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!) 

Mumbai

Two posts in two days - you're all excited right? This one will take off where the last one finished... with me getting on a train with Claire to go to MUMBAI :D 

We both finished work early on the Friday, as the later trains were already overbooked (please don't ask me to explain the train system in India, it's way confusing!), so we got on the 3.30 train, and after a bit of rearranging ended up in seats next to each other, rather than diagonally opposite from each other. We had a lovely journey there, in second class (under instructions from Kirti who told us under no circumstances were we to sit in AC class because you can't see out of the windows... it's also nearly 4 times more expensive than second sitting class!). The scenery was beautiful, lots of rocks and hills in the countryside, and lots of slums and housing blocks and and and... and we watched the sun go down while we were going through some countryside which was spectacular (or speccy as the Australians say apparently - although Claire hadn't quite figured out this could be short for spectacular!). As we were getting closer to Mumbai we started getting a little paranoid that we didn't quite know where to get off, especially as there are lots of train stations in Mumbai and the train was VERY empty by the time we thought we should get off! luckily we managed to get off at the right station, and we found a taxi to take us to our hotel. We could easily have walked but it was dark and we had NO idea where we really were! We were glad we got a taxi anyway because the traffic was crazy, even crazier than normal, and I'm not sure we would have managed to cross the road. 

We were both tired by the time we got there, so we ordered some pizza to our room (as Claire pointed out, it's amazing how you quickly go back to familiar foods when you're tired!) and collapsed. 

Saturday morning, Claire decided it was a good idea to wake me up at 6.20am!! Apparently Claire and I have different views on holidays. To Claire it means getting up at ridiculous times of the morning to go and DO STUFF. to me, it means lounging around in bed and doing nothing for a few hours and then doing something at a reasonable time of day (i.e. 10am). We almost managed to compromise, and I got an extra hour in bed. 8.15am saw us on the terrace eating breakfast, which was yummy. We then headed out to the Gateway of India and I made my second trip to Elephanta Island to see the caves. The journey last time was in the middle of the monsoon season, and given that it's an hours ferry ride, was pretty hellish! This time was a lot calmer, and we got chatting to some English guys who had come over to watch the cricket, which was fun. We were definitely confusing people when we told them Claire is Australian and I'm English, the look of "but they're on opposite sides of the world, why are you together?!" was very obvious!

Elephanta Caves aren't that exciting, but I got some rock (basalt) and I was happy :P 

We got back on the boat and headed to main land, where we found a very yummy Indian restaurant, and ate too much and still couldn't finish our meal - shocking! Then we headed back to the hotel and the afternoon consisted of sleeping because I'd been made to get up so early, and Claire skyping her mum because her skype works when she is not at Sangam! 

In the evening, we wandered down the sea front, and watched the sunset over the ocean. I love sunsets, and I love the ocean, so all good :) Then we carried on wandering and went to the beach, which has the most amazing food section, with lots of stalls selling anything, from Indian, to Chinese, to pizza, to ice cream... we bought some noodles, and sat on one of the mats laid out. It was awesome, with a fantastic atmosphere, and the noodles were tasty! Then we headed back slowly, and flicked a film on the tv and fell asleep.

Sunday morning found me being woken up early again, I got 10 extra minutes this time, and was woken up at 6.30! By 8.30 we were out of the door, having had breakfast and everything. We hired a car for the morning and travelled around a lot of places, most of them I couldn't even tell you the names of, I will get Claire to educate me when she's back from Goa! It was all really cool though, and we saw loads of the city and most of the tourist attractions listed in Claire's Lonely Planet :P Lunch time found us back at the beach for some more street food, this time another plate of noodles and some Sev Puri (think nachos, but with crackers instead of nachos, and Indian-fy it!) We also ended up at a French Bakery on both days, because they made yummy apple crumble, and it was just too hard to say no! 

Sunday afternoon, we again had a sleep because someone insisted we got up so early, and then we went to find the train station so that I could get my train home. Claire stayed in Mumbai, and is off to Goa very early tomorrow morning for the week. I unfortunately had to work, but I've had a really good day today, doing lots of bits and pieces, and working with Sayali and Aarti, which is one of my favourite bits of my job! Oh, I also took a trip to Mobile Creche, one of our partners, to deliver some stuff with Heidi, which provided some interesting rickshaw rides, as always!

