Day 26: Traffic, Traffic and More Traffic...

---

The traffic jam from Maya Puri to Zakhira made me late this morning. One stretch of road was at a stand still for about half an hour, and whilst sat in the auto, I couldn't help thinking how crazy the traffic is! Bikes and motorbike drivers dodge around the bigger vehicles, through puddles and even on to pavements to get to the front of the traffic queues, and autos and cars swerve in and out of the paths of buses and trucks, then the strange 3 wheel "public carriers" just make lots of noise and get in the way...
Yesterday's half an hour of rain left huge puddles behind, and the few drops of rain just added to the chaos!
So I finally arrived at Zakhira, with Phoebe, the new Asha employee with me (having a Hindi speaker on board make Auto rides a lot easier!) and discovered that teaching kids about the weather is difficult! What makes it more difficult is that some kids, especially the girls, are unwilling to interact with me, and just nod and look confused when I put something they don't get on the board! I don't think any of my lessons today were similar, I really struggled to gauge how much the kids understood, and thought it would be pointless getting them to copy down words which they can't even distinguish.
So I just about went through the months with them, gave up trying to link weather and temperature with the different times of year, and moved onto the days of the week! I will recap the weather tomorrow.
At lunch I was called into the computer room, where Phoebe was sat with some kids, and they all tried to get me to sing to them! I chickened out though, but did join in when they sang the wheels on the bus!
I had a small nap (unintentional!) at lunch time and ate my plain rice which I hurridly prepared this morning.
I actually had a whole seven girls in my last class (I am sure I get new kids every day) and their understanding is a lot better, and they can read and write well. The only trouble is that they insist on having conversations with each other in Hindi, and when I tell them to be quiet, or talk in English, they say "sorry, no talk" and are quiet for 5 minutes, then start talking in Hindi again!
The auto ride home took forever, because of all the left over water and resultant mud causing all sorts of road difficulties. Phoebe got out at a metro station, and I did the last part of the journey on my own. Halfway back, in the middle of arranging where and when to meet everyone, my phone died! So by the time I got back to the office they had left. I went across the road and attempted to get an auto: the first guy wouldn't take less than 50 rupees, but luckily the next guy accepted 30 rupees (after I walked away three times!) and I got to Priya pretty easily in the end. (This was the first time I had asked for and negotiated a price on my own, big step for me! ~only a month after I arrived...) We all went to Cafe Coffee Day for our ETV (English Teaching Volunteers) meeting, and I met the two new volunteers, another Brit called Vikki, and an Indian girl called Aditi. I stocked up on my Western food (Pop tarts and marmite!) and bought McDonalds on the way back to the auto and we had a nice quiet ride back to the flat. Only Cayla and Emily managed to have a mini disco in their auto, as the driver was blasting the Backstreet Boys, and flashing lights in his auto!
I'm having a relatively early night, after preparing some colouring sheets for tomorrow's lessons!
Dhanyavaad (thank-you)

---