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Published: December 28th 2011
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12/6/11 First day of some physical labor! We are working for a few hours a day at the school for mentally-disabled children; the building is already constructed and we are priming/painting/creating colorful pictures/etc. While most of the group is doing this a few others prepare lesson plans and substitute teach at the "normal school". On Friday I will be teaching Literature to a class of 10-20 8th graders...I'm nervous!
Today we had our first lecture in Ayurveda and we will be having a lesson or practical each day. So far it is fascinating and the professor is extremely knowledgable and informative. The school where we are receiving our lessons is quite renowned for Ayurveda and some of the practicals we will be doing are the same as doctors-in-training. Not sure how I feel about this but we will even get a practical that will involve actual human cadavers!
12/9/11 Today Jae Qun and I taught Literature to a class of 8th graders, which was fun but challenging...much respect to my teacher friends! The boys were hyper and it was difficult for us to get them to focus while the girls were shy and it was hard to get them to answer
questions. Overall it was just really fun...I told them about the culture/politics/history of the U.S. and they educated me on some of their Indian leaders/religious traditions and so on...super smart kids. The boys were excited when I told them I taught kickboxing and they were begging me to show them some moves...I told them ok but that I do it only for exercise not for violence. (see video)
12/10 and 12/11 It's the weekend! which means we are free to do whatever we want as long as we return by Sunday eve. Anna, Susan, Maren, Karin, (aka Scotland, Canada, Germany, and Netherlands) and I decided to escape and rent a beach house for one night. We thought we would try and test our bus navigation skills but this did not work out so well; what should have been an hour trip ended up taking about 4 hours. We first got on the right bus but then were told inaccurate info and ended up getting on a bus that took us about an hour out of our way. Our bus patience was wearing thin (muni is heaven compared to buses in India!) so we opted for a rickshaw...the driver spoke
little English but said "yes" when we asked him to take us to Ezhara Beach bus stop. His rickshaw was meant to hold 3 people but he said ok to 5 so I volunteered to lay on the floor (see photo/video) and let the other gals squish in the seat. We went for about a 30 min ride and then came to a beautiful beach but there was no bus stop. It took a while but we finally figured out that he apparently thought that we just wanted to go to any beach! We then clarified that we needed to go to a certain address because we had a reservation, he said "fine" but he wanted a break first, so we hung out with him on the beach. A group of cheeky Indian boys found us and we had a good time with them singing some songs and answering questions about our home countries. Our driver then got a bit jealous of our new friends and said "we go now!" but instead of going he then wanted us to walk on the beach with him and take pictures. ahhh! Ok good times, so we finally got back on the road,
got lost a few more times and then finally made it to our destination 4 hours late... BUT it was oh so worth it once we finally arrived! We practically had a private beach and house to ourselves. The owner Hyacinth was a lovely host and cooked all our meals...amazing food and so much of it. The only drawback was I caught some yucky sickness the day before and what had started as a sore throat turned into a full blown viral infection 😞 so I spent much of the day in the bathroom or blowing my nose. Sitting on our beach you could spot dozens of eagles drifting in the sky... the next morning we even saw dolphins jumping around right by the shore. Overall it was lovely to escape our town for a day and take in some new surroundings.
12/13/11 Ok I'm getting a little tired of eating Indian food for all 3 meals everyday and only using my hands to eat... at first curry for breakfast was kinda yummy, but now I miss cereal and oatmeal, and good coffee, and eating salad. Also by looking at my feet I can't imagine them ever looking semi-clean again...I will spare you the picture but they are disgustingly dirty, we have little contests every night to see whose wins the dirty feet award, eww
Because the town we are living in only receives about 50 international visitors annually, we are treated like celebrities, or maybe circus freaks...and it feels very strange at times; people are always waving and saying "hello! Where you from? what is your purpose here?", also we are often stopped by teens and even adults asking to take our picture, then they want to pose and have someone take a picture that includes them, and then they want our email to send us pictures, and maybe be penpals, it's cute but it gets a little tiring... I have some "boyfriends" from the nearby engineering college who buy me ice cream and walk me to my school, it's actually nice cause I feel safer walking with them and I tend to get less people shouting at me for whatever reason...it's rare to see women walking alone here I guess.
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