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!)