April Fools and Amritsar

The week of April Fools Day was a great week! I continued to bond with the daycare kids, make progress with the girls in English class, learn more Hindi (and a little Pahari) and play a few pranks on April Fools Day! The daycare kids are so cute! They are very energetic and they love to dance and sing! One little boy in particular really loves dancing! He's got all of the moves down from probably every Bollywood movie out there! In the English class the girls are improving a lot and I can definitely see a difference in their English and computer skills from the beginning of the class. I've come to appreciate every one of them for their individual personalities and I realized that I will miss them so much when I leave! I was so happy to hear that India has April Fools Day! I love April Fools Day I had been thinking that I was going to miss it because I would be in India! They may not get as crazy with it as my brothers, Josh, and I have in the past, but I managed to get everyone in the joking spirit that day! We had been talking about April Fools Day about a week and a half before but I think I was the only person who remembered when the day came! Of course, I had to plan ahead for some things so I got up in the middle of the night a few times the night before to dip Aoife's toothbrush in a cup of water and then put it back in the freezer. By morning time there was a block of ice frozen around it but by the time Aoife woke up it was just a little bit icy! Another classic April Fools Day prank was the "balloon in the door" trick! I inflated a balloon but didn't knot the end and shut it in the door with the balloon on the outside and when Vineet went outside, he opened the door and the balloon flew up in the air zoomed right in front of him. I was sitting on the couch when it happened and I couldn't stop myself from laughing a little and making it obvious that it was me who set it up but once he realized what day it was, he was laughing too! I had more things planned for that day that were a bit delayed because of one problem. Ramesh. Just kidding! He's not that bad but just when I was about to start setting up a new prank, he insisted that I watch him and Vineet fix the water pipe. Then when I need glue for the coin trick, I asked Ramesh if he had any glue and after what seemed like an hour he finally came back out with... toothpaste! And that wasn't supposed to be an April Fools joke! But then I found some double-sided tape that worked well to stick a coin and a 10 rupee note to the floor. Varun helped me with that one and we were planning on tricking Ravi with it, thinking that he would see the money on the floor when he got out of the shower but he just walked right past it several times! Ramesh didn't fall for it and then tried to help us but made it completely obvious by going out of his way to make Ravi walk over to the money. After that there was no one else to fall for it. I still don't know what happened to my 2 rupee coin though! That morning I had the worst chai ever! I usually don't like sugar with tea so when Ravi gave me a cup of chai with breakfast, I thought that the little white crystals on the rim of the cup was sugar and they put sugar in it as an April fools joke. But then I took a sip, thinking that a little bit of sugar wouldn't be the end of the world, but it wasn't sugar! It was salt! It tasted like ocean water with milk! I couldn't drink chai again for a while after that! Then I did a few other pranks throughout the day, like taping paper over the bottom of the computer mouse. Varun was the victim of that one and restarted the computer twice before finding the "April Fools!" note under the mouse! Then I made my own Uno cards that fit into the deck and when we were playing Uno that night, I slyly slid the "draw 20" card and the "automatic win" card into my cards and tried to use them but they wouldn't let me! On Saturday morning we boarded the taxi for the four hour drive into Amritsar in the state of Punjab. When I first got in the taxi, seat belts didn't even cross my mind. I found here that even when the seat belts are intact with the car, nobody ever wears them or even waits for you to put on yours before driving off. So when the driver made an attempt to fix the seat belts in the back seat of the car, I was a little bit shocked, but not shocked to see that they were not even in one piece. So we drove four hours, on some of the craziest roads in the world, with no seat belts. It would have seemed completely insane before I came here but now, somehow it seems normal. The car ride wasn't terrible. We stopped a couple times along the way at smoke filled rest areas with dirt floors to go up to the roof to use the non-flushing toilet surrounded by walls made of bamboo strips and the door that didn't shut completely. Once we were in Punjab, there were few traffic jams in the cities. Traffic jams are a great opportunity to buy some fresh coconut from your car window! I didn't know until we bought some that the brown skin of the coconut is edible! The car ride was nice for a while with the windows open but then once we drove a little further into Punjab, I was getting very bored and it was too hot to close the windows but the dust, dirt, and smog blew right into our faces. It wasn't too hard to get used to and ignore most of the time, but when we arrived in Amritsar, I noticed that my hair was really dry and dusty and a layer of dirt had built up on my face. Once we were checked into the hotel I was able to wash my face and use a little bit of baby powder to freshen up my hair. Then we took an auto-rickshaw to the Crystal Palace restaurant and then took another rickshaw back to the hotel. Aoife and I took the taxi for an hour to go see the Wagha Border closing at the India-Pakistan border. Varun didn't come with us though because the final world cup cricket match between India and Sri Lanka was that day and he wanted to see it. The border closing was really fun and crazy and I was thrilled that I actually got to see Pakistan from about 70 meters away! They started getting ready for the border closing by getting the audience enthusiastic. The Indian side and the Pakistni side both try to play music louder than each other and on the Indian side people from the audience get in line to run the Indian flag up to the Pakistani border and run back. Then they play really bouncy music and people get up to dance and some people sing along to it! It gets really crazy and exciting on the Indian side but then when you look over at the