First Blog!

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I've finally sat down and decided that today I will start my travel blog. I wish I'd started this sooner, as I'd like to include Burundi and KL as well as other minor adventures, but don't know if I'll vere find the time or motivation. Due to a rather problematic dial-up connection and large images I may have to leave uploading photos until I get home, though...
I would like to introduce this as a witty, amusing and entertaining record of my travels but I imagine it will just be a brief outline of what's been happening as I am already dreading having to back-date everything by at least a month!
Right now I am in Bandla, near Palampur in Himachal Pradesh, a mountainous region of Northern India. It is incredible here, with views of the Himalayas and other amazing scenery. I am teaching at Malanta Primary School in the mornings - English and Maths (although I tend to stick mainly to English, having forgotten most of my GCSE maths), to class four (aged 8-9). In the afternoons I do community surverys, visiting local people's houses and collecting data for future development work and support. After that I take an after-school supplemetary English class with 14 year-olds at the High School. The teaching is quite challenging work, but in an enjoyable way.
We work 6 days a week normally, but have two full weekends off during our time here, so have taken the opportunity to travel around a bit as well.
Hopefully so exciting stories of crazy adventures will appear here soon, but for the moment I have only just got the feeling back in my feet after getting really cold (sitting here is a ski jacket, scarf, woolen tights hiking socks...), and am exhausted so will try and get an early night. Although it's quite hot during the day still, the temperature really drops at night, and our house isn't full constructed yet and so is freezing. The top floor is still being built so we effecticely don't have a roof and the builders aren't the most motivated bunch. Or skilled as it appears from such unique features as the wall at the end of the corridor next to my room, where the space left for the door-frame doesn't actually correspond with the fitting, leaving about an inch all round...In the next entry I may detail for those unfamiliar the joys of the Indian obsession with extra light-switches. And after that health and safety and the minor feat of actually getting to my work place...
Just to finish, I love India and cannot believe how lucky I am to be working here. Everyday the scenery is still as breath-taking as it was on the first. I have met some amazing people - within the group (although I often feel alot more affinity with the Indian culture than those who seem to want to recreate the UK in rural India), our project exectuives and people along the way. The spirituality here is astounding and in India religion truly is alive. Life is more open.
Life changing moment of the week: when I grow up, I want to BE a mountain.

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