing than I am, and I don't have any particular inspiration or desire to re-write what she has already written very fluently! But in brief, we had a very very cool seminar based on how to advocate, and specifically how to advocate about HIV/AIDS. There were 21 participants from 10 different countries and they loved it. We had some fantastic feedback and it was a brilliant way to end my time here at Sangam.

And that end is actually what I want to talk about in this blog.

Whenever I've been on camp, or away for a while, and my mum comes to pick me up, I spend the whole car journey home talking basically non stop about everything that happens. My poor mum has to listen to basically an hour by hour account of everything that happened, every minor incident, everything that made me laugh, everything that everyone else did, you name it, my mum has to listen to it.

So in two weeks time, I fly back to Heathrow. My mum will come to pick me up. We'll drive back to Mark's, and then the day after, back to Leicester. I'll sit down in that car, and ... well where will I even begin to describe the three months here? How will I explain everything I've done? Everything I've seen?

During my last two weeks of work here, as there is no event on, and also no event coming up until 21st December, I will be focusing on my final evaluations and presentation. Again - how do I fit 3 months into a 5 minute presentation? Even my dissertation presentation was longer than that!!

I'm sure I will talk to my mum non stop, I'm sure I'll manage to fit everything into 5 minutes, but it just blows my mind right now when I try and comprehend everything I've done so far, and everything I've learnt, and everything it's meant to me. But right now, it's the beginning of the end...

Maher

So I didn't quite manage to write this blog post on my last day off, but here it is. Better late than never, hey?!

We work with a lot of partners here at Sangam. Some we work with on a day to day basis: Deep Griha, Mobile Creche and Anand Gram are the three our Tare are working with currently. Some we have worked with in the past, and still have some links with, for example Green Tara. For some, we sell their products in the shop, Door Step School for example (Although I believe some Tare are going there in the next set of Tare, so we'll be getting more closely involved again!) and there are those that we work with regularly, but not every day, maybe once an event, once a month...

Maher is one of those partners. We don't send any Tare there, partly because it's 45 minutes drive away, and partly because they already have their own volunteer program. We invite some of the children from there to perform in some events, they do a fantastic play based on the life of Gandhi, and they've even been invited to come to Glasgow next June! One of their performers has been short-listed to be one of the next big acts in India.

I have visited there twice now, and each time I have been astounded. Here is the story of Maher...

Maher was founded by Sister Lucy, back in 1997, just 15 years ago. In the early 90's, she was living in a convent. One evening, a woman came to her, 7 months pregnant and asked for shelter. At the time, Sr Lucy couldn't provide that shelter because of the rules of the convent. She asked the woman to come back the next morning, when she would be able to help more. That night, Sr. Lucy heard a commotion in the village, as it wasn't far from the convent. She rushed down to discover an argument had occurred between this woman and her husband. The husband had poured kerosene on the woman and set her on fire. To make matters worse, the woman was 7 months pregnant. Sr Lucy tried to save the woman, she took her to hospital, but because of the rural area, and the lack of cars, it took her 6 hours to get the woman to the hospital. She couldn't be saved, and neither could the child.

From this event, Sister Lucy decided to do something. She wanted to set up a place for people to come, somewhere without barriers that would force Sr Lucy to turn these people away. After a few years, and with the generous help of some Austrian backers, Maher was set up.

15 years later, Maher has at least two sites in Pune, a site in South India, and one in the North. Sister Lucy is also trying to set up a site in Delhi. Maher takes in anyone, one of their mottos is "always room for one more". Sr Lucy said to us when I was there this last time "When we are full, we open another house. God sends us the funds from somewhere." 

As we arrived for my second visit, a child of around 6 weeks was brought in. It's parents had poured tobacco, kerosene and compost down it's throat, in an attempt to kill it. Why? It was female. The family had already had 4 or 5 girls and the parents were desperate for a boy, and couldn't afford to have another girl. Luckily, this baby was brought to Sr. Lucy in time. She sent it to hospital, and when they have made the girl better, it'll be brought back to Maher to live a really happy life. 

So that's the story of Maher, here's the website and here's some photos from the day!

Me and the small child I wanted to bring home

Claire and some of the children

Maher celebrate all religions!