Pakistani side, you see the men and women sitting on separate sides, just sitting there with no enthusiasm at all. When the border closing starts, India and Pakistani border guards start their goofy-looking marches (trying to kick their legs much higher than they are really capable of) and they do yelling contests where they yell into a microphone and see who can yell the longest without running out of breath! It's kind of silly but it's definitely a lot of fun! Before Amritsar, the only people that really annoyed me were the sellers that tried to sell me everything in Delhi but walking back to the taxi from the border closing was when I really got annoyed by the boys there. There was a group of four teenage boys that followed Aoife and I all the way back to the parking lot (about at 15 minute walk), trying to get our attention and "accidentally" bumping into me and then apologizing in the midst of laughing and high-fives from their friends. Eventually we lost them and got back to the taxi, followed by more staring and waving from young men. After getting back to Amritsar, we went back to the hotel and then went to the Golden Temple to see it at night. The Golden Temple was amazing! At night, the lights on it make it look like it's glowing and it shines really brightly and the reflection of it in the pool makes the water look like a golden liquid. It was much better seeing it in person than I'd ever imagine from a picture! Pictures can't grasp the shininess of the temple like human eyes can. Photographs also can't show the complete atmosphere and mood of the area surrounding the temple. Many Sikh families travel a long way to see the temple because it is very important to them and their religion. The temple grounds at night are scattered with families sleeping on blankets on the marble floors and other people still walking clockwise around the temple and kids playing together near the water. You can hear the high priests inside the temple, reading aloud from the Granth Sahib. The entire Granth Sahib takes 48 hours to read and at the temple, they must always have a priest reading it aloud so they take shifts for reading it over the big speakers throughout the temple grounds. The temple was amazing and I didn't want to leave but we still had to get dinner somewhere and stop at an ATM. I also was temped to bring my shoes to the shoe-fixer guy on the corner of the street to get my shoe fixed because at the border closing, the back strap of my sandal snapped off on one side. But I didn't want to bother with something that wasn't extremely important. We took a rickshaw back to the hotel and on the way, we were a little confused when the rickshaw driver slowed down in the middle of the road and then stopped and turned his head too look at something outside. Then Aoife and I saw that he had stopped in front of a store window with a TV in it to watch the cricket match! We had dinner at the hotel that night. We had dinner with Varun and the taxi driver but I think that their minds were more focused on what they were missing in the cricket match! There was a TV in the bar of the hotel and a few times I saw our waiter standing by the door watching the match for a few minutes. Then he came over to our table with more beverages and apologized for being slow because he was really busy! Apparently cricket is a really big deal here! Towards the end of the night at the restaurant, Varun and the taxi driver went back inside to watch the match when there was a few minutes left. Then from our table we heard a ton of cheering coming from the bar and then people coming out of the bar and their rooms and getting on their cell phones with friends and talking about the match. Then, of course, there were fireworks! Then Aoife and I decided to go into the bar to see what the celebration on the field looked like but there was nowhere to sit and it got boring after a minute. I'm glad that they won even though I'm not a cricket fan and I don't even know the rules of the game! If India didn't win, I had a feeling that there would be a more negative mood the next day. It's more fun when the whole country is celebrating! The next morning, we went back to the temple. This time Varun came with us because there was no cricket match to watch! The Golden Temple was amazing during the day as well! It looked really bright, even against the sunny, blue sky! The temple was so crowded that day because there was a Punjabi politician visiting the city that day so many people came to Amritsar. It was too busy to go inside the temple because the line would have taken at least two or three hours. The temple grounds were crowed and we felt squished while not in the line, so I couldn't imagine being squeezed into the roped off que with hundreds of people for that many hours! I see how it would be worth it if you were Sikh and you made a long and difficult trip with your family to go see it because of it's religious importance, but for me, photographs are going to have to do for now, until I visit the temple another time! I would really like to go back to the temple sometime to spend more time there. We were a little bit rushed to leave because we got sort of pushed out by the huge crowd. There were a lot of Indian tourists there at the temple that asked to take pictures with me and Aoife. Most of the time we would stand there with the family of strangers for a quick picture but as we were leaving it was a bit of a nuisance to keep stopping for pictures. We were able to see the cooking going on in the other areas though. That was really neat to see all of those people being served the food made by the volunteers. It was awesome to go "behind the scenes" of the temple and watch all of the volunteers (including children) making hundreds of pounds of food to feed the temple visitors. There was one man standing on a platform, stirring a huge pot of food! The pot was bigger than a king sized bed! Then there was a chapati making station where people sat rolling out the dough for chapatis. I had to stand on a pile of broccoli stalks to see into the cooking area but I could have stood there and watched for hours. I loved how everyone seemed so happy to be there to work! They were mostly Sikhs that were volunteers but not all of them. There were no foreigners there but I thought that it might be fun to be a volunteer for day at the temple. I might be peeling potatoes for five hours straight but I'm sure that I'd have a very interesting experience with the other people! When you enter the temple grounds, you have to cover your