Sumit’s Silver and China’s Cheat

 A little joyous, Sumit and coach Kishan returned from the Seoul Special Olympics victorious with a silver medal for the India hockey team. The first I saw of them was being swamped at morning assembly and applauded. I managed to catch up with Kishan, he had never been OS before and was totally awed by the difference, cleanliness, technology etc. Sumit’s team had won every round-robin played until it came to the final match, where the team numbers were brought from 16 a side to 11. China all of a sudden had a long list of injured players and a number of fresh recruits to play in the final match, much to the questioning and chagrin of the others teams.  Funny, you kind of don’t consider that in the Special Olympics you are still contending with under-handed tactics <insert some clever comment regarding Armstrong>

 * Victorious, Kishan and Sumit, Dinner with Kishan and his wife tonight :)

Monday will be my last day sadly; of course I have now been swamped with multiple requests from all the teachers to merely whip up laminated posters, flash cards and photos of their classes. They seem to think it all takes just moment to do it all; design, layout, retouching photos and the trip into town for the printers and no doubt this all happens at no cost to me, I will try my best and there is a touch of wanting to leave my mark in some way. Rajani, my teacher was sweet, saying she was honoured that I was in her class and that she will remember me for a long time as she think of me using all the resources I have created and added.

Drilled again, this time by the music teacher and a student teacher… *all in pigeon English. “Why aren’t you married? Do you have a girlfriend? When will you get married? Is your brother married? Don’t you want to be married? Is there someone special in your heart?”  I just tell them in Australia you can marry at any age and that many of my mates are “unmarried”, oh jimmenies I won’t miss that daily interrogation!! Though it did come out that I was 36 and was smugly satisfied at their shock.

Listening to a little Dolly and staring out the window to the sun dappled jungle backing onto Raphael, slurping my Nescafe coffee (can’t wait for a real coffee) and smiling, I am ready to go. I have had the experience of a lifetime.

Some pics of my last couple of weeks xoxox

Community outreach program - out with the physio therapist hitting rural Doon,

 * Roof top preschool

 * Another school - "Uncle, uncle, photo Uncle!"

 * And another school, found somewhere behind a series of ramshackle buildings and seemed to be someone's concrete backyard

* A strange little community, people from Uttrapradesh travel here to work in the brickyards.

* Poo!!! Nothing is wasted

* Just about to pass another baroque painted truck

* Sooo cute with her screwed up little legs, phyio sets to work doing exercises

Chai with Chavi, Ashu, Pooja and Komal

* House mother to the four girls living at Raphael in Barbara Cottage

* Ashu wanted a pic of her moving out of her chair to her wheelchair

* Lol, Komal showing off her teddies

* Just hanging with the cool kids

* Pooja displaying her domestic prowess

* Chavi whips up some chai

Some photos of the kids from class

* Teacher Rajani

Untitled

Untitled. The polar emotion accompanying my last week. I miss home, Daniel, cuddles, friends, coffee, my balcony... Then here, there is sweet tea, namaste greetings, bright full smiles, Bollywood moves, dirt, dust, street vendors. I have a thousand small stories to tell, telling is not sharing.

Daniel rang the other week saying only 2 weeks and 2 days to go, poor guy, I snapped. Two weeks is too long to imagine being home and to short a time to think of leaving. I have little left to say, my next blogs will be pictorial because I can't find the right words without blundering. In one moment sounding forlorn and the next fulfilled. 

If you have a chance to do something you have never done, don't be brave, be foolish :)

Competition Contact

It’s funny how you make the most mundane things into a competition, I have spent the last couple of hours, after dinner, helping Anita and Sarah to double side contact onto alphabet letters, multi-sized dolls and chairs. The contact is the most horrendous, cheap stuff and trying to get the edge to peel back the "non sticky side" is an art and hence who can separate the contact from its backing the quickest requires a scoring process.