Five Days Out

So this will probably be my first blog of the day, I think I'm going to end up writing two... I know what you're thinking, my blogs are like buses! Well, we'll see how this one goes, and then see how my afternoon goes - it's only an hour until lunch time right now! 

The past five days have been a little crazy, so much so that I've actually had to get my schedule so that I remember what I did and what order things came in! I have worked for all of them, and I've enjoyed them all so much, but I've also been very tired, and hopefully you'll be able to see why! (Although you could just tell me to man up and get on with my life, who knows!) 

November 10th - Day 1 of 5.

This day was the third day of the event. We headed out to Laxmi Road, which I've probably mentioned before. It's in the oldest part of Pune, and we do a cultural tour around the area, and the participants also have a chance to buy bangles, bindis, saris and punjabis, so it's always fun. Philippa, Aarti and I took a group of 12 around, and it was good fun. The participants enjoyed their shopping, and also wandering around the old temples and vegetable markets that we show them. This session is always very tiring for the SVs because it involves a lot of concentration to remember which direction to go (it's not quite second nature yet), and also to make sure the participants are ok crossing the roads, which are VERY busy, even by Indian standards, and generally walking in the right direction, particularly when you're taking a big group - and 12 is a big group for us! When walking down the line bazaar, it's almost impossible to see the end of the line of people trailing behind you because of all the other shoppers around. It's helpful to have two staff with each group, because then the one at the front can just glance and spot the very obvious purple of the other SV! 

The afternoon of this day was very relaxed though, with the tailor coming in, and then the pax going out to visit Indian families for dinner. 

November 11th  - Day 2 of 5

Today started with a visit to a community partner. I went to one of the sites belonging to Deep Griha. Deep Griha do just about everything, they have creches, coaching classes (a bit like a homework class), they teach teachers English, they teach tailoring, they have a health clinic, and do health checks, eye checks, and they have a massive HIV awareness project as well. And they do this in several slums, and they're just generally a bit awesome. They have lots of volunteers helping out there, including Claire and Danielle - two of our Tare. Danielle showed my group around Ram Tikiti, the slum we visited. Deep Griha was the only community partner that our Tare are working with that I hadn't visited, so it was really good for me to get the chance to go there, and see what they do first hand. I was a little shocked to walk in and find a laptop and speakers set up for us to watch a video. It seems Deep Griha are very well supported, much more so than a lot of our partners, and whilst they obviously need as much help as they can get, they maybe need it a bit less than some others. They're doing fantastic work though, and the participants enjoyed being able to play with some of the creche children!

The afternoon found us running a 10 million girls session. 10 Million Girls is the name we give to our sessions about WAGGGS. We try and give the participants who come to Sangam some information about what WAGGGS is doing, and what other organisations are doing, and try and show them what they can do when they go home. In this session, we ran a game developed by Philippa and the rest of the Sangam Staff, about a variety of 12 year olds from around the world, with different opportunities. It's based on work done by The Girl Effect, and you can find out more by googling for them, and also watching the video found HERE. Hopefully there will be a video of our game coming out soon, because I think it's a brilliant game! 

In the evening, we spent some time planning for Day 3 of 5, which happened to be our Community Fun Day...

November 12th - Day 3 of 5

COMMUNITY FUN DAY! This is a day that Sangam runs twice a year, at the end of the Tare's time here. They invite children from each of the sites that Sangam have been working with to Sangam, and we run activities for them! The Tare are in charge of the day, which is good for the SVs, and the participants help too. This year, we had 30 children from Mobile Creche and 35 from Deep Griha (ish anyway), and they were doing crafts, playing games, playing with a parachute, playing musical chairs, pass the parcel, all sorts of things. The children, and the participants really enjoyed their day, and we got some fantastic photos from it! The day was very hot, so a lot of the staff were melting, but some of the children were in woolly jumpers! Strange. The SVs were doing the odd jobs, taking photos, filming, carrying water out to the campsite, making sure the green children were with the green group, and the pink children didn't keep coming back to the crafts (note: this is not related to their skin colour, but their group colour!) 

