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Published: January 19th 2010
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paparazzi were onto me pretty fast...Hello everyone! A volunteer I met on the weekend told me he kept a blog just to keep everyone at home updated, and since I have a fair bit of time on my hands at my placement (as well as internet), I thought I would set one up.
This is now my 9th day since arriving in India and I think I'm just about getting the hang of it! The journey here was quite long, about 10 hours to Colombo, where I slept overnight, then on to Chennai for a six hour wait before taking a little plane to Madurai. Madurai is the second city of the state of Tamil Nadu, and is pretty manic! I thought we would crash at least six times on the way to my accommodation from the airport! There doesn't seem to be any rules for driving here, in fact, quite often when you jump in a rickshaw, he will casually drive on the wrong side of the road until he fancies cutting across traffic (normally as close as possible to a bus!) The rickshaws are pretty fun to travel in, and the haggling is cool - although I'm not very good at it yet.
My
journalism placement is about half an hour by two buses from my accommodation, or ten minutes in a rickshaw, and I go each day at about 9 with 4 other volunteers who live in the same place as me. So far I haven't had too much to do really, I've written a few things, and we been on a few excursions (one day we went to watch the start of the Pongal Festival - something like New Year and Harvest blended - and we were hoping to do some interviews, but we were actually interviewed and put on local TV!) I'm hoping I will do some real reporting soon, because being in the office all day is a bit boring, although we still get a share of Indian culture exploring Madurai in the evenings and eating lunch with the locals in a road side restaurant we have made or own. (You can see an online version of the magazine at www.timesofmadurai.org)
Last weekend Projects Abroad organised a trip to Kovalam, a seaside town in Kerala. I will try and get some pictures up, but it was such a nice beach! Its worth typing it in on google images for a
look! The waves were pretty awesome too. I was hoping there would be a backpacker scene there but there were actually a fair few old German people instead! The other volunteers were all nice though. It was a bit of a trek to get there, but it was great to get away for the weekend, although it was about 5x as expensive as Madurai. I think this weekend a few of us are going to rent a houseboat and travel on the backwaters of Kerala, which according to Lonely Planet is expensive but "worth every darn rupee!" It should be a good trip.
I'm also really getting into the food here. I didn't really like spicy food at home, and I'm still not great with the really hot stuff, but I've had some really nice things so far, although I expect by the time I get home, I wont ever want to eat rice again!
I will try to keep this blog updated fairly often - I have 3 more weeks here doing journalism before I go traveling (unless I decide to head off earlier), so during that time I have easy access to internet if anyone wants to ask
anything.
Hope everyone is well, let me know any news!
Charles x
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Charles91
Charles Hatfield
oo and I've seen two elephants walking down the road!