After dinner, I went for a swim with Ellen, Philippa and Heidi (Jessica sat on the side of the pool). We filmed Ellen underwater with her camera, which was very funny, and the results will be up on youtube sometime this week hopefully! I'll let you know when that happens :P

Tomorrow and Wednesday night I have been invited to Diwali parties at Kirti and Mina's house respectively! I'm very excited about this, but less excited by the layer of pollution that is rumoured to cover Pune during Diwali, from the sheer number of fire crackers that are let off! I'm really pleased that I'm here during Diwali though, I've seen it in Leicester all of my life - it's time to see how to do it properly!! I'll update you on that later in the week :D

Death of the X:

This week has been slightly slower than the previous week, thank goodness! I last blogged on World Sangam Day, so I'll start from there! 

Monday was the last day of the event, and I ran a session called "Future Journey" which was a follow on from the "History Journey" sessions I'd been running all week. They had to talk about their own futures, the future of the Sangam staff, and the future of WAGGGS. I think it was a good session, and Jessica agreed with me :P It involved Sophie being in charge of WAGGGS, technology taking over, and Priya being told she had to have an arranged marriage. All fun! 

After that the participants slowly drifted home, and life at Sangam got back to ... normal? Nahhh... it's never normal here! On Tuesday and Wednesday the computer system went down. Our universal power supply (UPS) that is meant to stop our computers ever turning off, even when the electricity goes, broke, and needed a spare part. We're fairly sure this happened because we didn't bless it on the day we were meant to bless everything that we need to work (the photocopier, the generator, the maintenance tools, the water tower, the swimming pool... that kind of stuff). Some pooja (blessings) has been scheduled in during diwali hopefully! Pooja is done on auspicious days, otherwise it's just not as effective. 

SO. The UPS was down, which meant our server was down, which meant the X: drive was down. Our whole lives are on the X: drive. AND to top it off, the internet company changed how they were going to charge us for the internet, so it worked out that we hadn't paid our internet bill. So no X: and no internet. Sangam ground to a halt. Priya and Gwen were spotted sitting leisurely in the breezeway reading the paper/a book. I gossiped with Jessica and Philippa. Sophie wrote in compliment books (we all have a compliment book, it's awesome), and then cried because she's leaving soon. It turned into a very relaxed couple of days. However, the lack of internet did mean that I didn't get round to putting any photos on my blog yet. I will try again next day off. My other issue is that my laptop has clearly disagreed with the number of times the power cuts out here (it's on regular power, not UPS, so it cuts out much more regularly) and the plug has fused. I've currently stolen a work laptop and unless I find a fuse in India, I will continue to steal a work laptop each night =P 

Luckily, by Thursday, the X: was back (though still no staff internet, but the guest internet was working). Thursday was full of meetings. We had a DOUBLE event briefing in the morning, as we have two events in very quick succession coming up, and Jen, the programme manager, is away for the majority of them. Event briefings are with all staff, and we find out which participants are coming to the event, and details about them (age, health, diet...), and we have a run through the schedule, and generally discuss important stuff. It's basically the only time all staff are together, so it's a fun meeting, and we always have a silly game at the start! It was a surprisingly quick meeting though. After lunch, we had a planning meeting for the HIV/AIDs seminar coming up at the beginning of December. This meant that in less than 4 hours, I had run through all the events I have left at Sangam. I can't believe how quickly this time has gone. 

Friday found us with yet another meeting, this time we had a double programme team meeting, where we planned the next two events in detail, dividing up the sessions between us, deciding who will go to yoga at 7am, and who will climb the water tower (always me, I love it!). We've got a fun couple of events coming up, and they should be relatively easy, so I'm looking forward to them! The highlight of the meeting was when Sayali, one of our volunteers in training, got given her own session to run - it's the first time she's been given this responsibility, and it's sooo cool! After the meeting, we ran through the pre-event task list, which is a crazy list of all the things that need to be done before, during and after the event, and we all stick our names next to certain jobs. Sayali got given some of these two, and she was already doing half of them while we were all faffing around before lunch! 