head with a scarf (or turban), leave your shoes with the volunteers who put them in boxes with numbers on them, then wash your hands in the little sinks, then walk through little pools of water to clean your feet. When Aoife and I were sitting outside, waiting for Varun to come back with our shoes, we started getting surrounded by boys asking us if they could take pictures of us. We just said no but then more people came and asked for pictures or just took pictures without asking. Some boys also just stood there and tried engaging in conversation. When Varun came back, the ring of boys around us dispersed and finally, we could breathe again when we left the temple without the suffocating crowds! When we left we took a rickshaw to a dhaba for lunch and then went to the memorial park where 2,000 Innocent Indians were killed by a British man. You can walk through the park and read about the massacre and about the people that were killed there. You can walk up to a little brick structure to see the bullet holes in the bricks and then look into the well that people dove into to escape the gun fires. All over the park, you can see signs that say things like, "you are standing on blood-soaked ground" and "biking, skating, football, and playing cards are prohibited in the park". The park was nice except for when you are reading a poster about someone who died in the massacre and then all of a sudden a guy comes up to you and snaps a picture with his cell phone or when a lady assumes that you need help reading the poster and starts reading it aloud, very loudly, so that you can't concentrate on what you are trying to read! Then we got back in the car and drove back to Himachal, stopping along the way to buy some juice and getting stuck in a traffic jam, because in India, they don't hold fairs in a field or empty lot, they set them up on the street! Amritsar was great and I would have loved to stay there longer and spend more time at the temple but it was nice to get back to Himachal and see the kids in the daycare and the girls in the English class again!

Trekking in the Himalayas

I know it's been a while since I did a blog post but the Internet here is very slow and it takes such a long time. Since I'm into my last week in India I have been putting it off to spend more time enjoying it here before I leave. Last weekend I went on a two day, one night trek in the Himalayas! Aoife, Varun, and I started the trek at around 9:00 in the morning on Saturday. We had a trekking guide with us and we were hiking with a group of other people, also following the same guide. The trek was very nice! It was not too difficult and not too easy! The views along the way were incredible! There were huge cliffs that looked down on little towns and cities and there were bright, red and pink flowers on the trees everywhere! On the way up, we stopped a few times at little shacks that serve chai and sell snacks and drinks. There were a ton of bees at the little stops! But they never stung anyone. There was some snow at the top but only in patches and only a few inches deep. When we got to the top after about 4 hours of trekking, it was a little bit foggy but I could still see the huge mountains towering above us! They looked even more amazing up close than from the lower altitude in Sidwarri or even Mcleod! At the top, there are tiny shacks that are basically a combination of free standing aluminum strips, plastic tarps, and tree branches, held together with some string. On the inside, you can sit on Coca-Cola crates covered in dirty wool blankets and in the back, there is a little gas stove and counter where someone cooks food for the trekkers. There isn't much of a choice for food but I had instant noodles which tasted so bland after weeks of having spicy food. Luckily they had extra chili powder which I added by the spoonful to the instant package noodles. When it started getting dark, it got much colder and people were huddling in the shack and putting on all of their extra layers of clothes. It was really dark in the shack even though they had tiny candles and a few people (including me) had flashlights. It was really fun being at the top with people from all over the world. There were some people from France, Australia, Finland, Austria, Ireland, USA, and India, of course! It was fun talking to all of the people and learning about where they were from. For a while I thought that I was the only American there but there was a married couple from Atlanta that I met later on. I was definitely the only 16 year old though! We spent the night in a guest house that night and Aoife and I shared a room with two girls who had been traveling around India for a few months together. They were really nice and we had a good time talking with them and playing uno. Yes, we really brought the uno game with us! The guest house obviously wasn't a five star hotel like the Lalit, but it seemed as if some of the people up there were expecting it to be. Aside from the non-flushing toilet, missing window panes, and dirty bedding, it wasn't too bad, considering that you are 2,500 meters up in the mountains. I thought it was nice to stand outside the guest house and look down at the lights from the city and look up in the sky and look for constellations. When I was brushing my teeth outside, I was just looking around and enjoying the view when I noticed that I had been brushing my teeth for over six minutes! I guess I was just too distracted by the views to notice! My gums felt a bit sore after that! The next morning we packed up our things and took our backpacks back to the shack where we had pranthas and chai outside on a blanket. That morning, the fog was gone and the mountains looked even more clear and perfect than the day before! The way back down the mountain was much easier and quicker than the way up. That is usually how it is when you are hiking but it was especially nice this time because we had a different view going down. There were a lot of mules going up the mountain that morning. They were carrying things up the the shops most of the time but there were a few mules carrying foreigners that were too lazy to walk up the mountain themselves! When we got back down to Mcleod, we went out to lunch at another rooftop restaurant with Nina and Simone (the two girls and Aoife and I shared a room with in the guest house). Then we walked around Mcleod a bit longer and then took a taxi back to Sidwarri! I was really tired when we got back but we stayed up very late that night anyways! We were playing more uno of course!

