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
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