Kylie's Birthday 24/10/09

We woke up early so that we could catch the train to Mumbai but when we got onto Alandi Road there were no rickshaws :O Then once we had finally found on and got to the train station it turned out that the train was canceled :/ Instead we decided to go to Koregaon Park for the day. We headed to the German Bakery for breakfast and I had a beast of a cinnamon roll which was a delicious. After having a nice breakfast we went to see if Osho had re-started their silent tours after the swine flu, which they had!!! Unfortunately they didn't start until 9am so we went and read our books whilst sitting on the wall. Whilst we were engrossed in our books a HUGE monkey flew out of the tree we were sitting under, which gave us a bit of a shock I have to say. Osho seemed to be a very tranquil place and I was glad that we got to have a look around. For the rest of the morning we strolled around Koregaon Park and manged to find Kylie a fab chocolate cake before we headed off to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. In the evening we had a little party for Kylie which was really nice :)

23/10/09

This morning we made mobiles which went much better than before as we had prepared samples of what they should make. The time flew by and I was shocked when I looked up at the clock and realised it was lunch time :O Sai Baba brought lunch for the children today which meant they got a good meal, they even got some bananas. We also put the letters of the English alphabet (we made a while ago) up on one of the pillars in the site. As usual I went outside and played games with the children, whilst we waited for them to be collected by their parents. Today we even had a digger right next to the creche I think UK health and safety would have a field if they saw the conditions of our site. In the afternoon we finished off making the mobiles and played some party games such as pin the tale on the donkey and duck, duck, goose. A thoroughly enjoyable day :)

22/10/09

Back to work :) I have to admit I've missed the children and all the fun we have at the creche. Today we decided to paint self-portraits which didn't pan out how we had planned but we ended up with some lovely paintings of Spiderman, Mickey Mouse and other unknown images. We also did some English work in the afternoon and spent the last part of the day playing games :) It was a fantastic day to begin the last stage of our work, we only have 13 days left now :(

Trip back to Pune 20th-21st Oct 09

Well we were told that our bus departed Mapusa at 5.30pm so we were cutting it fine as we wanted to catch the local bus but taxi's were 5 times the price and I also enjoy catching the bus. So once we got to Mapusa after worrying we would be late (we were right on time by the way) we found out that there wasn't a bus leaving until 7.30pm and we had been told the wrong time :0 to make matters worse our travel company hadn't phoned up to confirm our seats, thankfully we were able to work it out so it was all ok. This meant we had to find a place to stay for 2 hours and as Mapusa has literally no cafes and restaurants around the bus station we ended up relaxing in Baskin and Robbins, in the end everything turned out fine and we spent our time reading until we had to get on the bus. The bus ride went really quickly and we arrived in Pune before I knew it. It was really nice arriving just as the sun began to rise, almost peaceful as there were fewer vehicles on the road. As my bag was in the hold I rushed out to grab it only to find that it was damp and smelt like fish, it appeared that someone was transporting fish in the hold and when the ice melted the water had run onto my bag = bag and cloths stinking of fish :( not really what I wanted to wake up to, only up side is we managed to get meter price from the bus station back to Sangam (rickshaw drivers usual try to get as much out of you as possible as they assume you a tourist and don't know any better, which is extremely annoying when you live locally and know exactly how much the ride should cost) So on returning to Sangam I got straight to laundry, even before having breakfast, and I ended up trying to wash the fishy smell from my bag and clothing for the rest of the morning :( with an hours stop for my Hindi lesson. The day got worse when me and the Sweds went to buy train tickets to go to Agra only to find that they were sold out :( it really wasn't my day. But at the end of the day things seem to have picked up; we have a travel agent looking at alternative forms of transport and my cloths and bag no longer smell of fish YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goa 16th - 20th Oct 09