Once that was finished, we tidied up, and then got straight on with another 10 million girls session. In this one, we talked about the community fun day, and also ran a short debate about whether we should be responsible for other people. I was then on reception until 8, just to add some more fun into my day! 

November 13th - Day 4 of 5

On this day, I was the only SV working for most of the day. Ellen wasn't very well for all of the previous days I've spoken about, and still wasn't 100% and Jessica and Philippa were both scheduled off anyway. I started the day at 7am with a water tower climb. I love climbing up the water tower, it's a great bit of exercise and the view from the top is so worth it! Half of the participants (13) climbed it with me this time, which is a really good turn out - sometimes people are just too sleepy! Last event, there were only 2!

Sayali and I took the participants and Tare out to Maher, another of our community partners, and had a fantastic morning. This will be the basis of my second blog post today, so I won't say too much about it! When I got back, I went straight to finalising plans for another 10 million girls session, with the help of Claire. Ellen was meant to be running this session, hence me not being completely organised for it. I also decided to change some plans based on the things we'd seen at Maher that morning. Sayali and Aarti covered for me when the tailors arrived with tailored saris and punjabis, and Gwen covered me in the shop. It's brilliant to have such a great team around me, especially when I'm the only SV working!! Ellen was feeling well enough to come to my session, but as she hasn't been to Maher before, I still ran it. I think it went pretty well, I was pleased :) Philippa also kindly came downstairs from her day off to sing a song with us! 

After dinner, I was then in charge of preparing for the children from Maher to come to Sangam to perform a play of Gandhi's life for us. They arrived, set up, and performed. I was a little annoyed because the CD player in the hall is being temperamental at the minute, and kept cutting out, so I had to sit next to it and press "pause" and "play" every time it seemed to do it. However, not really knowing the music/story that was on the CD, I was never entirely sure whether the CD player had cut out, or if it was just a silent bit! 

That night, I collapsed into bed. I don't actually remember getting changed I was so tired, but I must have done at some point. I was asleep by 9.30 easily (given that the session finished at 9, and I had to clear up...) Ellen, now feeling better, did my "On Call" for me. Being On Call basically means if the participants have any problems in the night, the night watchman comes to wake you up and you have to sort it out. I don't think there were any problems, but if there were, I don't think I would have been in a fit state to sort them out!

November 14th - Day 5 of 5

And for my final day of excitement, all of the SVs and Sayali went out on a cultural tour, lead by Sayali (her first ever session "in charge"!) We went to Alandi, Tulapur and Ishwari. Alandi is a really really old temple next to a river, which Jessica described as DisneyHindu Land. You queue up to get in, and around the temple, and it was very much a tourist attraction. Philippa and I stayed outside to guard the shoes - I wasn't really in a temple type mood, I feel I've seen a lot of them, and with such a big group, I wouldn't have been able to ask all the questions I would want to to understand it properly. Tulapur is another big temple, but a lot less touristy. It was in a very serene location, at a "sangam", or river confluence, as we would call it, a meeting of three rivers. Sangam means "coming together" which is why Sangam is named so. It was really peaceful there. Ishwari is yet another of our community partners. They do a lot of work with women, and we went to the founders house, where we ate ginger biscuits, and guava cheese (not actually cheese, more like a block of jelly tot, it was very yummy!). There was also a very sweet ginger cat there who was very playful! 

After this, we headed back towards Sangam, but stopped off for lunch at our local resturant, Aangan. The food here is really good, and as usual, I ate far too much! 

We then went back to Sangam for half an hour break, before heading out again to Aga Khan Palace. This is a palace built by an Aga Khan, and it's famous because Gandhi was imprisoned here. It's a beautiful building, with a big garden, and it's very peaceful. We set the participants off with a challenge, some questions to answer based on the displays in the museum, and Ellen and I taught Sayali a bit more about the Sangam SLR camera, and then relaxed on the grass! 

After this, we had a much deserved free evening! 

So there's my five days. At some point in that lot other things happened - Jen came home, and left again, I think I slept, I think I showered, I'm pretty sure I ate (other than Aangan!), and I definitely took lots of photos. I also don't think I can say enough how much I enjoyed the last five days, but also how much I am enjoying my day off today!! I'm definitely not doing anything much today. I might make it to the sweet shop, but that's as far as I'm venturing... 

