Half Way!

The 19^th of February is my half way point through my year in India.  Five and a half months in, five and a half months to go.  Being half way is really exciting.  I’ve manage to survive India for five and a half months.  I’m actually tempted to give myself a wee sticker for that.  It actually gives me hope that I’ll be able to survive the next five and a half months and safely get myself back to Scotland in August.  The time has gone so fast but it feels like I’ve been here for ages.  I’m not saying that I feel Indian, I really don’t, or that I’ve gotten used to country, I really haven’t, but it’s become slightly more normal. 

The next few months here are going to get a lot warmer, I’m going to have loads of holidays and trips, I’ve got to get through exam time without stressing (for the kids, not for me, luckily I don’t have to deal with that any more) and I’ve still to try and control my classes.  But I’m in the home straight!  And as much as I’m enjoying it, the thought of going home is still exciting.  Basically so I can annoy everyone telling them about my year in India. 

I’ve learnt to do quite a lot of things that I didn’t really know how to, or need to, do before.

1.       Dodge cows the size of a small house in the street as they come towards you
2.        Wash clothes thoroughly in cold water while being watched by someone
3.       How to walk away from a rickshaw driver who is trying to rip you off by making you feel sorry for them
4.       Haggle in shops to get a pair of trousers down to 150 from 500 (a fiver to £1.50)
5.       Cross the road without dying (I could do that at home but here it requires more effort)
6.       Sleep anywhere. Honestly anywhere, a rickshaw, a bus, a train, a courtyard, a café…
7.       Eat plain idly
8.      Find somewhere to go to the toilet when there’s a massive spider above the one in your room
9.       Improvise a lesson on description. 
10.     Improvise any lesson that is
11.     Kind of control a classroom of 35 3-6 year olds
12.     Teach ceilidh dancing to kids whose English doesn’t stretch to “now dosido”
13.      Find my way out of a Pongal celebration after taking a wrong turn
14.     Fend off questions like “Are you married miss? Why not?”
15.     Not get offended when people say I’m really pale.
16.     Eat a plateful of rice that’s bigger than some people’s babies
17.     Get a mouse out of our room at half 2 in the morning
18.    Wear a sari (and then get it re-tied in the nursery because it wasn’t correct the first time)
19.   Not pick up stray puppies every time I see one
20.  Get excited over things I take for granted a home like a shower head, a washing machine, pancakes

It’s been an absolutely mental last few months.  Pretty hard I’m not going to lie, some of it really has been rubbish and frustrating at times.  But then I just look at some of the fun trousers I’ve got here and it makes it all good again!  And having kids sing Flower of Scotland.  That’s nice too.

One of my other friends, Tabs, did a half way blog as well and she talked about how proud she is of all the other Project Trust volunteers, especially in India.  And it’s true, I honestly feel like a proud mum most of the time.  Everyone has done amazing!  We’ve all managed this long in India, we’re all teaching some crazy Indian children, we’re dealing with strange food, wearing strange clothes in crazy temperatures but we all still manage to get on with it and deal with every day and all the weirdness that comes with it.  I just want to give stickers to everyone.

So, I’m hoping I survive the next few months here and I’m treating myself tonight by ditching my pajama top and starting to wear a new one.  I’m really splashing out.

Everyone loves a good ceilidh

We get one period a week with each of the older classes in the school to do whatever we want, be that craft, activities or dance.  So we chose to teach them some Scottish dancing because that's one kind of dance I can actually do.  One of my classes, 6th Standard, absolutely love it.  It's amazing to see them so excited over something that I love.  And they're really good at dancing as well.  Every time I go into the class now and ask them all what they want to do, the response is always "Scotland dance Miss!!"  I'm hoping to have a whole school ceilidh before the end of the year.  It's one thing I am definitely missing about Scotland but the kids here really make up for it!

School Trip or Party Bus?

On a school trip to Chitradurga with 5th to 9th Standard late last year, they decided that it was a fabulous idea to loudly blast out some Bollywood music.  For the whole bus journey. From half 6 in the morning to 10 at night.  And they didn't just play the music, there was dancing as well.  I was led up the bus by a girl in 8th Standard like people usually lead others onto the dance floor.  It was one of the weirdest things that's happened here but it definitely improved my balancing skills.  Because trying to copy some Indian dancing on a moving bus the way Indians drive was very difficult.

Hampi! Or the weekend Niamh got too excited over some ruins..

Honestly, this is my third and final holiday of January.  Promise.  This time it was for Republic Day and we headed to Hampi for a long weekend with Tabs and Ruth again.   We see them far too much..

