Learning to bargain, India style. The first blog from our India GapBreakers

Well, here we are, at the end of our first week in Incredible India. Lauren, Maddy, Annie, Sophie, Hannah and I all arrived at the share house early on Monday morning, feeling very exhausted after nearly 24 hours of traveling. We had the first two days to ourselves, so we could rest, unpack and get used to the area. We’ve had a few orientation meetings as well as Hindi and cooking lessons.

On Wednesday we were lucky enough to visit the various places we would be teaching at, before we actually started the next day. Annie and I are teaching at Bedla Day Care Centre, the same place George and Bec (the two Australians who came here with Antips last month) were at. Annie and I are loving the little kids, but they are taking a while to warm to us, and don’t understand a lot of what we say. The other four are all teaching at the same school. Hannah has another day care, Lauren and Sophie have 1st grade, and Maddy has 3rd grade. They are all loving their kids and are having a great time teaching them. At both the schools and orphanage (which we visit in the evenings) the kids call us didi, which means big sister. So all day we have kids yelling “Carla didi” or “Maddy didi” at us. We’ve been very busy in our first week, with numerous shopping trips to the city where we’ve learnt the art of bargaining. There’s been a few trips out to lunch and dinner at local restaurants. We went to see our first Bollywood movie, Aarakshan, which was a lot of fun as the crowd was constantly clapping and cheering. We’ve experienced two Indian festivals already, Independence Day and Raksha Bandhan. On Independence Day, we visited a local disabled school where the children put on a performance for us. Unfortunately the heat got to me, standing in the sun and I fainted and had to go home, so didn’t actually see the show – but the others said it was great!! The other festival Raksha Bandhan (which celebrates the relationship between brothers and sisiters), was a lot of fun. We all went out to buy sari’s for the occasion. We visited the orphanage where we gave the boys bracelets and put red tikka on their heads. Other things that happened in the week were, Sophie unfortunately getting sick and being bed ridden for two days, Annie, Maddy, Lauren and I looking for a shop in the outskirts of the city and getting lost and walking around for about an hour completely clueless, getting Henna done, and learning how to make our own chai!!!

On Friday night we are dressing up in our sari’s again for a farewell dinner for some of the other volunteers who are leaving. Katie, Becca, Tom, Pratik, Lotta and Alisa have all helped us settle into the house so well and we will really miss them. Carla