Hopefully I'll be awake enough after lunch to write a blog post about Maher, but I might end up sleeping again, so maybe it'll come another day... we'll see!

Cuppa Tea!

You'll be pleased to know that this week my blog comes from the land of the less poorly! Things have started to get better now, the tired and ill participants have gone home (and hopefully enjoyed their lamb roast that a lot of them had planned, and are now having just as much fun at school :P ), the staff are steadily getting back to full health (although we're still looking after Philippa who managed to get a sinus infection, and basically slept for 4 solid days - she's back to work but we're making her take it easy), the server is basically up and running again and we haven't had to deal with Hanif's sense of timing since!! 

We had three days between events this time, which would have been fine, if we had managed to get all the participant names earlier in those three days, but we got them in the afternoon of the second day, leaving us just half a day to get everything ready before the participants actually arrived! It was a little chaotic. 

The two groups arrived on Monday afternoon, one from Birmingham, and one from Bucks, with an age range of 23-75! During our staff briefing, we were told (by the Americans) not to stereotype English people, and maybe they wouldn't just want to drink tea all the time. Well. I know my country better than that. Sangam has had to bring out the spare mugs because there weren't enough out, and we've also had to buy extra milk! We're having to plan in time for them to make tea between sessions, and we're also having to teach all the non-English speaking people exactly what a "cuppa" is...

So far it's been a lot of fun. I thought when I first arrived that I would enjoy having younger groups here more, and whilst the younger groups are fun, I actually enjoy the older ones a lot more. I enjoy hearing their stories, and listening to their life experiences. They also tend to be a lot more willing to "get stuck in". It's interesting how my opinions and expectations change the longer I stay here. 

Today is the second day of the event, and I have a day off! It's a little strange, because I haven't yet got to the point of needing that day off, so for the first time on a day off during an event I'm ready to do something! So my plans are: updating this blog, obviously! Tidying my room, as always, maybe having a nap, generally relaxing this morning, and then this afternoon I'm off out with Hayley (the guest services co-ordinator) for a drink and maybe a wander around whatever exhibition is on in the college grounds :) I might be ready to do stuff, but I'm not going to exhaust myself at the very start of a 10 day event!! 

And finally, as promised, only a couple of months late, a picture of me in my sari! 

Claire and me in our slightly matching saris by the pool :)

Sick all round...

Today my blog is brought to you from the land of the poorly things. But don't worry, for once I am not poorly! (yet!) However, here is my list of things/people that are poorly...

1) The participants. 

The current participants, a group of mostly 16-19 year olds from Norfolk, arrived at Sangam after a weeks tour of India. They visited Delhi, Agra (and the Taj), and Jaipur. They saw a tiger on a safari, they shopped lots. Sounds like they had loads of fun. This also meant, however, that they arrived at Sangam absolutely exhausted. So we changed our schedule, and gave them an afternoon off to recover. Now whether they're over-tired, or whether they've been running on adrenalin, or whether they ate some dodgy plane food on their way from Delhi to here, I don't know, but they seem to be slowly dying. We've had at least 5 out of 18 be particularly ill so far, but the rate seems to be slowing, and they seem to be recovering. And give them their due, they have got on with it most of the time (particularly when there's shopping involved!) and they've been trying. 

2) The staff.

So lots of the staff also seem to be getting ill at the minute, in a completely different way to participants. Whereas the pax are throwing up, the staff have sore throats, bad heads, jaw aches, all those kind of exciting things. We've got at least 5 staff who haven't been feeling amazing, and I thought I was heading that way too, but I was just overtired, so I am 100% now after a good night's sleep!! 

3)The washing machine.

Last week, I was doing some washing (shocking I know). I went to collect my clothes from the machine,I opened the door, and out poured smoke. Yes. Smoke. Not steam. No. Burning type of smoke. Luckily, my clothes managed to not smell of smoke (I am not sure how), and I went and wrote the situation on Aruna's magic board. (you put broken things on the board, they get fixed. Aruna does not like things written on her board). The washing machine man says the machine is very broken, with a big crack on the inside. Sad times.

4) Hanif's sense of timing. 