After the task allocation merriment, we went to film a video. Christa has been training us on how to make videos, and has given us the task of making a video to introduce ourselves. This has so far involved us skipping around a tree, whilst singing, and popping out from behind a different tree, a bit like the teletubbies... it will be fun when it's finished! 

On Friday, I finished after lunch as I went to Mumbai with Claire!! I will update my blog again with this trip on, because I have rambled on for long enough anyway, the laptop battery is dying, and it's 8am, and I would like a shower before I start work! All good reasons to stop now I think! (photos from Mumbai are up on my facebook already though if you would like to see them!)

World Sangam Day

First of all, I need to start off by saying a big "HAPPY WORLD SANGAM DAY!" to everyone out there! Today is Sangam's 45th Birthday, and what a day it's been!! I'll tell you all about it later, but first I'll catch you up from where I left off last time!

So on Friday, I was meant to have the day off, but I ended up working, which is fair enough given my sick days! I spent the morning doing bits and pieces with Philippa, sorting out some posters for World Sangam Day, and basically faffing a lot! It was hard to refocus after a few days off, but it was good to be back doing something at least! The afternoon was Indian afternoon, so I was back in my beautiful sari (which I must remember to get washed very soon!), and I also helped Jessica and Philippa learn how to tie their own saris - the fun process of putting it on, and taking it off, and putting it on, and taking it off, until you know EXACTLY how to do it the next time! I had to do this during my first event too, and it's really annoying at the time, but I can tie my sari in super fast time, so it's definitely worth it!

After that, we had Maharastrian dinner, the traditional wedding feast for the state (not that there was a wedding!) and then we packed up and went to bed!

Saturday morning was lots more prepping for Worlda Sangam Day, finalising our posters, and checking things with people and tidying the whole of Sangam - Jessica and I had the highly exciting job of stacking the inflatables in the storage area! It was a really enjoyable morning though, lots to do, and lots to achieve :) The afternoon found us doing Indian crafts, so I was doing Warli Art, which is a very relaxing session!

Straight after that was dinner, and the Jubilee Garden movie, which was going to be in... the Jubilee Garden. BUT then it got moved to the pool due to technical difficulties... BUT THEN it got moved to the hall due to the amount of rain coming down! Lots of people came, and we had snacks and drinks for everyone, and I think it was a success - although I wrote down the wrong time on the invitations to the local staff, so we had to start an hour later than we were meant to - whoops!

Also on Saturday night, the highlight of the night... THE ELEPHANT ARRIVED! The staff were all sitting on the front steps waiting for over an hour for this elephant to arrive! It was SO exciting! I never thought I would see an elephant walk through the gates of Sangam. We took it to the campsite, fed it some bananas and it went to sleep. All good :) I was going to camp in the campsite that night, but I decided that because I still wasn't back to 100%, and I needed all my strength for the next day, it probably wasn't a good plan! Hopefully I will get the chance in the future.

Today (World Sangam Day, don't know if I'd mentioned!) was incredible. It started with both mine and Ellen's alarms going off at 6am to get ready for a water tower climb that didn't happen as it was too wet. We did however go and watch the elephant have it's morning bath! really really cool. I will try and get photos up - I have a day off on Wednesday, I will try and put lots of photos on my blog then! Eventually, the elephant was ready for the day, and Claire, Saga (a guest for the weekend) and I climbed on (literally, we put our knee onto the elephants hip, and pulled ourselves up!) and went for a ride!

Straight after this, it was time for me to prepare for the WAGGGS quiz! This is just a fun quiz where we test the participants knowledge, and hopefully teach them a few new things as well! Once this was finished, the participants had chai, and then headed off to the campsite to create some memories with Sophie. They made some clay tiles, which will form part of a new decorative piece going to go in behind the laundry. Should be good! Philippa and I wandered around with Jen for a while and made sure everything was looking fantastic for this afternoon. We quickly sorted out the last few things for Jen, and I even had plenty of time to do my meal duty! Sayali and Aarti (our volunteers-in-training) also followed me around for a while practicing their speeches for tonight's ceremony. OH and Ellen and I actually climbed the water tower to put up a big banner.