English and Daycare

I've been putting off writing a blog post lately because until yesterday I didn't have much to write about. I started writing a post a couple of days ago. I started writing about the books that I've been reading to the daycare kids and how I started teaching the girls about adjectives and verbs and now we've moved on to articles but then I realized that I'm just going to bore everyone with too much technical stuff. I've been having a great time volunteering! I love the kids in the daycare! I love watching them because they are so resourceful when it comes to entertaining themselves. When I pack the daycare bag in the morning I always bring a ton of books because they love books. They've found more uses for the books than just to read them. Sometimes they stack them up and build towers with them or bounce a ball on one of the books like one of those ball and paddle toys. I also like to bring stuffed animals because the little kids like to cuddle them and the older kids like to balance them on their heads while they walk and play catch with them! I especially enjoy the English class in the afternoon! I teach a really awsome group of girls! It doesn't seem like work when I am teaching them! They love to learn and they are very quick learners but it also helps that they are so much fun to be around! I am very proud of them for the progress that they've made so far and I am glad that I now have so many great friends! It will be so hard to leave them when I go back home! Last week Anju and Pooja did a henna design on my hand. When they first started drawing it, I thought that it would be just one little vine but they went all out and made a really intricate design! It came out really nicely and you can't even tell that two different people did it! I was trying to avoid being to detailed in describing the English class but I can't help it! They have improved in their English so much already! I have been using an English book for ideas for lessons but sometimes, for example, lesson 5 will be significantly more difficult than lesson 4, and it makes it more difficult to judge which lessons will be a good fit. I gave them an English test on Friday (which they were actually looking forward to) but I think that they rushed through it too quickly! They had been firing off right answers in class but the test grades were much lower than I had been hoping for. When I was grading them I noticed that the one who finished her test first had the lowest grade and the one who finished her test lastly had the highest grade! They might have been rushing through it too much because it was too boring. I think it was a mistake on my part by making the test three pages long! Well, I've learned my lesson now and I will be sure to make the next test slightly shorter! They were all really excited when I told them that I was going to bring some English music to class so I made up a playlist on my iPod that I thought they would like but then when I played it on the little, portable speaker in class the next day, at first they seemed entertained but then I got the impression that they didn't particularly like the music in general! They really like their Hindi music and the styles are much different. I don't like Hindi music but since I have been listening to it all the time and everywhere I go, I don't mind it as much anymore. Now it sounds more like background noise, like cars going by or birds would sound when you get used to those noises. I wake up to the sound, I hear it every time I get in the car, I hear it every time I step out of the car onto the street, and I hear it on TV and from cell phones everywhere! I was going to write about trekking this weekend but I will do a separate post so that I can add more pictures!