So Hanif is the local Scout master here. Last night, he took a group of pax and Jessica to his house for dinner. He was told to arrive for 6pm, he arrived at 7pm. Even for Indian timing this is bad. Jessica was under strict instructions to make sure they left before 10pm, and to not let Hanif take them to his gardens, 45 minutes drive away. At 10.45pm they still had not returned home. Jessica says they left Hanif's house at 9.50pm. They just happened to take a detour via Hard Rock Cafe, and some out of town construction sites. Obviously the most direct route home!

5) The server.

It is with regret that I announce that Sangam's server is very poorly. The poorliest of all poorly things. The computer men have been looking at it for nearly 3 days now, and each day they walk away shaking their heads. We have no staff internet, only guest internet, and that is only desktop computers, as the wi-fi is broken. We have no X: drive, once again, and I'm sure you remember how traumatic it was last time we had no X: drive. We also have an event starting in 5 days. We miss you server. 

But despite all these ill things, we somehow seem to be surviving this event. Odd things keep happening, that mean we get by. Pure coincidences. Jessica needed the Rickshaw Skit video from the X: drive. The X: drive was broken. Claire had it on her memory stick. Philippa needed some videos, again from the X: drive. Christa had them on her computer. Someone had printed out the example Sangam Snapshot for the pax. We never do that normally, we just show them it on the computer. 

We are prepared for Poorly-Land!

Goodbye...

So Sophie and Aleia left on Friday. They've been here since I got here, they were the ones to teach me how to do my job, I worked with them almost every day, we worked together almost every day. We shared an office, we sang together, we laughed together, we Gecko-ed together (this will make no sense, and I don't intend to explain it =P ). 

And yet somehow, it wasn't until their last week here that I really got to know them. I think because I began my term sharing a dorm with the Tare, and because Ellen and I came half way through their term and replaced Ana and Amina, who had been with them from the start, there was almost a divide between us. Not an unpleasant divide, and not an awkward divide, but somehow, it felt like it was "Sophie and Aleia" and "Net and Ellen". In the last week, this changed. Maybe this was partly because the Tare were away, and there were less of us around, and so we talked more. Maybe this was because they opened up to us about their feelings about leaving. Who knows. But it was awesome, and made me really really wish they were staying longer. 

Sophie is from the UK, so I'll definitely get to see her again, and Aleia is Mexican, so going to see Our Cabana and Aleia in the same trip just gives me a double reason to head over the Atlantic! 

I had Friday off, I spent it creating crazy decorations for Claire's bedroom, because, well why not?! 

Saturday was the busiest, hardest days work ever. Not. Christa, the other SVs and I headed to MG Road to plan our "Explore MG Road" session. We wandered the street, found Thomas Cook, wandered down the other side of the street, went into a few shops along the way, then we stopped to have a drink at Barista. After this, we slowly meandered down another street, Christa pointed out a few restaurants that we didn't know about, and then we stopped in one for lunch, joined by Gwen and Heidi. 

After lunch we headed back to Sangam, did a couple of jobs, had my mid-way evaluation, and then finished for the day. I decided that swimming was more fun than working =P 

Today, I found some jobs to do, worked hard doing them, and now I'm waiting for the participants to arrive. We thought they were going to be here at 4, but they are actually arriving at 6!! Nightmare, changes all our plans!! 

Never mind, we'll be strong! I'm off to have an emergency meeting now - oh the joys!! 

(PS Philippa, you just lost the game, and you're not particularly awesome! =P)

This is not a war zone...

So this week has been Diwali. I said right from the start that I felt I was really lucky to be experiencing Diwali in India. I've seen it all of my life in England, what with living in Leicester and everything. I see the Diwali lights go up, and look incredible, and I know that the party is happening outside when I hear the fireworks going off in the park behind my house. But I've always wondered whether that's just an English variation on the Indian festival, whether it's the same or whether western culture has warped it. Now I've had the chance to experience the real Diwali, how it's meant to be done! And it's mental. 

If you want a really good explanation of the story of Diwali (as well as a second telling of what I'm about to write here!) then please go to Jessica's blog by clicking HERE. She's just finished an English degree, and wants to become a writer, so it's far more coherent than I could ever manage! I would recommend reading some of her other posts too, because she can write properly (and doesn't overuse the words "amazing" and "awesome" as I am aware happens in this blog!) 