School has been back almost two weeks and I am sooo happy to see them all, I have been working with Rajini, my teacher, over this time and looking at assessments that cover everything from stating name to interview skills to behaviors with opposite sex and privacy. Being India, this of course has my teeth on perpetual edge as the process has been not been executed well, lacking simple language for the teachers, the  documents are in English that even I find challenging to translate their meanings, let alone the poor ESL teachers. Then there’s missing pages, teachers not truly understanding the assessment methods and report writing without proper templates esp when even plain paper here is hard to find. I just want to get in there and “fix” it all, but one must be very, very careful, so many toes and so much hierarchy. Needless to say was has taken 2.5 weeks I could have rolled out and had everyone on board and complete within 4 days.

Running several of the classes whilst the teacher is completing evaluations has been challenging with no Hindi but I successfully covered; sex education, personal hygiene, first aid, prevocational training, calendar activities, sport and more – yay me! It actually feels really good to be able to do this and know I am helping, my comm skills are diversifying and getting better, though I have warned Daniel I will be even more dramatic in my hand actions when I get home.

Went to Rajani's house for chai the other night and whilst I have been to other teachers some gut instinct made me wary. After cutting through small alleys, crossing a dirty river by sand bag stepping stones, shimmying along a 30cm wide precipice we arrived. After not long did the conversation turn to how lonely and bored Rajini was, I knew it was coming, respect and smiles can be taken the wrong way, having a boyfriend seems to mean nothing here, they expect you to have a wife or girlfriend as well. As I was fed chai and much food the stilted conversation turned to family, would I live in India etc. I made it clear that Daniel was my only one but then received a lecture on how this was not good. So I gave a lecture back, lol. I spoke about living a complete life in which joy is found within yourself and not a partner or children, in which some people must work harder (those without kids etc) to find the soul and joy and that all aspects of your life must be attended to with goals and determination, mum would know the 5 horses I speak of or Molly the complete wheel. Health, home, relationship, soul and future/finance. She told me she would never forget this moment. So I successfully got out of another proposition without causing offense, I am seriously going to write a book on how to say no and turn it into a positive experience.

Well that’s been about it, just been cruising along with school, shopping and getting fat on chapatti and all the other carbs. I have been making the girls drool with recipes and cooking options on a daily basis and weirdly enough can’t wait to get home and make dhal, because of course, in my usual arrogance, I can do it better : )

Took some shots of music class the other day so I have popped a couple below. The gay has completely come out in me, all those hand gestures and bouncing totally works to Bollywood music, I am natural here. Foolishly I shimmied whilst dancing with a girl in a wheel chair and then had to get up, on my own, and dance for a full class :/

 * Rapt attention, Manu commands the class so well and its brilliant to be a part of it!

 * Time for the new kid to join in some dancing, This is a no shoes class room and the sock stink with teenage boys can get pretty bad, so my stinky feet blend right in :)

 * The buggers spotted the camera - Madhav at the back, Jaijay on the left and Akhil to the right

Even looking at these photos makes me miss them, I have no idea how I will be when I actually have to leave...

Adventures in Amritsar at the Bagaborder with Delhi Belly

In Amritsar, sleepy, stinky and cold, found myself approached by near to 30 Auto-Rickshaw drivers as I got off the train and trundled sleepily down the platform, all to be expected though. Finally agreed to let some guy take me, after he found out the hotel name he tried to charge me Rs100, having done my research I knew it was only a 2 minute drive from the station but haggled down to a more reasonable excessive charge.

At the hotel a little bit of drool rolled down my chin, this looked exactly like I needed, excellent service, well dressed porters, could the room match the lobby? And yes it could, I didn't even need to switch on the hot water geyser for a shower and then wait for it to heat, burning myself as I defrosted I knew a climatic joy. Dramatic? Yes, I can tell you it was damn dramatic, the pleasure was so good I was wondering if I should tell Daniel and whether he might get jealous, sorry babe. The shower was over a bath so I didn't even have to squeegee the floor after!!

