Indi-aaaah!

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I have no idea where to begin! We’ve been here a little over a week and everyday is full of so much but to some degree things are starting to feel somewhat normal…or maybe I’ve just completely forgotten what normal is!
Every morning begins with breakfast at 7am. We’re staying at a place called Mithra that is run by an Australian nun. It’s a school for children with physical and intellectual disabilities and is also connected to a massive church. At breakfast everyone is pretty quiet. We sit next to the sister who says grace and then we eat. We have broken away from the breakfast curry and I now have oats and sultanas and Tess and Darrel have muesli-Tess and I found curry for breakfast quite tough, Darrel however is exited about all the food options and tries a bit each morning. We have also been having toast in the morning which the lovely lady helping out in the kitchen prepares especially for us.
The next part of our day usually comprises of Darrel and I doing some kind of exercise circuit while Tess laughs at us (although I was struck down by a stomach bug and haven’t done that the past few mornings!). Alternatively we’ve opted to have an extra snooze in the morning, the uni students within are fighting the early morning wake ups!
We then attempt to catch an autorickshaw – regardless of whether its 6kms away we will be quoted between 100 and 300 rupees when we know it should only be 70 rupees. In the case that we are quoted a ridiculous price (which happens 99.9% of the time), one of us takes the role of the assertive person that states that that’s a ridiculous price, throws their hands in the air and walks away but not to fast because the driver will follow you and quote you a better price. This goes back and forth until we end up with a price that’s about 10 rupees more than we should be paying. We end up tired and slightly defeated while the driver has what seems to be a hilarious laugh at us with his driver mates!
We’ve explored quite a bit and have just begun visits to organisations. Our first visit was to a residential school for children with intellectual disabilities, then to an orphanage with 43 children all of which I’d like to adopt and to a girls home for street children. At the girls home we were given the opportunity to make fools of ourselves by showing the kids ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ while they impressed us with far better action songs!
We’re starting to become more familiar with the food but it’s been a slow learning process. I’ve been trying to stick to mainly dal to avoid delicious creamy curry goodness and have been eating only vegetarian stuff (however haven’t managed to avoid the delicious Indian sweets available everywhere).
On our second night we were sitting in our room (possibly contemplating our next meal…the most important conversation of the day) when we heard what we were sure was either a gunshot or a bomb. We all sat there looking at each other, no idea what to do if Chennai was in some kind of war we were unaware or if someone had decided to shoot up a philanthropic prganisation and decided Mithra was the place to be! We heard another ‘shot’, a little bit of wee came out. We didn’t want to leave the room in case we became obvious targets for whoever was going on this rampage of death. We continued to wait in silence until we got up the nerve to glance out the door. It was fireworks, gunshot-sounding fireworks, we didn’t laugh until about 20 minutes later when the shock had worn off.
That’s just a snippet of our week in Chennai, India. I’m sure there will be many more adventure to inform you about next week!

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Comments

[G-Funk]

Fabulous
Hi sweetheart, I've just started reading your blog - hilarious - can you rememebr to get me some harem pants and crazy Indian jewellery and a silver spice rack - you have failed to mention this in your blog but I know they're available - get cracking!!! ;o) I miss you so much but am v jealous -this experience sounds awesome and is only the start of your adventure... loves ya honey x x