We got a sleeper train there.  A lovely 14 hour train that stopped in all the stops along the way.  However, it did go right through the middle of nowhere so when I got up in the middle of the night to close the window, it was beautiful to look out onto basically these plain with palms trees dotted along the way and the stars which were so bright.  But I was a wee bit too cold and tired to appreciate it.   Tabs and Ruth were arriving a bit later than us so we had a bit of a wait.  We headed to our hotel, which turned out not to be the hotel we thought, and then it turned out that they had given our room away!  But it was okay, they were going to sort it!  So, not really worrying about it, we went out for a walk.  Tabs did warn us not to do any ruin watching without her, but as we soon found out, that was much harder than it sounded.  There were ruins everywhere.  And honestly, I mean everywhere.  It was amazing.  Even the police station and the bank were in one of the old bazaars.  I absolutely loved it.  We thought we’d go for a wee walk up this hill, thinking we’d maybe see the river or something but we actually ended up finding an amazing temple and the main bazaar.  It looked like the monkey temple from the Jungle Book and I actually just wanted to walk around touching everything.  Despite the majority of the buildings in Hampi being built in the 1300s, everything was so well preserved.  It really was beautiful.  Even all the intricate carvings and stuff were still really clear.  Even if some of them were fairly Kama Sutra like.  Although that may have been because we found the old Red Light District…

This was literally my stairway to heaven

Where I'm convinced the Jungle Book was set

After Tabs and Ruth arrived, we headed to dinner.  Again another chance for me to eat non-Indian food.  Chapatti all the time just isn’t interesting!  Heading back to the hotel, we saw our bed for the evening.  It was two mattresses on the floor underneath a mosquito net.  Now I say mosquito net, but any mosquito determined enough to want to get in could have because of the two rather large holes.  It maybe wasn’t the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had, mainly due to fact that I was concerned about getting eaten by a sloth bear and trying to scare that rat-maybe-cat away from our bags, but it was the most interesting I think I’ll have in a while.  We headed out for the day armed with our lonely planet guide, and bottles and bottles of water.  I seriously think I drank about 9 litres that day.  Our plan was to go the Royal Centre because that was at bit further away so we took an auto there and started from the start!  We went this underground temple that was partly filled with water so we had to wade a little bit through but it was amazing.  Apparently there was a bit in the middle of the temple that I think was a dancing platform, or something.  But the woman may have been telling us that we could dance if we wanted to.  Who knows?  It was amazing to just wander round this old city.  There was so much to look at and see and I could have wandered around it for weeks.  It was amazing.  Cue all the history geek jokes from the other three.  But to be honest, I really didn’t mind though, I was too busy trying to touch everything.  And it was surprisingly quiet for India and for a holiday.  Which was amazing because after the Shore Temple in Mahabs, I was dreading Hampi being that busy as well.  But there were times when we had the place to ourselves.   We also went to see the Vittala Temple and that was amazing as well.  Although slightly busier than the rest of Hampi, it was still beautiful, especially as we went as the sun was beginning to go down so the light off the ruins was amazing. 

I was just wandering off to touch some more walls and stuff.  It was far too exciting,

Elegance personified

Our bed.  With Ruth, Tabs and Sarah still in it

I honestly could have skipped around this all day 

Everything's a farm in India

Being elephants in the Elephant Stables

We got back to the village of Hampi later that day, went to our hotel but the people there were trying to charge us more than we had agreed and we just not being very pleasant about it all, saying that we were out all day when they could have given our room to someone else who would pay the amount they were asking.  But why would we stay at the hotel all day when there were loads of ruins to see!? But we’ve been in India long enough now to know not to stand for any of that any more.  They’re just trying to rip us off.  So we headed off to find another hotel.  Luckily, the hotel we thought we had originally phoned but hadn’t (if you’re ever in Hampi and try to book a hotel from the Lonely Planet, just make sure you’re booking for the hotel you it says,  I think they’ve changed numbers) and they were lovely enough to let us stay in their rooftop café for free!  Which was amazing.  So we ordered a lot for dinner that night…  The rooftop café was amazing.   It was so nice to be able to look out under the roof to the stars and it was so comfy!   If I hadn’t been so tired and needed to fall asleep I would have appreciated it so much more! 