Not one to ever be slowed by lack of sleep, I dressed, tried to cover the bags and my eyes n' blotchy skin and made my way out. I took a rickshaw to the Golden Temple. Simply aweinspiring ornate moldings finished beautiful architecture in the big square building that enclosed the central lake and golden temple. I would be happy to share the photos had I not have deleted them :/ So I walked, gazed and marveled at the marble work on the ground. 

Later, after wandering some amazing old streets and a crazy rickshaw but fun ride home to pumping Hindi pop music, I headed out to the Bagaborder, the border between Pakistan and India. Everyday people arrive en-masse from both sides of the border to beat out an aggressive military parade and a show down with much shouting of taunts etc. Despite the festive feel, I could not help the constant nagging awareness that whilst this was only a show, it was still a celebration of hatred and only serves to excite jingoistic behavior and prejudice. As the parade closes people run from the stands down to the gates to yell insults across the closed gates.

 * Ghandi Goodness at the border

 * Despite the guns, I only saw peacocks in paper hats

 * Pakistani gates

 * The rush of the crowd at the close

And so ends my journey, following this was vomiting, diarrhea, fever and shivering, finally had Delhi Belly!! This crapulence caused me to stay very close to the hotel and my bathroom and fork out for another night and another train fare. Oh well, had to happen sometime and somehow authenticates the India experience.

The following are a few pix from the train when bored, took me 15 hours to travel 470kms.

 * Misty morning view from train window

 * Living it up in 1st with a cheeky cigarette

 * It's a tree

 * More comforts of travel, my backpack cum pillow now has drool marks

 * More trees

 * I really like trees!

 * Inside the Chai shop where I know the Chai is truly safe and no belly worries, was glad to be home

Train times

It's 23:55, on the 1st class sleeper to Amritsar, I have just gotten up to have a cigarette in the train doorway and another slug of vodka to keep warm. I have succumbed... Wearing a pair of tracksuit pants over my jeans, two pairs of socks and two jackets to try and keep warm. The whole carriage stinks of strongly of stale piss and the occupants have no concept of keeping voices down so others can sleep. My sleeper has just one other person an old man with the good sense to have brought a blanket and beanie who snores with every breath and on the exhale too... I have been trying to sleep with my thin scarf to cover my face to keep the cold out and some light from my closed lids. If this is 1st, I'd hate to see 2nd, 3rd or the economy class. I guess this was the experience I had been looking for, I've said it once and I've said it a thousand times, Indians are effing mad!! 

In trying to work out what they are tossing with such incredible force through one door of the train to the other side I have realised it's post parcels. Why they are being thrown through I have yet to fathom, as all they are really doing is passing from one side of the tracks to the other.

Despite all this and the shaking with cold, I am smiling, where else would I experience such things and allow myself such unfashionable dress?!?!

Perfect picture blog time - a visual update

Happy New Years all, it was a quiet night for me, a couple of drinks and a walk up Rajpur Road.. I had considered going to bed before midnight but in the end thought “screw this I’m not dead so I will have fun”, so I danced around the room to P!nk Raise Your Glass until about 12:30.

With school out and not much happening, it has been an interesting, reflective and speculative time and a sometimes lonely time, which I have enjoyed and I think needed. I could share these thoughts but I do not feel I could articulate them adequately to encompass the emotion that accompanied the thought flow. Not that I believe these thoughts are unique in any way its just, hmmm… one of those things I guess. I think that there is a moment when no one else will understand your process and I think at that moment your true journey begins.

 The following are a series of pics over the last couple of weeks with short explanations. Though no pics ever do justice they may provide some context 

Raphael Xmas

* Santa was out kissing babies at the Christmas Pageant just before school closed

 * Nativity scene, though I think Mary might have had a bit too much makeup on to be considered that virtuous.

