Deepvali/French Politicians/Water incidents and Chapattis

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Thursday (Karnataka Independance day) Holiday!!!!!!!! Im starting to like the ammount of holidays India has as it tends to mean we might get a day off work, as they celebrate Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddist festival days and all the Independance days along with politicians birthdays and deaths! So we had a whole day to do our washing and to relax, which was really good, well apart from the washing! In the evening we went to Majella's as there was a power cut, and there she was feeding us loads of sweets she had been cooking and potato bhajis, and of course Chai, we then went back to our flat had dinner, and then were called around to our neighbours house as it was there 8 year Wedding Anniversary, so we all prayed for them and then had CAKE!!! we are having lots of cake here as it costs 10p a slice, which is pretty good if its been a tough day, or a good day, or...... We were then just chatting with the family and friends, of course its impossible to escape so we kept looking for a loophole as we were quite tired and it was about 10:30pm but then Karrobie the mother started dishing out the Byriani, we tried to refuse but she then disappeared and then came back with a slightly smaller plate piled high, it was really embarrasing because we didn't want to be rude so we started making our way through the byriani, which we have found so far to be quite difficult as it is very spicy and they use everything on a chicken for the meat, although Karrobie knew we had just eaten a very large meal, we had to keep on eating. By the time we managed top escape, we had eaten so much I was sick. The things we do!

On Friday we didn't really have any work as all of the office went to the new Oasis project for the day of prayer and fasting, this is in a rather dodgy area of Bangalore, where there are "gangsters" and it is a Hindu and Muslim community where they always fight against each other, the building was given to Oasis by the government and one side is a Muslim burial ground and on the other is a Hindu burial ground. Our GAT team was given a briefing before we set off in the jeep with about a hundred other people, that we had to go straight inside and weren't allowed to be on our own as its really dangerous, so off we go feeling a bit like celebritys but when we get there its completly fine! Problem was when we did get there we learnt that there wasn't any toilets and this was about 11am and we had not been told this before and we were going to be here for the rest of the day until the evening, so we made our comments to Summangla and then discovered most of the other women were in the same situation (desperate for the loo) so she disappeared for a bit came back and had arranged for the neighbour to allow us to use his outside loo (in a little shack) so we had a giant que and everyone was queing up on the street to get in and whilst we were waiting a random old man was walking by with his family and grabbed his granddaughter and shoved her into my face and was telling me to take her, I think he was trying to sell his grandaughter! A good frown informed him I wasn't impressed so he went on. The prayer and fasting was really good and we were able to hear lots about everyones projects and at the end we all had sandwichs and pepsi! It was a good thing I'd been fed loads the night before as we would have been hungry otherwise as we haddn't known before that it was fasting. On the way back Alannah had a lift on Majella's scooter and we were packed into the jeep again which was quite fun as everyone was very bubbly, but it was a bit worrying watching Ali, as the passanger on the bikes don't get helmets and we were a bit worried if there was going to be anyone who didn't like white people as she stood out like a saw thumb with her blonde hair and bright pink top, it was quite good fun as we kept having conversations across the jeep Maj's scooter and another one which had Penny on. One disturbing bit though was when we had got into the jeep the traffic was moving very slowly and then we saw there was a big group of men with drums and were throwing fire crackers and dancing, there was also a group of men carrying a stretcher covered in flowers thinking it was another of there deepvali festivals with an idol on it however when we were alongside we realised it had a dead old man stretched out, not covered like the previous funerals we have seen where the body is rapped in linen this guy was just there for everyone to see! And it wasn't a pretty sight. hmmmmm.

La Weekend
This weekend we explored "Indian culture" meeting up with Ria who we met from All People's Church, we all went along to a theatre for a charity dance show. When we arrived and went through to the auditorium some of the ushers told us to go and sit at the front in the middle, so when we got to the front we found that the seats had been reserved for VVIP's and Sponsors, but they told us to sit in them anyway. The first few dances were quite interesting but then it developed into dances worshiping the Hindu gods, which were a) rubbish and b)boring, and at the start of one of the dances there was a power cut so the host came out and was apologising and quote of the evening "how ironic that it ahas occured whilst we are worshipping xxx god who overcomes all obstacles". we were also entertained by classical music with no words but a man continually singing and the host kept appearing at the end and saying "how entranting I do believe I was transported to another world" and "it was truly mesmorising" which would have been ok but within the course of about an hour she repeated it about 15 times. about an hour in our row of seats were joined by some other western people who we thought oh they are probaly just business men, but after that performance the host announced them as being Valérie Pécresse the French Minister for Higher Education and Research, we then fewlt pretty good sharing our seats with the French minister, although most of her entourage kept falling asleep during the performances and then they snuck out half an hour later. Afterwards we wwent to MG Road and Ria treated us to a Chinese which was very nice, and has valet parking.
That morning we also had a slight water incident, as our tank which stores all our water had run out, and of course it ran out half way through Alannah's shower= hair full of shampoo and no water, now I had to go and fix it but the problem was I hadn't done it before so I didn't know what I was supposed to do, so Alannah in her towel rapped her blanket over herself and came out on the balcony with me and was coaching me through what I had to do with the fuse box and pipes, this would have been fine apart from our next door neighbours kids were playing hide and seek with the boy who lives downstairs, so sneeking out of the flat we run right into the little boy, who is struck with utter horror at seeing Ali with wet hair, which is seen as quite bad here and obviously with nothing on under her blanket, the boy is like a rabbit caught in the headlights, Ali is also frozen, eventually the little boy (9) runs away, im pretty sure he ran away to cry! It was probably not what he was hoping to see on his Saturday morning, to say the least we haven't seen him since!

Sunday we tried Hope Chapel, which is a church just around the corner to us, so no Rick and we don't have to get up too early. The Worship was really good and the hour and a half sermon was excellent! So I think we may be looking to come back here often. After the service we all gathered upstairs on a building site, well it is still in the process of being built so we were standing amongst heaps of dirt and rubble, but we got chatting to some of the people so that was good. Afterwards we went to Fame for lunch, splashing out having starters as we hadn't spent much of our weekend food budget, it was a refreshing change eating pasta and garlic bread from rice, and then we finished off sharing a sundae between the three of us.


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At the moment all of the Hindu's are celebrating Deepvali so we have the constant sound of fire crackers being lit in the street by little boys, from the middle of the night too 7am, and there has also been bands in the street outside our little Deepa bakery (which is now trying to over charge us for everything so we are planning to deprive them of our business for a week or two until they have learnt there lesson!) The bands normally consist of 5 to 10 men playing drums and then everyone comes and gathers around all the women in a group watching and then all the men and boys dancing wildly. They also have a cart with a statue of whatever god it is surrounded in flowers and multi coloured lights. We are also having random bursts of fireworks, although there is no set time, the celebrations are going to continue to this Thursday when they will have a national holiday, although Oasis won't be having it as we have 10 days off at Christmas.

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This week we have finally started our schedules which are mostly working at Balwadi Doddigunta the pre-prep school and nursery, helping out as a classroom assistant and in the afternoons making resources for the children such as flash cards, although over the week we will also be having some Kannada classes and in some of the afternoons helping with the community and HIV project. We have also just been asked to make some of the Christmas cards for Jacobs Well as they have had loads of orders.

Chappatis
Monday night, after supper we were quite hungry so we decided to get Sumi to teach us how to make Chappatis, but we were more or less doing it ourselves, so they were a bit too hard but we will try again. So when I get back im going to be doing loads of ACTUAL Indian cooking, as pretty much the food you have in UK is nothing like what is actually eaten out here.

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