After lunch, it was time for the party to start! But of course, there's always time for a short lunch time nap, which I duly took. Then I had to sit and wait for the puppet man, to set him up. We all had one thing we were in charge of throughout the day to make sure that things got sorted properly. The puppet man was mine. He arrived, in true Indian style, nearly 50 minutes late. He also couldn't speak a word of English. So I quickly borrowed Priya and Sayali to be my translators, and got him everything he needed. As well as the puppet show, there was also a tabla (drums) player, laughter yoga, a potter, a tarot card reader, and of course, the elephant and camel!

Then I wandered around taking some photos, trying to put the cat on the elephant (it didn't want to ride!) and generally enjoying the party. I was also on reception for a while, and then at 5.50pm I had to run up the water tower with the sangam camera to take a bit group photo! It was lots of fun being up there, lots of people waving - I felt famous, which of course I want to be :P I then ran down the water tower (or at least might as well have done) and got down in plenty of time to hear Sayali and Aarti give their speeches. They were amazing. I am so proud of those girls.

We also had a cake cutting and announced some very exciting things for Sangam - they're getting a new building! AND also, the volunteer in training program now has an official sponsor which is awesome!

After that, there was some dancing, some dinner and this evening we had a lovely community partner forum, where members of 7 of Sangam's community partners came along, and we could ask them any questions we liked. tt was very good!

Right now though I am falling asleep whilst writing this, so I think it's time I actually went to bed! Luckily I have a bit of a lie in tomorrow - 8.25 Flag ceremony! No problem :P

Today has been awesome, and I am so lucky to be here, working in this environment, with the fantastic people I work with! 

Poorly Net

Well everyone, once again I am blogging. I know you're all shocked. This is the second time in a week! Feel free to sit down :P

After my two days with mornings off, I decided that just wasn't enough time, and I got ill, to give myself another couple of days off!!

Tuesday afternoon found Sangam swarmed by 50 local scouts and 10 local guides. The participants ran activities for them, we fed them, and we were going to let them have a campfire and sleep in the campsite... until Mr Rain came, along with its friends, Thunder and Lightning! so we quickly ran from the dry kitchen shelter, through the wet campsite, to set up the indoor campfire, and got all the kids inside. We had a good traditional sing song, with songs from all over the place, and it sounded like they were having a lovely time! I didn't stay in there for very long, as I had preparation for the next day to do (and good job I did it!) and also I was helping Jessica and Philippa move all of their stuff from the dorm to the Guide House, so that the guides could sleep in their dorm for that night! The scouts slept in the hall.

Sophie and Gwen had the lovely job of getting up and getting all the kids out to school in the morning, at 5.45am! Luckily, I didn't have to get up, and I actually don't think I could have done.

Whilst attempting to prepare my session, I start feeling very tired and not quite right. I soon took myself off to bed, where I tried to sleep but generally failed until 11.30ish. I woke up at 7am the next day with a fever, and shaking. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get out of bed that morning. Sophie very kindly ran my session for me (so as I said before, good job I had managed to plan it!), and Claire lent me her laptop with all her movies on it, so I watched the classics... 10 Things I Hate About You and How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days! The afternoon was very similar, although I went and sat in the garden for a bit of air for an hour or so before needing to go back to bed. I managed to get out of bed for dinner, and had some very yummy meatballs, before needing to go back to bed! Then I wandered downstairs and around the 1960's wide game for a bit, which looked very cool and I wish I could have enjoyed it more. I also watched Notting Hill during the evening!

I woke up this morning feeling LOTS better, but not well enough to do my actual activity of going to the caves, in the heat of the day, with lots of walking, so I spent a little time in bed, but then got very bored of my bedroom, and decided to go do some work. I cracked out another video (see here and here for the two I've made so far) and also sorted out another session for Sunday morning. I also managed to have a couple of naps and do some washing. I smashed my head on the ceiling in the laundry (low ceiling, I haven't grown) and gave myself a massive headache, on top of not feeling 100% which wasn't very clever! but I slept it off, so that was good!
Also had a meeting about the birthday on Sunday, it's SOOO exciting!! Mostly because by 8.30am I will already have watched the sun rise from the top of the water tower, and ridden an elephant. What are YOU doing on Sunday?!