Teaching and Learning

During the past few days, I've continued to work in the daycare and teach English to the girls. In the daycare, I have been mostly playing with the kids, helping them learn to count (one, two, three and ek, dow, teen) and keeping an extra eye out for children that might see their mothers washing clothes by the river and make a run for them. Some of the children have already started to warm up to me and I have been able to see their personalities and get to know them. One of the kids named Shubam, is really talkative and loves to learn English words. He is one of the oldest of the group and definitely the most outgoing! Rhea is extremely quiet and will never speak unless she is asked a question. She is three years old and really shy but she always wants to sit with me and hold my hand. She hardly ever speaks to the other kids but if I want to know the Hindi name for something I point to it and ask "yeh kya hai" (what is this) and she will always tell me! I am learning Hindi the most from the little kids rather than the older people. I think it is because younger kids are more persistent and will repeat the word and use hand motions until you understand. Varun really helps also though. I am always asking him what something is in Hindi! I really enjoy class with the girls! I've gotten to know them more and we have a lot of fun in class! Sometimes it's too much fun and we don't get a lot of work done! They are picking up what I am teaching really quickly and I think they will be able to speak English very well by the time I leave. It is sad to think that I will have to leave eventually, but I miss my family a lot already so I will be happy to go home and be with them again. I have been reading the girls the book, The Calico Buffalo and they love it! I also brought the stuffed buffalo toy with me and they took turns holding it and giggling at the sad, droopy eyes on it! The book helped increase their vocabulary because every time we came across a word that they didn't know, I would explain it. It helps with the whiteboard to draw pictures and diagrams. When I came here, I was thinking that I was going to miss St. Patricks Day but I definitely did not miss it! Aoife is from Ireland so we wore green and then when everyone had already gone to bed, Aoife and I were still wide awake so in the middle of the night we were learning Irish dancing from youtube in the driveway! Then I was teaching her how to do a headstand. It wasn't such a good idea, especially under the particular circumstances! Then we tried skyping some of Aoife's friends in Ireland and so we stayed up all night so that she could celebrate St. Patricks Day in the Indian time zone and in the Irish time zone! So we talked to her sister and brother in law on Skype and accidentally woke up Varun! I was so tired the next day so they let me sleep in and I was a little bit late for work in the daycare on Friday! Friday was Pooja's birthday and I gave her colored pencils and a candy and Aoife gave me a miniature perfume to put in the gift too. She was really surprised when I gave it to her and she loved it! I tried to say happy birthday in Hindi (janam din mubarak ho) but all the girls just giggled while I struggled to get the correct pronunciation! Yesterday was Holi and when I woke up in the morning I got a dot on my forehead smeared on with colored powder that sticks to your skin and then some on the rest of my face too. Then we drove to Vaun's parents house early that morning. They are really nice people and we had a lot of fun there! When we arrived, we got more powder smeared on our faces and we put some on them as well! Varun's mom is a really good cook and she let me help make breakfast! I watched her first make the paranthas and then I tried to do it but mine came out terribly! It started breaking apart when I was rolling it out and so I patched it up but then once I put it in the cooking pan, it split apart completely and crumbled! I didn't try to cook anything else after that! After breakfast, I met Varun's cousins and they put more colors on our faces and we took some pictures. Then we walked to his sister's house down the street and on the way there more people stopped us and dipped their hands in the powder and put it all over us and everyone was shouting "HAPPY HOLI"! Then a group of people with musical instruments came down the street, playing music and they were lead by the mayor of Palampur who put more colors on us! There was so much powder being used that it was like a big cloud of colors in the air! My face was so full that people started smearing the powder in my hair and for the rest of the day it looked like I had dyed pink streaks in my hair! When we got to Varun's sister's house we got more colors put on us of course and we visited there for a while and took a few group pictures on the balcony. Then we went back to Varun's parents house and watched people get smothered in bags of colored powder and buckets of dyed water dumped on them from the balconies as they walked by! It is really funny to see people on motorcycles ride by and then be taken off guard when they get a bucket of blue water dumped on them! Varun, Aoife, Varun's cousin and I were standing on the lower balcony watching and then a truck of boys drove by, throwing raw eggs at people. They threw two eggs up onto the balcony and one of them missed and the egg flew into the house and got all over the floor and some on the chairs. The other one hit the edge of the balcony and splattered on some of us so I got some of the raw egg on the bottom of my shirt but it dried up and was just a little stiff. Aoife and I were afraid of getting hit by eggs again so all of us moved up to the upper balcony of the roof of the town-house style building, right in the middle of the city. We were higher up than before but still not out of reach of people throwing eggs so every time we heard that truck coming or people shouting "anda" (egg in Hindi), we would run and duck! We had the perfect view of people getting covered in dyed water dumped from other balconies and they managed to hit every white car that came driving down the street! The white cars had big splashes of blue dye on them! It doesn't matter who it is walking down the street! They will still