The next morning was another early one and other trip to the really clean, but really expensive, 10 rupees (okay yes, that is 10p but usually toilets here are 2), public toilets where all the local Indians were getting ready for their day.  It was Republic Day so we were greeted on the way in (after we had a waited for a really scary cow to move out the way of the door)  by a really excited man wishing us Happy Republic Day.  We planned to go on a coracle, well I didn’t, I’m not a fan of boats, but the others did.  However, the people who had the coracles were trying to charge them 400 rupees, far too much for a quick jaunt over the river.  So we just walked to other temple.  We just went to the one Sarah and I had been to because the other two hadn’t seen it yet.  While we were there we saw another ruined temple up a hill and decided to go and see it.  We maybe shouldn’t have gone up in the middle of the day with not much water but it was worth it for the view.  Despite my inelegance and lack of proper walking skills we all made it up alive!  And it was beautiful.  We could all the way across Hampi and it was amazing.  The terrain all the way around it really was incredible and all the ruins looked amazing from the top of the hill. 

Later that day we went out to the main working temple in Hampi which was really busy but it looked amazing.  And we think there may have been a wedding going on…  There was an elephant we could have been blessed by, Lakshmi, but she was a very smart elephant and knew when someone gave her less than 10 rupees so she wouldn’t bless you.  And with us all being tight, we just settled for looking at the elephant instead.  Then it was some shopping time!  Obviously.  But fun trousers are too hard to resist.  And after Sarah almost getting rabies from a monkey, we decided it was time for dinner.  At dinner we met a girl who was travelling India and then some more of Asia who had just finished in the north so we were grilling her on tips she had for when were up there.  It was actually remarkably helpful, thank you Becky!  Sarah and I had to run off to catch our bus a bit earlier than Tabs and Ruth so we had to say bye!  We’ve seen them so often in the last few months that it feels strange that we might not see them for a while!  So we’re currently planning a meet up at some point because going more than a few weeks is just going to be too hard! 

Lakshmi!  

So, the bus!  Well, when we booked it, it said it left from Hampi.  On the ticket it said our get on point was Hampi, I asked at a travel agent in Hampi and they said we could get on in Hampi.  However, when we got there, we discovered that it didn’t go from Hampi!  And our bus was due to leave in 10 from Hospet, half an hour away.  Thankfully, a lovely couple came to our rescue and phoned the bus company who said it would be okay, it would leave at half 8.  So after a rather fast rickshaw ride to Hospet we made it to our bus with plenty of time!  Now, sleeper buses seem like a great idea, but not when your bed is right at the back of the bus, so that you’re looking out onto all cars behind.  It was interesting though.  And I did manage to sleep, even if I was woken up every so often as I flew off the bed when the driver forgot to slow down to go over the bumps. 

We were dropped off at half four in the morning, a quick two and a half hours sleep at home, and back to school.  We are very dedicated to teaching I have to say.  Although not as dedicated as Tabs and Ruth who were getting into Tirupathi at quarter to 9 and were getting a rickshaw straight to school for 9. 

Pongal Holidays - We spent a long time in buses

After just a week back at school, we were off again!  It was a festival called Pongal, where they dress up cows and worship them.  A bit strange, but I’m not complaining, we got another week off! 

Sarah and I headed to Tiruvannamali first of all.  It’s a temple town about 2 and a half hours by bus from Chennai (according to the guidebook).  So four hours later, we arrived!  We stayed in a really nice hotel called Hotel Ganesh which was so close to the temple.  And the hotel was lovely.  After a breakfast of dosa the next morning, we headed out to the temple.  It’s a massive temple with lots of Gopurams.  (I just had to ask Sarah what they were called and for the spelling.)  It looks amazing and there are loads of carvings.  However, I’ve decided that temples aren’t really my thing.  I love to look at them from the outside and I think they look amazing, but going inside them isn’t that interesting.  I don’t know what it is but I just don’t get it.  I like the outside though!  This one at Tiruvannamali looked absolutely beautiful.  That night we headed out to restaurant because they had live music.  It was the quietest gig I’ve ever been to.  It was really good, just strange.  I don’t think I was hippy enough to fully appreciate it.  But it was really good! 

 A Gopuram.  I think..

 A very very quiet gig.  People were even sitting on the floor.  And they hadn't been drinking all evening.

The next morning we headed up the hill because apparently there were some good views.  Now, either we didn’t go up far enough or you had to climb on a tree because we didn’t see much!  We left Tiruvannamlai later that day and headed for Pondicherry again!  I love Pondicherry, despite it’s slightly expensive food.  But to be fair, the burger was only 4 pound and that was for a really good burger.  In Pondy, we met our friends Ruth and Tabs again and our friend Anna who we haven’t seen since training!  It was so good to see her and to hear another Scottish accent again!  You don’t realise how much you miss it until you don’t hear one for several months.  It was really nice to just wander around Pondy and just relax.  It’s a really pleasant place.  We went for dinner at a really nice restaurant and had some lovely cocktails and meat!  Which I was really excited over.  Then we just headed back to the hotel because everything in Pondicherry seems to shut at about half 10, so we just stayed in our hotel for the rest of the night.  The next day we decided to hire bikes, which turned out to be one of the best decisions we’d made.  So, led by Tabs, we cycled around Pondy!  It was really nice and a really good way to tan my lower arms…  Three of our other friends were arriving as well and then later Charlie and Zoe were there as well.  We were a massive group of 10 for dinner but it was really nice to be back with everyone. 

