COUNTRY: India
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Bec Farquhar
Namaste!
After only being here for a few weeks we already know that India will be part of us for life.
The people and children especially, have touched our lives in so many ways we don't even know where to begin. Since we started teaching last Thursday we've already noticed that the Grade 1 students have made significant progress, which has made our experience so far much more rewarding and worthwhile. For example Bharat, a student at Aakharia (our school) had an initial written testing score of 10 out of 26 for the alphabet. He was reassessed one week later and surprised us all when we found he could now write A-Z unassisted.
To add to that, they greet us daily as "Didi" (big sister) with the biggest smiles on record and high fives all round. Our students are mostly around the age of six, but we also find that siblings as young as three often join the class due to lack of daycare in the village.
An "average" day in India consists of:
- Morning Yoga at 6am
- An abundance of incredible Indian food (we can't imagine how we've gone this long without chapati with every meal), cooked by our house Mum/Legend cook Meenaji. Her comforting meals make our mouths water and our nose happy and lets not forget her motherly hugs of a morning.
- A scenic view as we wash our clothes on the roof of our three story house.
- Our invaluable time teaching daily at the school & boys orphanage
- Hindi lessons
- Designated Chai time at 4.30pm
Winter is certainly ever present here in Udaipur, the unexpected five degree nights came as a shock. It is hard to imagine the heatwave that is happening back at home in Australia.
Two weeks have passed and we can comfortably say that this is our second home and we are already regretting that we didn't sign up for longer. (Sorry everyone back home - we still love you). The four of us, plus our wonderful Pankaj (punky) "not a tour guide" have got to know each other so well already that it is hard to believe that we only met a few weeks ago.
Our first of many weekend trips began at Pushkar, only a six and a half hour drive on the "calm and orderly" roads of India. It's a scenic location surrounding a holy lake with a wonderful market filled with treasures of all shapes, sizes and colours that drained our spending allowance just a little.
On Sunday morning we hiked up a mountain to a temple at the top overlooking Pushkar to watch the sunrise. We lost count of the amount of steps we climbed in the freezing cold before realising that somebody had to carry a fridge on their head up the mountain for the cafe! Meanwhile, we complained about carrying little more than a camera. As we sipped Chai and salty-sweet Indian biscuits the sun rose and the view was quite surreal.
Most recently we celebrated Indian New Year and Lohri festival (festival of fire) with the boys orphanage. This experience introduced us to the importance of music and dance in the Indian culture. Also this weekend we look forward to being a part of a three day campaign where we will distribute free polio drops to children, ensuring that India will reach its goal of completely eradicating polio by 2015.
Stay tuned for more of our exciting Indian adventures, until next time!
Lizzie, Sam, Bec and Georgie
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