dump color on them! I saw one person walking with an umbrella! The only people that they won't throw color on are police officers but even the mailman gets covered! I felt so bad for him because his white uniform shirt was all tye-dyed with powder and colored water and his hair was purple! After most of the color throwing and craziness of Holi was over everyone was washing off the powder and it came off of my face and neck but the purple around my hairline wouldn't come off. So my face looked normal but my hair was still pink and my white pants were covered in purple, orange, green, and pink and my shirt had a ton of orange powder on it but you couldn't really tell because it was already coral colored. When we got back to Sidwarri, I took a shower and managed to scrub off the leftover color. In Sidwarri, they celebrate Holi later and Dharamsala is still celebrating today, so after I was all clean a group of people covered in powder, carrying flags, and playing drums came to the house and I was afraid that they were going to cover us in powder again but all they did was put the dot on our heads. Throughout the whole day, everyone we saw would shout "happy Holi"! When we were back at the house in the evening, Vineet and Neeraj were with their families for Holi and Varun, Ravi, Aoife, and I were playing badminton and the birdie went over the stone wall and so I climbed over it, not knowing that someone's backyard was on the other side! When I landed on the other side, there was a little girl standing there and I was a little bit shocked to see that I landed in their yard and I thought that she would be too but she just said "happy Holi"! So, still feeling a bit embarrassed, I just said "happy Holi", retrieved the birdie and started climbing back over the wall! Later that night we were playing uno outside and Ramesh had some of his friends at the house but he joined the game anyways. Ramesh always thinks he's going to win but he only won once! Today is Ramesh's birthday so this morning I went outside to say happy birthday and then I tried it in Hindi. I've been practicing so I think I said it correctly this time! Today Varun, Aoife, Ravi and I went to the Himachal Chidhyaga (zoo). It is a small zoo and not anything like the ones in the U.S. The animals are enclosed in rusty, wire fences with barbed wire on the top. It is in the jungle right off of the road we took to get to Palampur yesterday. It is a very small zoo but they do have lions and leopards! The lions and leopards were the most exciting animals we saw and Aoife and I were making fun of how they put chickens in the zoo even though most families have them at their house! We had fun at the zoo though and on our way back we stopped at a little fast food place and a sweet shop to try to find a cake for Ramesh' brithday party tonight. They had only one cake and it was white with a big pink flower on top. Aoife was going to ask if it was fresh but then Varun said that the guy would just say yes even if it wasn't but he asked anyways and the guy said no. So we figured that it must be really not-fresh if the guy admits that it wasn't so we didn't buy it! Then we stopped at a few more stores, looking for a birthday gift for Ramesh. We have been playing a ton of Uno at the house! They never get bored of it! We have been watching a lot of cricket too! The guys are always either watching cricket or playing Uno! Actually, right this second they're doing both! While writing this blog post, I forgot to mention, for anyone that doesn't know yet who everyone I have been talking about is! So, very vaguely, Varun is the director of Ispiice, Aoife, Ravi, Neeraj, and Vineet also work for Ispiice and Ramesh is the owner of the house who lives upstairs. I'll try to write another post tomorrow night so I hope everyone has been enjoying the blog so far!

Meeting Everyone

The next day at Ispiice, I was one of the first to wake up. I got dressed and washed my face and still had time to read in the living room before everyone was awake. I was reading Nancy Drew for a while and then started looking through some of the French fashion magazines under the coffee table. I don't know any French so it's a good thing they take good pictures! Then I picked up the Beginner' Hindi book and studied that for a little while until breakfast. For breakfast we had toast with jam, peanut butter, nutella, or marmite and corn flakes. In India they have different kinds of corn flakes with bananas and mangos. They are good but very sweet! Everything in India is either really spicy or really sweet! The chai in restaurants is really sweet and so are most Indian desserts and the green, minty, crunchy things they give you after your meal at restaurants. I'm not a big fan of the minty things. I think it tastes like something they use on your teeth at the dentist, coated in sugar. A little while after breakfast, we packed the bags of toys and drawing materials to bring to the daycare center. We only stayed long enough so that I could meet the children and get used to the daycare. The daycare is just one cement room with a porch and metal roof. It is really small and dark inside so during the warm months the children sit on the porch floor around little tables that we bring outside. When I got there, some of the children started to cry because they are not used to seeing new people and they get shy and scared. The kids are all very well behaved. They don't ever fight or throw things like I've seen in preschools before. They just sit and color like they're supposed to! The hard part is keeping track of them all. There is only one daycare teacher and lots of kids and without a way to keep them all contained in one place it is a challenge. When we leave, we have to take the toys with us because if we left them at the daycare then they would either be destroyed by the next day or taken home by one of the kids and never seen again. So after we packed up the toys, we went back to the house and had lunch and I wrote some of my blog (it took me 4 sit-downs to finally finish) and we played a million games of uno with all of the staff people (a good opportinity to learn Hindi colors)! After a few hours at the house, I left to go meet the girls that I will be teaching English to in the afternoons. We