India is now part of us!

COUNTRY: India
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Georgie McRae

Namaste,

All of a sudden, our final weeks are upon us, the whole 6 weeks have flown past and this incredible experience is now reaching its end. The final fortnight was jam packed with so much happening that there was no time to think about the fact that we would be leaving so soon. Our last weekend was our market marathon. Two whole days of haggling and running from shop to shop to make sure we all got enough goodies to bring back home. Intense, but so worth it. Hope the baggage allowance can make some exceptions! And after all, knowing our way around the markets, being on first a name basis with shop vendors who invite you to have chai, and ordering Golab Jamon from the inside of a rickshaw is definitely an experience that us and us alone will be able to remember from the time we lived in India. It was just another aspect of Indian life that made us feel so at home.

We were also lucky enough to share our last fortnight with Sue and Jill (Soup and Jelly according to the Orphanage boys), two English women doing a short-term medical project in the Orphanage & School. These two lovely ladies were like mothers to us and we loved them from the first day. As the day we would have to leave the kids reached us, we found that, of course, the whole lesson planning and teaching process became so much easier. We had finally found our routine and we had to leave!

Our final day teaching consisted of many photos being snapped, making chatterboxes, bracelets, cow masks, mandalas and blowing balloons & bubbles. Oh yeah, and a whole load of emotional teary eyes on our part! Those tears got even worse when two boys Bhursingh and Jeevan from the orphanage asked us when we were coming back, to which we all we could do was hug them and pray they were going to end up okay. Our last Saturday in India began by waking up side by side in the ‘Rec Room’ (lounge room) after having ‘commited a criminal offence’ (sleeping somewhere other than our own beds – shock horror!), then we got ourselves down to the City Palace and were amazed by the intricate designs left, right and center all over the building. Indians, are amazingly skilled!! After viewing the Palace, we rushed off to catch our van home.

Although, the rush was hardly necessary as we were late to lunch anyway – the traffic jam due to a wedding in the middle of the road made sure of that! A ‘Wedding Jam’ we called it. It was lovely to see though, all the people dancing and singing, with the groom on the white horse being blessed by multiple women. It was just the fact that part of getting through the ‘wedding jam’ included scraping up against a school bus that was about 2 centimeters away from the van that concerned us slightly. Talk about special awareness!

That night, Meena Ji, our cook, dressed us up in the Sarees we had bought earlier on in the week and we headed off for a delicious dinner on the lakeside, overlooking the Udaipur lake & the Lake Palace, also the full moon was a sight never to be forgotten.

Of course, our last day was filled with panicked packing frenzies on all of our parts. It’s amazing how much you can spread yourself and your belongings in just 6 weeks. Meena Ji also did henna on our hands, which were so beautiful and it helped us to feel just a little bit more Indian as we left. During our time here, India has taught us so much. We learned the importance of community, family, and group belonging. We learned that simplicity and selflessness is an art, and that happiness isn’t something you can pay for, something that the kids definitely taught us. Also that trust, (within reason of course) is invaluable when travelling.

Random acts of kindness and finding goodness in people can happen anywhere at anytime, and these may not happen unless trust is given to another. We also discovered that all people, no matter where they come from are the same at the core, even though we speak different languages and practice another culture; smiles are the same in every language. That is a fact.

As our final post, you wont be hearing from us again. India is now a part of us that we will never part with, and hopefully we will return one day to visit our Channel Youth family and this wonderful country. We hope the next volunteers will have just as many fantastic times as we did, and that they can continue to make a difference in these children’s lives.

Georgie, Lizzie, Bec & Sam