It's been crazily busy here but thankfully me and the other volunteers got a little holiday for the Diwali period, so we decided to head down to Goa. We caught the over night busy which turned out to be better than I expected considering it was a 12 hour journey. We arrived in Mapusa in the early hours of the morning and decided to have a mini adventure and caught the local bus to Anjuna (the place where we were staying) Unlike the buses in Maharashtra the signs were in both Konkani and English which made it much easier to know which one to get on to. Once we had freshened up we headed out to check out our surroundings and the BEACH!!! It was a lovely area, with stalls and restaurants paving the way to the beach - this meant we never ran out of places to eat and there was always something new that might take your fancy - I'm rather worried about how I'm going to fit everything in my bag :S The closest beach was beautiful soft golden sand and a fantastic view but unfortunately as soon as you sat down for a relax you were surrounded by women trying to sell you stuff that you just didn't want to buy. We were literally surrounded by about 10 women who just wouldn't leave us alone and once they did every so often they would come back and try again GRRR Another down side to the beach was that the sea was full of rocks which were the same colour as the sand which meant we came out with a fair few scrapes and bruises :( The next day we decided to go to another beach which was a bit further away - although it didn't have the same soft sand it was much more secluded, with very few hawks and an amazing sea, it was pure bliss. On our last full day we decided to visit Old Goa and Panaji which was interesting - we caught had to visit catch the bus to Mapusa, then to Panaji and then another one to Old Goa, for the total cost of 60Rs return (thats under a Pound) We explored Old Goa and visited a few of the churches which were very grand, we even saw the resting place of St Francis Xavier, although I don't have an interest in religion I'm always find religious places of worship interesting regardless of the religion. The heat of the day put the others off so they headed back to the guest house, but me and Kylie were still going strong and eager to stroll around Panaji which was a lovely little town next to the river. On our last day we did some last minute shopping and relaxed at a cafe by the sea - wonderful. The whole trip was fantastic Goa as a place was very different from Pune, which was a refreshing change. There is a Portuguese influence throughout Goa both religious (as the one of major religions is Christianity, for example Old Goa has 11 churches) and architecturally.

13/10/09

We had today off instead of Wednesday so that we could visit the sari factory with the trefoil ladies. It was amazing to see how a sari is made from such small threads of cotton and becomes piece of inter. Most of the work is done using machines but there are people manning them to ensure threads don't get tangled. In the afternoon me and kylie made a happy Diwali sign for our creche which turned out better than expected :)

12/10/09

Linnea came with me and Kylie to our site today as Door Step School was closed for Diwali (Door Step is another of Sangam's partner organisations which CVPs like me work at) In the morning we started of with the alphabet and then did some work on India using flash cards with images of major landmarks, such as the Taj Mahal in Agra. During lunch we put our amazing sign up and in the process also moved the birds we made :) In the afternoon we started to make Diwali decorations such as lanterns and other hangings. At the end of the day the creche had really started to brighten up with all the new added decoration. On the way back to Sangam we caught a rickshaw that is more like a minibus than a rickshaw (people can hop on and off at anytime) this meant that we had loads of extra leg space as we were the only people in it :) for a while anyway.

10/10/09

Me and Kylie joined the Trefoil, who are on an event at Sangam, when they went to visit the Buddhist Meditation centre. The trip was really interesting, we had a presentation on a programme they run there, which aims to bring equality between castes - especially Dalits (untouchables who clean up human excrement). They work with the most marginalised and exploited communities of untouchables to help them to develop the strength to overcome the conditioning of castes which keeps them in the old derogatory jobs. We were showed a short filmed which was produced to show that 'sweepers' (untouchables who are made to pick up human excrement) are still being forced to 'sweep'. The images were shocking - even though some of the workers wore rubber gloves this didn't prevent crap from flowing over the top. The work they are doing is brilliant for example they are trying to create a strong network of Dalit women leaders who can fit against those who appose their right to equality. Whilst we were at the centre we also took part in a mediation class which was nice - although my foot did go a bit numb after being cross legged for so long but are well I still felt very relaxed :)

9/10/09

We decided to have a crafts day and spent the morning making mobiles out of straws and paper flowers. In the end the children threaded the straws on to the sting and then started drawing pictures - it seems that everything we plan changes a little bit but it never really matters as the children enjoy themselves and that's what counts. In the afternoon we made lanterns in preparation for Diwali. The children were thrilled as it was another activity involving cutting - they absoluteness adore using scissors and glue :) So now our creche is filling up with colour which is wonderful.

8/10/09

Busy morning - we decorated letters to make a sign for mobile creche, using colouring crayons, glitter and sparkles which everyone really enjoyed - including me and Kylie :) In the afternoon we attempted to make letters out of play dough but it didn't pan out how we had planned and we ended up making whatever we liked. The girls made kitchen utensils such as chapatti rollers, tables, bowls etc. One girl even made a bowl filled with chapattis :) One girl was teased about the size of her chapatti roller as it was huge which was rather amusing. We also attempted to play pairs with the younger children but it turned into a bit of a frenzy with all the children snatching the cards of each other (which were by this time covered in play dough) - so I ended up collecting the cards and played some other games instead. After work me and Kylie went in search of bus tickets for Goa. With the aim of getting the lowest prices we went down a row of travel agents - it was rather a long process as they had to ring up to find out prices using about 3 phones at once :O This meant that there was a large amount of noise in very a very small hot room = rather stressful and after going into a fair few shops it ended up being the 1st one which was the cheapest :/ After finally getting the tickets (YAY everything is sorted for Goa) we went to the train station to buy tickets to go to Mumbai for Kylie's birthday - we were in the queue for ages and when we eventually got back to Sangam we wanted to laminate the letters we made early. This meant we didn't sit down to have dinner till 9pm so it had been a rather long day but a very productive one - plus our sign looks ace.

