Thursday 2 July 2009

From teaching to eating - first experiences of India



Written by Emily Fischer - GapBreak 2009, India

India is so much fun but SO hot. It is currently about 45 degrees! We went and visited the schools and the orphanage yesterday, the kids are really cute! At the day-care centre they all came up and shook our hand and started singing. It was awesome. But then I asked them how old they were and the teacher responded “umm they don’t actually know how old they are!” They don’t keep records of their ages or anything, which is quite sad. As well as teaching English we’re going to try and teach them a bit of hygiene. They all get really sick because they don’t really understand that they should wash their hands or have showers or not eat dirt.

So our first class is tomorrow. The kids are mostly on summer holidays at the moment so we’ll only be teaching in the day-care centres and orphanages. I’m pretty excited but it’s going to be interesting because there are kids from 2-10 years old all in the one class.

The day-care centre and school we’re going to work at is a fair way out of the city. It’s in this little village where they all live in these traditional looking huts and buildings. It’s pretty awesome it feels like your going back in time or something because the community where we’re going is made up of people from the Gameti tribe who are farmers, so everything they have is really old and basic but it makes the village really traditional which is kind of good I guess because its less polluted than the city. When we drove past the kids ran out of their houses and waved and some of them followed the rickshaw. We only met some of the kids who go to day-care though because there was a religious ceremony in the village.

I thought I’d get culture shock really badly but so far it hasn’t really hit me that much. All the shops have the nicest stuff so I’m finding it hard not to spend all my money in the first week. The old city is smelly (I think most of the locals use the side of the road as a toilet?) and loud and really dirty but we all love it - the old buildings and the bright colours and completely different culture is stunning. Also the people are really friendly to us and very respectful. I feel really happy that we're living amongst them and not seeing India entirely from a tourist perspective.

Last night we went out for dinner and sat on a rooftop restaurant that looks over the lake palace and the city palace. The food was good but nowhere near as good as the food we get served in the house! Meenaji's cooking is amazing and she is lovely. She’s always smiling and friendly it makes the house seem so much homelier! The place where we went for dinner was pretty good though, we watched octopussy in the restaurant because it was filmed at the lake palace. The lake is actually dry at the moment but its still pretty. There’s a really nice temple in the old city. We’re learning heaps about Hinduism and a bit of the language as well! I only know 2 words at the moment though.

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