meet at Anju's house after they are done with school. Anju is one of the students. The girls are aged 10-20 years old and have different levels of knowlege in English. Anju is the oldest and speaks the most English so she helped me understand the others. The classes are held on the patio at Anju's house next to their family's little shop. Aside from English, I will also be teaching them IT skills on the tiny netbook computers that they share and like to use for playing the jawbreaker game! They were very nice wanted us to stay longer and of course, wouldn't let us leave before having chai! Then we went downtown so I could get a cell phone to use while I am here. Indian cell phones are really cheap but the only way to get minutes on your phone is to bring cash into an airtel store and give them your phone and they will give you more minutes. The phone that I got is nice and simple because I don't need anything fancy just for calling home. The phone has English and Hindi letters on the buttons but the voice notifications on the phone are all in Hindi so whenever I get one, I have to have someone translate for me! After getting the phone, we came back to the house and Aoife and I decided to go to Mcleod, the bigger city near Dharamsala and Sidwarri. It was a 40 minutes bus ride into the city and I can't say that those buses are much more comfortable than the one from Delhi! There are more buses that leave during the day so I don't know why they have to cram the bus full, past it's maximum capacity! The buses are either really old or really broken because they don't even beep when they back up. Luckily they have a man in the back of the bus with a whistle! He is also used for when they drop people off the bus. Once they are inches out of the way of getting killed by the bus, the guy blows the ear-piercing whistle and then the driver slams down the gas pedal. Once we were in Mcleod, I was a little disapointed to see that it was mostly stores and street vendors selling Tibetan crafts and souveniers. We went into one of the Buddist temple's but it wasn't much to see because it was being renovated and there was construction equipment and wood shavings everywhere. We went to the Dalai Lama temple and saw all of the mats and speakers set up like they would be if there was a big event going on. We went inside and saw all of the art and statues and people praying and then we asked someone if the Dalai Lama had been there and they said that he had just left earlier that day but that he was coming back later in the week. I'm hoping that I might have a chance to see the Dalai Lama at the temple sometime while I'm here! The temple was probably my favorite part of Mcleod. After going to the temple, Aoife and I walked around, looking for a good place to have dinner. We found a Tibetan/Indian restaurant that had a rooftop dining area with great views of the mountains and the city up in the rocks! Since being in India, I hadn't had anything that I would consider extremely spicy and I was surprised because I was preparing myself for testing my endurance with spicy food. The hotel in Delhi deffinitly toned down the spices to suit foreigners but even the restaraunts we went to seemed like they just assumed that foreigners don't like spices. So when I ordered the chana masala at the restaraunt in mcleod I asked for it to be extra spicy. It was really spicy but it was really good! There is more flavor when it is more spicy! So when Aoife saw that I could handle really spicy foods she told the Ipiice cook, Neraj (i'm not sure if I spelled his name correctly), that he could put in as much spice as he wanted to. Most of the time he make two batches of what he cooks. One has less spice for the volunteers and one has more for the staff who are used to really spicy food. We took the bus back to Dharamsala and I could write a lot about the bus stop but right now I really want to catch up on my blog posts so I won't write about it. As you could imagine, it was pretty dumpy! From there we had to hike up a lot of really steep, stone stairs that went up the side of the mountain. It was dark and you couldn't see far ahead of you so I didn't know that there was another part of the city way up there that you could get down from by driving down a little road on the other side, until we got to the top of the stairs where the taxi stand was. In Dharamsala, you don't just get in the taxi and pay the amount that it shows on the meter. We asked how much it would cost to Sidwarri and tried to negotiate a little but it was getting late and it was dark and we didn't want to be standing out there for too much longer. So we took the taxi home and by then, the guys were back from playing cricket and I was exhausted so I went to bed shortly after writing more of my blog which has been monopolizing most of my free time lately, so I hope everyone is enjoying it!

Ispiice

After the long bus ride and the short drive in the taxi to the Ispiice house, I was greeted by Aoife who showed me around the house and introduced me to the rest of the staff. They are all really nice people and they are a lot of fun! The ispiice house is nice. My room here is a good size and there is lots of storage to keep my clothes and the toys, books, and candy that I brought for the children. I think I will give it to them in small amounts at a time so that they have something new to play with everyday. There is a large full bathroom connecting me and Aoife's rooms and the bathroom as a perfect view of the snowcapped himalayas! It is strange to see the snow up on the mountains because it is so warm down here! It feels like early summer right now but it will start to get very hot soon! When I arrived, Aoife and I had breakfast and tea and then I unpacked my suitcase and then took a shower and then took a nap. Since I hadn't slept much on the bus, I ended up sleeping until 6:00 in the evening and the tradition of skipping one meal a day continued since I slept right through lunch time! That night we had dinner which was vegetables with spices and chapattis and more tea. Then Varun and Aoife set up the modem on my laptop so that I could use the internet. Then we talked about the work areas and the schedule for the next day and by that time I was tired again and I went to bed.