7/10/09

After Hindi we went to visit a local school which was interesting. The school teaches primary, secondary and college so the building was huge to accommodate for all the children. We went into one class and they re-sighted poems to us which was nice. In the evening me and Kylie made play dough for tomorrow.

5/10/09

We made people paper chains this morning which went down a real treat as the children love any opportunity to cut things (nearly as much as they enjoy painting I'd say) I also got them to colour them in and we ended up chains of men and women in colourful cloths, until they decided, are well lets just cut them up as I want to do some more cutting - it did make me laugh. Even though we didn't end up with anything to hang in the creche the children really enjoyed themselves which is the main thing :) The computer bus was here again, which is a bit unusually as we hadn't had it for nearly 2 months and now its been 3 time in 2 week, not that I'm not complaining its great for the children. So whilst the older ones were on the bus I stayed with the younger children and helped them to cut and colour in. One girl has a cast on her arm and I didn't want here to be deprived of using scissors so I held the paper - her face lit up when she cut the paper :) She nearly cut me by mistake a few times but I came away without any major injures so it's all good. In the afternoon Ezster came to visit and we made pompoms which was great fun, all the children were running around with pompom necklaces by the end of the afternoon :) We went back to Ezster's after work for hot chocolate and ice cream, luckily we managed to get there before it started to rain and rain it did, buckets and buckets full. It eventually stopped which we were in the middle of our hot chocolate but then as soon as we got up to leave there was another huge down pore. To delay going into the teeming rain we popped in to say Happy Birthday to Kirti (our yoga teacher) and Karmeny (Kirti's twin sister) who live in the same block of apartments as Ezster. They were thrilled to see us and we ended up getting way layed with food which was delicious but meant I didn't have much room for dinner. We managed to catch a rickshaw for 20R (you should be amazed they usually attempt to charge 60R as the distance is so small and it was dark) he possibly took pity on us because of the rain :) On the ride home I got splattered with several drops of rain but then the run from the rickshaw to Sangam made me absolutely drenched - it was rather flooded with massive puddles that you couldn't edge around as they all merged into one. Me and Kylie also managed to terrify Atool when we ran into Sagam laughing like loons and covered in water hehehe

4/10/09

Breakfast was included so we were up and ready by 7.30 so we had plenty of time to explore Elephanta - unfortunately the rain hadn't stopped and it looked like it had set in for the day, which meant there was another change of plan. We decided to catch the bus to Mani Bhavan, a house which Gandhi use to stay in and has now been converted into a museum all about Gandhi's life. Although it was only small it was very interesting and I was very pleased we went to see it, unfortunately it hadn't taken up much time so we still had a rather large chunk of time until the train home which we needed to fill. So we caught a cab to the cinema to check out what was showing, but there were only Hindi movies without subtitles showing which the Sweds weren't keen on = we went in search of the Oxford bookstore the largest bookshop in Mumbai. I have to admit it was nice to be in a bookshop as it reminded me of home. Even though it doesn't compare to Wenlock Books it was still a nice environment as you were able to browse and have a piece of cake and lemonade at the cafe at the same time - brilliant really. Eventually we left the shop to go and get some lunch - I have to say that I had one of the best lunches ever, a huge pitta bread filled to bursting with humous, falafal and salad, it was delicious. Even though it was still raining we decided to go for a work, which was really nice