In Diwali at home, there are lights. The Christmas lights come up a month early, and they sparkle through the town. Diwali is the festival of light, so it makes sense. Here in India, there are lights too - on every shop door, in every house. As we would hang wreaths on our door at Christmas, they hang lamps outside theirs. But there aren't just lights. Like every festival in India, there are colours. Where there aren't lights shining, there are streamers, flowers, hanging decorations. There's rangoli on the floor (a type of sand art) everywhere, in front of each house. They also collect mud (I haven't investigated this tradition yet, the Indian staff haven't come back to work yet, so I can't ask... I intend to!) and build mud castles outside of their house, and put candles on them. There's tinsel up everywhere. It's just incredible.

In Diwali at home, there are snacks, and sweets. Clare told me the other day that she was pleased it was Diwali because she would get Samosas from some of the Indian staff. Here, there are sweets and more sweets and more sweets. Everyone gives sweets. To the extent that even the guy who runs the travel company we use dropped in to give us some sweets! The night-watchman on the night of Diwali itself came to find us in our rooms to offer us sweets. Most of the festival food is sweet, rather than savoury, and by sweet I mean basically pure sugar! The women in the family spend around two days beforehand cooking and creating culinary delights. I have had more sweets recently than I ever want to have again! And of course it's culturally inappropriate to say no... dilemma.

In Diwali at home, there are fireworks. People will buy a box and set them off on the park or in their back garden. Here in India, there are fireworks. There are firecrackers. There is noise constantly. The firecrackers started maybe two days before the main day of Diwali (26th October this year). There were just a few going off (and ironically as I'm writing this a whole load have just gone off!) to start off with. Mina and Aruna had both told us that they hated the noise, and Christa had said how much she hated it too. We weren't aware quite what they meant. Now I know. On 25th, we headed to Kirti's house, and there were quite a few crackers going off then. Enough to make a noise, and for us to recognise it as more than your average firework display. Kirti and her brother both warned us not to walk anywhere on 26th. Diwali day came, and started, for most Indian families, with chai (obviously) and then a bath, with some special bath rub stuff, including sandlewood, at around 5am for most of them (although like our Christmas, every family does it slightly differently). Once the bath was had, they went outside to light firecrackers. So for us here at Sangam who weren't wearing earplugs, the day began with a bang, or several thousand. The crackers continued all day, and eventually the noise became background. 

After dinner, being the brave/stupid girl guides/scouts that we are, we headed to Mina's house, on foot. It's just under a 30 minute walk, although we stopped off at Aarti's house on the way. Even taking this into account, it definitely took us longer than 30 minutes. We were stopping every 10 metres to wait for another firecracker to go off before we thought we were safe to walk. They had ones that just made a big bang, ones that made a fountain of light, ones that were like a Catherine Wheel, on the floor, ones that burst in several different places, and a few that zipped into the sky, and looked like they do at home. And these were being lit anywhere, just on the side of the street, and normally by small children with sparklers as lights. And when I say small children, I mean small. We saw one boy who must have been about four lighting one, and burning himself when he then picked it back up. The kids were lighting them, and then kicking them away, and if they didn't go off fast enough, grabbing them and shaking them, even though they were already lit. As I said at the start, mental. We negotiated the streets around them, with only one minor incident. 

We made it to Mina's house, and she gave us water and sweets (obviously) and introduced us to her family. Her son is in the army, but he was given a few days off for Diwali, so we got to meet him too. However, fairly quickly, her husband, son and daughter disappeared off downstairs with yet more fireworks. Some of the others went with them to watch, but I stayed inside, along with Philippa! We could see from the window... Mina lives in an apartment block, and here there are no safety warnings with fireworks, so it's completely ok to let off fireworks in the middle of the courtyard, with massive buildings around. This however means that the sound echos around. Sanjay, Mina's husband, is a big kid with fireworks. His favourite was a strip of fireworks that you lit one, and it just went along the strip making bangs and lights for at least a minute. Ellen has a video of it, so I will hopefully be able to link to it sometime. At the end, she says "This is not a war zone, this is Diwali". It felt more like a war zone than a festival though. Sanjay drove us home later, which we were grateful for! 