 Trying to be very French

 Very arty French photography thanks to Tabs

 "Follow me children!"

I was so excited about that burger I could hardly eat it.  

The next day, Sarah, Tabs, Ruth, Anna and I headed off to Mahabs!  I can’t say or spell the proper name so Mahabs is just going to have to do.   After a 2 hour bus journey and a few failed attempts at I Spy and Who I Am I, we arrived.  We dumped our stuff at the hotel and went out for a look around.  It was a really nice wee place with everything quite close together.  We visited a couple of the old ruined temples there which looked amazing.  They really were lovely. However there were far too many people about them!  Taking pictures of themselves with the temple or trying to take pictures of us, it wasn’t nice.  And it meant I couldn’t properly appreciate the ruins.  But it was fine, most of the time..  Back to the town for a wee bit of shopping (buying fun trousers) and out for dinner.  I got really excited because I thought “yes, this is a touristy place!  I can have meat and it’ll be safe!”  No.  I tried to order a beef sizzler and was told I couldn’t because it was “cow’s birthday.”  So no meat for Niamh.  Cow’ birthday is Pongal, just in case you thought it might be the birthday of the cow they were going to serve, thankfully not.  Ruth did suggest that I just go out and start ripping chunks off a cow in street but I decided that would have been frowned upon.   It was really nice not to really do anything but to just sit and chat with people who actually understood you when you nodded your head and didn’t wobble it when you meant yes.  But again we had to go back to teaching.  It was just as hard the second time around, although the teachers did seem happy we’d celebrated Pongal.  Although I didn’t have the heart to tell them I’d not done it the traditional Indian way…

 Shore Temple

 On one of our many bus journeys.  And the time Tabs discovered I wasn't very good at Who Am I?

 We just seem to attract people wherever we go.

 

The courtyard outside our hotel.  No big spiders this time.

Christmas Holidays!

So after finally getting my laptop working after far too long, I can now brag about all my holidays.  I was planning on doing them in a big long blog post but I realized I would probably write far too much and it would just be boring.  Although, I’m not sure how interesting three will be.

Over Christmas and New Year, Sarah and I had 10 days off school.   So after planning and replanning because of the lack of trains we’d finally decided on our itinerary!  So, straight after school on the 23^rd we headed to the train station and got on our first of many trains.  We arrived in Chennai at the horrible time of 4.30 in the morning.  I can confirm that Indian train stations do not get quieter at any point, it was still as busy as we’ve ever seen it.  We met our two friends Zoe and Charlie at the station purely by chance!  I just felt this tap on my shoulder and heard “excuse me madam” and I panicked a fair bit because I thought it was someone offering me a rickshaw.  But it was so good to see them because we hadn’t seen them since training!  We then had a long wait at the train station for our two other friends Ruth and Tabs.  Finally after 7 hours in Chennai Central, we were finally on our way.  We had rented an apartment for all of us to spend Christmas and it was amazing.  We had a washing machine! I washed all the clothes I had just because I could.  It was beautiful.  I may have even done a few loads on Christmas day.  My parents think that someone else is currently using my body.  The apartment also meant we could cook whatever we wanted.  Being able to eat “normal” food was the best Christmas present.  Maybe bar the washing machine.  We may have gone mental at the supermarket while shopping for Christmas dinner.  But the draw of cereal was just too much. Three of our other friends arrived later, Brittany, Anna and Natasha, and it got really exciting. 

Christmas Day was definitely not the traditional Christmas everyone knows.  I was woken up by Tabs flinging a toilet roll at me because I was still sleeping and she wanted to start Christmas.  We had secret santa presents under our “tree” (bamboo and palm leaves) and we all got to open them!  I got this terrifying baby bag that I’m still not sure what to make of it but it’s getting treasured now (thanks Zoe) and a blueberry muffin when we headed to the mall on Boxing Day.  After breakfast of cornflakes, we watched Frozen and everybody skyped home.  It was so strange to be talking to everybody at home while they were eating turkey, gammon, pigs in blankets, (can you tell I’m missing meat?) roast potatoes and all other normal Christmas food while we were cooking fajitas.  That was our Christmas dinner, fajitas.  But I’m not complaining because it was wonderful.  It was so good having everyone together though.  We could all talk about our projects and India and it was really nice to know that everyone was feeling the same about different things and having similar issues to what we were having.  And the common answer to everything that happened was “cause India”  and it’s true.   If anyone’s thinking about having a year away, yeah, Christmas is hard.  But it’s so different that you don’t even notice it and it’s not too bad.  You’ll always have next year as well and it’ll be just as you remember!