Mumbai day 1 - 3/10/09

We found the train easily enough but finding the right carriage was a bit of a problem as for some unknown reason D1 wasn't inbetween D2 and C4 but all the way before C1, some unknown logic I'm sure. The train ride went smoothly I just sat and read my book most of the way, which was nice as I don't have many opportunities to do that at Sangam. As soon as we got to Mumbai we hopped into a cab (there aren't any rickshaws allowed in the centre of the city) and went to our hostel to drop off our bags. Poor Katsuko looked rather shocked at our room, she'd never stayed in a hostel before and I expect she is use to staying in hotels but she didn't complain and was amazed by the cost - 279R which is about 3 pounds 70 (which is cheap for Mumabi but expensive in relation to the rest of India). We went straight to the Gateway to India as we wanted to catch a boat to Elephanta Island. We found out that the ferries stop running if it starts to rain and as it looked like it was going to tip it down we decided not to risk getting stranded, so we headed to a restaurant for a bit to eat and a rethink. Me, Sara and Linnea decided to go to an art gallery whilst Kylie, Katsuko, Jane and Arielle went to the Prince of Wales museum. The art gallery was fabulous with a great range of pieces from paintings to sculptures all of which were very different as there were several artists in the exhibition. I have to admit there a few pieces I really wanted to buy but 1. I wasn't sure how I would get them home 2. I'd budgeted myself and left my debit card at Sangam so I wasn't tempted :( All the artists whose work was in the exhibition were actually there when we were looking around and some of them explained the ideas behind the painting which was really interesting. 1 of the artists took us to meet everyone as he wanted to introduce us to everyone :S it was really nice as they were all thrilled that we had spent so long looking at their work (it was a small exhibition but we had spent over an hour looking around) and they encouraged us to go Kolkata as that's where they are all from. For the rest of the day we browsed the bazaars and strolled around Colaba - we were asked a few times if we wanted to be an extra in a Bollywood movie which would have been rather amusing but it meant being out till 6am and we wanted to be on form for tomorrow. The rain that we were expecting came down with force in the evening, there were huge thunder storms which felt like they were right above us :S

Gandhi's Birthday 2/10/09

As the creche wasn't open me and Katsuko went to visit Door Step in the morning, this site on which Linnea and Sara work. Door step is another CVP project that offers after school help to children and has a school on wheels for street children. The children seemed more calm than our lot, it may have been because there was fewer off them but we were able to do puzzles and play games without any snatching or screaming (which is usually the case at our site) We also sang songs and did some dot to dot colouring in. When me and Katsuko went to catch a rickshaw home we found that Atool's dad, who had driven us in morning, had been waiting for us, which was really nice as he didn't even want any extra money but Katsuko was rather insistent :) Didn't do much for the rest of the evening just packed for MUMBAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1/10/09

As it's Gandhi's Birthday tomorrow there is a national holiday (which means that mobile creche is closed) we decided to have a fun day as a bit of a celebration. In the morning we made friendship bracelets. There was a bit of a frenzy actually making the bracelets as all the children wanted string at the same time which was rather intense but at least I new they were interested in the activity :) The children had a big lunch today as the same people who gave food to Katsuko's site brought a meal to ours. I think its a fantastic act of charity as the children get a decent meal with the chance to have 2nds, 3rds and some even have a 4th helping. I find the work mobile creche does so inspiring as it provides a haven for the children, supplying them with 3 meals a day and the opportunity of informal education which can help the in later life - it's fantastic. In the afternoon we made paper hats which turned out to be even frantic and crazier than making friendship bracelets - one thing I didn't think was actually possible. Eventually the children calmed down - after all 50 of them had a hat and some even fell asleep ahhhhhhhhhhh All the excitement rather took it out of them.

30/09/09

We had a Hindi lesson as usual and learned how to say times and practiced our rickshaw ride conversation which was fun. After our lesson we had to quickly catch a rickshaw to the polytechnic at the Muslim girls orphanage, where we were going to take part in a craft workshop. Kylie, Katsuko and Linnea decided to do tie dying whilst I did candle making (Sara wasn't feeling to well so she stayed at Sangam - unfortunately it the bug is still going around, I just hope I don't get it) Candle making was a bit lame as all I, well actually all the teacher did was pour melted wax into molds whilst I watch not brilliant really. Really random molds as well - a pineapple and a clown. However, she did show me how to make was flowers which were beautiful and relatively easy to make when you get the trick to making the petals. As candle making didn't take very long I was also able to do some tie dying which I always enjoy. On the whole the day was really enjoyable and relaxing, even though it was slightly tedious having to take undo all the knots after tie dying - I had used really small beads and lots of them = it took a very long time to undo them all but the end product made it all worth while. I had my first experience of an Indian train station in the afternoon - we went to buy tickets for a trip to Mumbai this weekend!!! Even though we had to queue for a while it wasn't so bad apart from when you wanted to went to the rickshaw stand. A mass of 20 or so men came up to use all saying 'My rickshaw Madam, mine' slightly overwhelming but we quickly got away when a guy from the crowd said Sangam = more likely to get home. It was a rather amusing ride home as by some amazing coincidence we drove past the drivers brother, who was on his motorcycle driving along next to us - freaky or what. I decided to stay in and have a relaxing evening rather than go out with some of the others, I felt rather drained of energy and just wanted to watch a film - turned out to be a really nice evening spent with Priyanka, who practiced Mehendi on me :)