There are still some firecrackers going off today, and there will be until tomorrow I think, but it's nowhere near as bad as that night, thank goodness!

Along with most Indian festivals, Diwali is a time for family, and friends, and guests. People go out to visit others, and take sweets or sometimes just to say hi. But you don't really arrange when you're going to go to see anyone, and no one really arranges when they're coming to see you. People just drop by. So, there always has to be someone at home, your door should never be closed, and you always need a constant supply of chai and snacks... This is my favourite bit of Diwali. At Christmas, on Christmas Day, it's a family thing. Apart from maybe going to church, or going out for a walk (sometimes in the snow), people stay shut in their houses, in their own lives. And I used to think that I liked that about Christmas Day, but maybe actually I'm changing my mind. Maybe I like the sharing, the friendship and the fun that comes with having a constant flow of people. Maybe I think I would like a bit of both. 

What I do know however, is that no country should be allowed that many fireworks for one night, and India needs to crack down on small children playing with fireworks!

Train things!

Seriously you guys, you just won't keep up at this rate! Well anyway, this will be a shorter one, I just thought now that you're up to date with my life, I'd give you a more random blog update - this is full of things that made me smile on the train on the journey home!

1) The cat on the ledge

They're quite silly little things, but still! There was a cat on the ledge on a building we travelled slowly past, and it was walking on it's back legs, with it's front legs against the wall, ninja style! Very cute, and made me laugh a lot! 

2) Kite flying

I saw at least three kids flying various forms of kites out of the window. One looked like he had a pretty good kite, one a reasonable one, and the other was purely a plastic bag on a string. It made me smile to think that no matter where you are in the world, and no matter what your financial and social standings are, you still want to do the same things as a kid. I however, did not want to fly my kite whilst standing on a train line, but I think that might just be a slight difference in education between the countries! 

3) Multi-coloured houses!

It honestly looked like balamory out of my window sometimes - the most amazingly coloured houses ever! It was awesome!

4) Things to sell on a train

 So on Indian trains, they constantly have people wandering up and down and selling things to you. Normally these are things like coffee, or chai, or biscuits, or some other type of snack. But occasionally, you get a real gem! Things I saw being sold: 

- colouring books

- hair ties

- earrings

- pencils 

Why would I buy these items on a train?! 

Also, at some platforms, when you pull up, they have sellers on the side of the train, selling food, and I love these, they come up to the window and pass food through the window to people who want to buy it! They have properly uniforms on, so I trust these people a little more than those who just wander up and down the train, but I wasn't hungry in either direction so I didn't try any. 

5) The spam on my phone

Ok, this isn't directly related to the train, but it did make me laugh... I get spam to my phone a lot, often trying to sell me things like "Improve your English" or "Do our unlimited maths quiz" which makes me laugh anyway, but I had some of my favourites on the train on Sunday..

- "Do you like or dislike picnics with your colleagues? Click OK to answer"

- "Parenting advice: distract your child with a small toy to avoid temper tantrums" (to those who understand, this is also known as: look at the wood chip!)

- I also had a text trying to sell me Waka Waka as a ringtone, which was a real highlight because that is a song we listen to A LOT in the programme room while we're working. I still declined though!

6) The price of trains

The journey from Pune to Mumbai is roughly the same distance as the journey from Durham to Leicester, a journey I've done quite a lot over the past few years. It's about 4 hours, depending on which train you get. Durham to Leicester cost me, on the day £50, in advance, it could vary from £11 to £30, and that's one way. Pune to Mumbai cost me the grand total of 99 rupees, so around £1.20, and the way back cost Rs. 76 so around 95p... On the Indian trains, I was guaranteed a seat, and I got my actual seat preference (i.e. window seat), no one grumbled if they were sitting in the wrong seat and someone asked them to move, the tea on sale cost round about Rs. 3. The trains were on time, give or take 5 minutes (which India does as standard). There was no overcrowding, the windows opened, it was a generally pleasant experience! British Rail - what are you doing? Take note and step up. 

Well that was longer than expected - until next time mes amis! (this is me using my French to please my mum!)