 * The three wise men taking a chill pill

Some shots of Raphael

 * Volunteers building, the bottom left is my room and the little cottage thing on the right is the "mess hall". Tiny little brown and grey squirrels run up and down the walls, v cute!

 * Part of the school building, standing on my porch I can see straight across, there's no escape :) 

* My classroom and it's "dusting" time. This is during vocational activities, Sonal is doing an outstanding job and is known for her prowess with a floor rag :))))

 * In this building is some of the housing for residents and the main kitchen, despite its outward appearance it's damnably cold, dark and there is no glass in the windows to keep the cold out and no heating and believe me it gets effing cold with concrete floors! Sometimes they set up a little fire just in the front corner of the building. Seriously these guys will set a fire anywhere! Just like peeing and spitting...

 *A panoramic view from my porch, so a little warped but you can see the main kitchen/residence to the left and the school on the right, plus my washing as I chase the sun around the yard after getting frostbite doing my hand washing.

*Mess hall - ironing time, little did I know the iron has no thermostat and needs to manually switched off and on, goodbye nice white shirt :/

 * My room, again more panorama warped goodness. Me being me, couldn't help but buy a sari and some yak shawls to add a little character. The mirror/vanity thing has my minibar ;)

r/

 *A typical lunch as served by Dhan or Hari - Rice, Chapati, some sort of vegetables and of course Dhal. Lunch and dinner are pretty much the same. Notice everything is in the oranges, yellows and reds you would expect of India.

 *You can see my favourite person here, Khanti, in maroon, they are painting the names of the residents to the underside of the Thali with cotton buds and enamel paint. Still not quite sure why though but I guess it helps keep an inventory.

 * Lunch starting to be served outside to some of the residents who had noone to return to over the short break

* The new volunteers who arrived a couple of days ago, Anita (speaks some Hindi, yay), Gen and Keely. They're about 19 waiting and waiting for Uni entry etc, they had come from spending warm beach time in Goa, very jealous!

Sumit and Kishan - Seoul warming (I have to have a Dad pun somewhere!)

 * Sumit on the left and Kishan on the right. Sumit has been selected for the Special Winter Olympics in Seoul. He had little wear that was not provided by the state for competing, David petitioned the Lions Club in Ballarat, who donated $200 plus added some of his own money and with a little extra from Jo Evans (thank you my darling) we managed to kit him out. 1 x Ski style tracksuit made to order with padding and lining, 2 x thermals, 1 x spare trainers, gloves and a reasonable amount of spare spending money so they can head out to get a burger or something when there, so freaking awesome to be a part of it...

I met with Keishan, Sumit and Sumit's father to do the shopping, Sumit and his dad shared a a bicycle down, whilst I braved crazy Indian traffic, helmet-less on the back of Kishan's scooter. The touching of the feet in thanks was a little uncomfortable,

* We even got his surname printed on the back. The maker was happy to throw in many extras to help out, it was heart warming not to be swindled for once.

Rishikesh - A holy city, no alcohol here :/ This was after leaving Mussoorie, where I beheld those stunning views before heading back to Dehradun

* The view from my room over the the Ganga

* And more

 And yet more

* You know the drill by now

* Because I am child, that's why... there were lots of different herbs at the hotel but couldn't help myself. The naked Ayurvedic massage here was a little different but that's another story for another time.

Back in Doon

* How cool, posing for the pic, this is on Mohini Road (Rahael's street) on my way to my morning Chai Masala.

Tapkeshaw Temple

These were taken today, the temple is set in a cave and said to be the walking place of Krishna when he was on earth, over 5000 years ago, it's old! I even got a dot on my forehead, see my selfy below, feel very local now. Tried not to take too many pics as did not wish cheapen other people's faith.

Well there you have it. It's taken hours to upload these photos and try not to write too much crap. So I'm off to bed, up at 5:30 for some exercise to try and wear off some of this ever expanding, chapati filled belly of mine.

Many blessings to all of you!

xoxoxo