I'm feeling loads better now and I was technically scheduled to have tomorrow off, but I think I might go and do some work seeing as I have had two days of basically doing nothing already! I might even make ANOTHER video! and sort out my final session for this event, and maybe even start planning for the next! As I was meant to be off tomorrow, I am not scheduled to do anything, so I have a fun day of picking what I want to do, and generally being helpful if other people need stuff done. These are my favourite kind of days!

Birthday's and days off!

Well, it's been a fun few days since I last updated my blog!! ( I apologise for the number of exclamation marks in this blog post, I have been having a lot of fun, and so they just appear in my writing... I had written most of the post before I realised this and now I can't be bothered to go through everything and change it!  - whoops, there's another.)

On Saturday, we started our 45th Birthday Event!! We have participants here from New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA and Sri Lanka, which is awesome! There are 11 Sri Lankans, 1 leader, and 10 girls, ranging from 12-15, so they're really young!! It's really good having them here though, and their English is very good. They're slowly starting to come out of their shells, and start talking a bit more - I'm sure by the end of the week, they'll be chattering away to us like anything. 

Saturday was a fairly standard first day of an event, with all the usual activities - Sangam Tour, Neighbourhood Walk, House Rules, Event Briefing... blah blah blah and the WELCOME CEREMONY of course! Which was lovely as always - I nearly dropped the flower garlands, but ssh no one noticed apart from Hayley! After the welcome ceremony I jumped on skype to chat to Jennie and Jess which was awesome to speak to them again :D and I also managed to catch my mum! I haven't spoken to mum for a while (sorry Mum!) so it was good to catch up, even if it did mean I didn't go to sleep until around 12.30...

AND on Sunday, I had an early start - we climbed the water tower to watch the sun rise over Sangam, which is gorgeous! A lot of participants came up this time, maybe 15 of them... The Sri Lankan girls all chose to jump in the pool instead, and watching them splash around and having so much fun whilst I was on top of the water tower was just gorgeous. Seeing girls have fun like that is kind of the reason I'm in Guiding! 

After this, we had a tour of Laxmi Road, where the participants get a chance to buy saris, punjabis, bangles and bindis. A lot of the Sri Lankan girls bought saris for their mums, which is very sweet. A lot of the other participants bought saris for their friends :P 

Sunday afternoon was the first stop in the History Journey that I'm running, I gave them all an event that happened between 1909 - 1960, from WAGGGS history, and from general history, and they had to get into order. WWII starting caused some confusion - the Americans only really get taught when they joined the war in 1941! And Sophie just got it wrong.. 1932 indeed! After this, we had our international fair, which basically means we all eat lots of different sweets from around the world! What a fantastic night :P 

I had Monday morning off, and I chose the fantastic activity of doing nothing! I really needed to just chill out and do not a lot, so it was fantastic!! I started at 1, with lunch. After lunch, Philippa was shadowing me, (the new SVs Jessica and Philippa don't have to run anything this time, but they follow us around, help us plan our activities, and we teach them as we're going, the same way that the previous SVs did for me) and we were VERY productive. We planned a whole session in around an hour and a half, and I thought it was going to take me allll afternoon! I was highly impressed! After that, we had the second installment of the History Journey, where we looked at some things that happened between 1960-2010, looking at guiding uniforms, guiding section names, badges, and some Lady BP quotes... I think it went well! After this, the tailors arrived to measure them all for their saris and punjabis, and then we set up for the pool movie! We had a big screen made, and we have an outdoor projector now, so we filled the pools with inflatables (which Aarti, our volunteer in training, and Philippa, had done a stunning job blowing most of them up!). They watched Surfs Up, but I hid out in my room and enjoyed the chance to just relax. It was a really good day for me, possibly my best day since I've arrived! 

