End of Event

My first event finished today, so I'm a little sleepy, but waiting up to chat to mum on skype when she gets home from work :) Should be around 10:30 so not too late, so mum, when you read this - don't feel guilty!! Figured while I was waiting, I could catch everyone up on the events of the past few days, although I don't have a schedule lying around any more so I have NO idea what I did... lets see how making stuff up goes!

Day 5 of Advocacy Seminar

This was the day after my day off... In the morning I went out to one of Sangam's community partners, Tara Mobile Creche. It's an amazing place - basically what they do is create creches near building sites, with funding, and provide free places to the children of the construction workers. There are 16 sites in and around the Pune area, and the one that we went to was amazing. The construction site was really close, but keeping the kids in the creche meant they were out of the way of danger. With ages ranging from 1 month to 14 years, there was quite a mix, babies hanging in hammocks, sleeping through the noise of the other classes. They only had 3 rooms for more kids than I could count, but everything was so well organised that it didn't seem to matter, and most importantly, the kids were happy! This is where Diane and Chelsea, two of the Tare, will be working for the next 3 months - Diane burst into tears and Chelsea seemed pretty overwhelmed too, but I think they're both going to love it! 

In the afternoon, we had a session discussing our visits, and then we had "Who Wants To Be A WAGGGS Millionaire?!" which was just a mental game which my team won - whoop!! Seriously crazy times though :P 

The tailor also came with my sari all sorted :D 

Day 6 of Advocacy Seminar

In the morning of Day 6, we had some sensible sessions, where we discussed things - or at least the participants did! I'm not really sure what went on in those sessions, so I will skip over those to the exciting bits... At lunch time, we headed out to our local restaurant, and ate some good food! Then we had a wander around the local shops, before heading back to get measured for our work uniform, and get changed into our saris to learn how to tie them, and have our Indian afternoon! This basically involved lots of different activities, so I have Mehendi (or Henna) on my foot, we did some rangoli, and lots of other things, and I had to tie my sari like 10 times in a row so that I could learn how to do it properly.. I really need to try it on again in a couple of days and see if I can still remember... It's a gorgeous midnight blue sari, with red blouse (and Claire has the opposite colours to me, so we clearly look amazing :P ). 

For dinner, we had a Maharastrian dinner (Maharastra being the state that Pune is in) and it was amazing! And straight after dinner, we learnt some Bollywood dance moves! So much fun :P 

Day 7 of Advocacy Seminar (last day!)

This was today - we started the morning by climbing the water tower - it's amazing up there, some stunning scenery, and a great view of Sangam itself! We'd been trying to climb it all week, but it's been too wet! Today however, we managed it :) After that, it was breakfast, and then Laughing Yoga, which is just the funniest thing you've ever done, and completely indescribable, so I'm not even going to try! After that we had a fake picnic with the staff, where they discussed how all the participants could come back to Sangam in the future (like I've done!). We ended with a closing ceremony, which was lovely. 

This afternoon, we were basically just tidying up, and the evening, just relaxing! 

All in all, the event was lots of fun, and a real learning curve! I've got a day of meetings tomorrow, then two days off (with Andrea and Amy), and then a few days of training and then I start work OFFICIALLY! Crazy times!! 

I would just also like to mention how pleased I am that Jill found her underwear, and how much I love chicken pie.