 Watching Frozen

 Our tree!!

Honestly, it was a lot nicer than it looked. It was one of the best meals I've ever had

A slightly long lie on Boxing Day then off to the mall!  We had a lovely western lunch and then just wandered around for an while in a nice air conditioned shopping centre!  After a boxing day dinner of pasta, we headed out to a club in Chennai called Dublin.  It was so different from a night out back home!  I’m not sure which one I prefer but being out in Chennai was definitely amusing.  And there was a bowl of free mints.  Which I think every club should have. 

Unfortunately, we all had to part ways on the 27^th.  It was really weird having to say goodbye to everyone again.  Sarah and I were heading on to Cochin in Kerala so that meant a 12 hour train arriving at the beautiful time of 3 in the morning.  Luckily we managed to find our hotel okay in Cochin so it was straight to bed.  Cochin is a really beautiful city.  And it’s a shame we were only there for the one day because it was really amazing.  But we were off again to Kumily!  We had to get a bus there and the guidebook promised us the journey should only take 5 hours. Almost 8 hours later we arrived.  In the middle of the night!  Which made it interesting trying to find our hotel.. But  it didn’t matter because Kumily was amazing.  It’s  lovely hill station, so it’s surrounded by tea plantations, spice gardens and a wildlife reserve.  Our friends Tabs and Ruth recommended that we ride and elephant and get a wash from an elephant so that was top of our list.  It was amazing.  It really was.  And I’m already to ride an elephant again.  It was so strange to be up that tall though.  You don’t realise how tall an elephant is until you’re perched on the top.  And getting a bath from it was amazing as well.  We had to sit on it then it sprayed us and it’s probably the best shower I’ve had in five months.  That night we went to a traditional Keralan dance thing.  Which was strange.  I’m not really sure how to describe it.  I think I enjoyed it but I really can’t say for sure.  And the pictures really don’t do it justice. 

We left Kumily pretty early because we had a full day of travelling in front of us the next day.  We got a bus down the mountain which was amazing.  It was beautiful looking down into the valley. But thankfully we got on early because loads of school kids got on as well and I would not have liked to be standing on that bus.  We arrived in Kottayam and went straight to the ferry terminal.  We got a two and a half ferry to Alleppey on the backwaters. The backwaters are beautiful.  They just have so much on them.  I would love to be able to explain them properly but I just don’t know how.  Hopefully the pictures at least show it a wee bit.

From Alleppy we headed on to our last stop for the holiday, Varkala.  We stayed at an amazing hotel called the Nine Planets Homestay which was in such a handy place and it was so clean!  With a normal shower as well.  Although Sarah did ask me where the bucket was the first time she went for shower.  We’ve gotten far too used to pouring water over ourselves.  However, we did find a massive spider in the bathroom.  Like the size of my hand massive.  It was not pleasant.  We had to ask to woman to come and get rid of it for us.  And it did come back on New Years Day.  Which was not nice when all you want to do it go to the toilet at 6 in the morning.  Thankfully, someone came along and dealt with it so it was not coming back!  Varkala was amazing.  It’s a beautiful beach resort right on the cliff with long beaches and lots of lovely shops and restaurants.  We spent every day on the beach doing absolutely nothing, occasionally going into the water when we got far too hot.  Eating Western food was delightful as well.  Normal breakfast food! Yay!  We ate at a lovely place called the Coffee Temple every morning, partly because it did cornflakes and bacon.  On Hogmanay we had dinner at a lovely Italian place where we met two Swedish girls.  They were really lovely and it was so nice to talk so more people!  New Year was strange as well.  We wandered around after dinner dodging men and fireworks trying to find somewhere to celebrate the bells.  It was also really strange wishing my mum and dad a happy new year when it was still another 5 hours away for them!  On the 2^nd our two friends Charlie and Zoe arrived! It was so nice to see them again even though it had hardly been a week!  But it was nice to just sit around and chat.  And then, on the 4^th, we had to leave.  It was actually really hard to leave because we’d had such a good and relaxing time that the thought of heading back to “normal” India just wasn’t fun.  We’d met so many nice an interesting people on our holiday, especially in Varkala and it was just strange to go back to somewhere where we would be stared at for being white and pointed at.  And going back to teaching after a holiday and 4 hours sleep was not particularly fun.