This morning (Tuesday), I also had the morning off! Today I chose to go shopping :D I bought some awesome pants, which are just indescribable - I will find a camera at some point and get some photos on this blog! I also bought a scarf, and a present for my secret friend!! This event, because it's a birthday event, we're doing secret friend, a bit like secret santa, but the idea is that you do something nice for your friend each day. It can be emotionally nice - a hug, or physically nice - a chocolate bar, whatever! and at the end of the event, we're going to reveal ourselves to our friend :D 

I start work again in half an hour, and I can't wait for today - I'm running the next History Journey session this afternoon, and today it's Sangam history, and they're doing a giant treasure hunt basically :D Looking forward to it! This is the session that Philippa and I planned yesterday, and I'm really proud of it, so I hope they like it too! For my last half an hour off though, I will be checking my e-mails and listening to music, generally relaxing! I also need to get a new video out today... wooooo! 5 days to go!

That was a super long blog post considering it was only about four days! I hope you all enjoyed the information :P 

Blog Fail

Ok so it's been exactly two weeks since I updated my blog - bit of a fail there. Just assume that no news is good news, and no news normally means I have busy having an amazing time!! It definitely does in this case!! 

The last time I updated, 19 Australians were about to fly in... Well. 18 Australians flew in, but they had an amazing time. We ran an event for them called Essence of India, which basically means we crammed in as many cultural experiences as possible! We went to Laxmi Road, they did the Pune Challenge, they did the Wadi Challenge (these are both challenges for them to go out and explore the local areas by themselves!). We took them to two of our community partners, SOS Children's Village and Aditi. SOS is a village where orphaned children live (orphan in India means a child without both parents to look after them, rather than both parents being dead) and it's an amazing place, very quiet and peaceful. There are "mothers" who run a house, with roughly 10 children in each one. They live like proper families, brothers sisters, and when the kids grow up, SOS helps them get further education and jobs, particularly the girls. Apparently lots of them go back and visit their "mothers" and even save some of their wages to give to them, which is very sweet! 

Aditi is a village community out in a rural area. There's a learning centre there, the person who set it up initially wanted a teacher training college, but when she discovered how many of the local girls weren't getting any education at all, she set up a school for the girls. It's awesome. They're so good, and they get girls from all the local villages and give them free education, right up to standard 12, which is like year 13 at home, and then help them get to college if they want to. After we'd looked round the school, we went to two of the girls houses, which was very cool. There was a 15 day old calf in one of the houses - so cute!!

The Aussies had lots of fun, they're on a four world centre tour, so as I write this, they're in Switzerland at Our Chalet, then heading to London and Pax Lodge, and finally to Mexico to visit Our Cabana! Sounds like a good trip right?!  It was fun learning all sorts about Australia - they don't have snow at Christmas, but they do put snow on their Christmas cards - weird right?

Since the Aussies left, it's been pretty packed - the birthday event starts on Saturday - 45th! WOOP! it's going to be amazing, but it's a BIG event to organise, so it's been all stations go basically, hence the significant lack of update since the Aussies left last Friday! 

However, on Saturday, I had a day off. I spent the day with Claire, we went to the zoo in the morning, which was very cool. There were LOADS of animals, tigers, leopards, elephants, wolves, deer, tortoises, terrapins, turtles, iguana, porcupine, snakes, some that I hadn't heard of, and some birds, owls, peacocks... it was a very fun morning, and well worth the hours rickshaw drive there and hour back! 

In the afternoon, we chilled out a bit, and then went to MG Road for some shopping. I bought baked beans which has literally made my week - Heinz and everything!! Then in the evening we headed out to Phulenagar to watch Sayali, one of our Volunteers-in-Training (VIT), in a dance competition. It was sooo much fun! All the little kids were dressed up, and they paraded them all on stage before the dancing started, and they were very cute - one girl had the most sparkly sari I have EVER seen! I was very jealous. 

Today I also have a day off. The new volunteers, Philippa (UK) and Jessica (USA) arrived yesterday, so I spent the morning showing them around a few places, chatting and generally getting to know them (they're both very lovely, hello to you both if you're reading this :P )  and this afternoon I'm chilling out, getting some washing done, etc... 

Still working on that sari picture, need to steal it from Claire's laptop! One day, I'll just have a blog full of pictures from the last month and a half!! maybe...