Last Day in Delhi

Sunday was my last day in Delhi and it has been a tradition, traveling with Uncle Kurt and Alex in Delhi so far, to skip at least one meal per day! It's not intentional. It just seems to happen that way! So while they were having breakfast downstairs, I was still up in my hotel room, listening to Hindi music while trying to cram all of my belongings back into my suitcase! I later needed some help from Uncle Kurt who is much more experienced in packing! That morning, Uncle Kurt and I went to the Krishna Mandir temple where you take off your shoes to go inside. The temple was beautiful and very clean inside and it smelled like insence. I think I learned a lot about the Hindu religion by observing the temple and the people going to pray. I was also learning about some of the Hindu gods when I went into the shop that was right outside of the temple. The store clerk was showing me some of the small statues of the Hindu gods and telling me about each one. The plastic in the shoulder bag that I had used for a couple days had started deteriorating and the smell of plastic was overpowering, so the day before, I had switched over my things to the small black, wallet/passport holder/camera case, combination bag that Uncle Kurt had gotten from going to the confrence, so on the front of it it had "HP" in white. I felt a little bit silly carrying that around while wearing my salwar kameez. I felt like it would go better with cargo shorts, a tee shirt, sneakers and white socks pulled up to my knees topped off with a baseball cap, so I swapped bags again, this time with a colorful patchwork shoulder bag with a zipper inside that I bought at the store near the temple. After walking around the park outside the temple for a while, we went back to the hotel to meet up with Alex. At the hotel we had "brunch", but it was already afternoon so I considered it to be lunch. That lunch makes the second time that I have been offered alcohol in a restaraunt! Its not a big deal but it probably would be if I were not the kind of 16 year old to make good decisions. After lunch, we were going to go back to walk around Old Delhi but since it was Sunday, all of the places were closed. It took a long time to get to the hotel where I was going to meet Vineet, the Ispiice staff person, so we didn't have much time anyways. After meeting Vineet and saying goodbye to Uncle Kurt and Alex, I watched cricket in the lobby while we waited for the taxi. I still don't understand the sport! We then took a taxi to the bus stop, which looked like an abandoned parking lot with piles of trash around and a lot of stray animals. While waiting for the bus, I met two girls who were waiting for a different bus, also going to Dharamsala. One of them was 18 and from England and the other was 24 and from Scottland. I talked to them for a while and they told me that they had been teaching English for a couple months so far in India. Our bus came first so I said goodbye to them and boarded the bus for the 11 hour trip. The bus was very old and the seat numbers were written in pen on the back of each one. The bus was also really stuffy and hot and there were little fans on the ceiling with a switch to turn them on but they didn't work. There were also little lights above each seat but those didn't work either. It seemed like nothing but the engine on the bus worked but I changed my mind when the bus broke down an hour after the first stop. The first stop was at a compound of a bathroom, a few stores, and a restaurant. Vineet and I had chai at the restaurant that I am deciding to call "Martha stewart's nightmare". It had stone floors, bamboo ceilings, and brick supports. One wall had a plasitc sheet with a beach scene on it and I am pretty sure that it was a shower curtain, but they hung it one the wall like art. The other walls had peacock tapestries and oversized posters of renaisance art and all of the glassware was missmatched but the chai was good and it didn't make me sick! I tried to sleep on the bus but it was nearly impossible when it feels like the bus is driving over jagged boulders the whole way! Every once in a while I would fall into a light sleep but then the bus would jerk or suddenly stop or bright, oncoming headlights paired with a loud honk of a car horn would startle me and then I couldn't sleep for a few minutes after that. I was almost asleep when the bus broke down while on a hill and everyone's shoes were sliding all over the bus. The bus stopped and the drivers stepped out and started inspecting the bus with flashlights then they would try to start the bus and when it didn't work, they would go back out with the flashlights and do it again. After a while, I was afraid that we were not going to get to Dharamsala but eventually they started the bus and continued the drive and I could relax again. That didn't last long because the bus broke down again and then I was getting really worried that it wouldn't make it all the way up to the mountains. After a while of them checking the bus and trying to start it again, I noticed that none of the people on the bus looked worried or anoyed at all by it and I got the impression that the breakdowns were not unusual. So by the third breakdown I wasn't worried and I just tried to enjoy the few minutes with no bumps or loud bus motor. Some of the places that we drove past looked like we were not even in India anymore. I was started to get really anoyed with myself because, no matter how much I tried to relax and sleep, I just couldnt fall asleep for more than a few minutes at a time. After so long on the bus, the seats feel really uncomfortable and I just wanted to stand. The bus is really crowded and the person in front of me put their seat back so far that I couldnt even touch my duffel bag next to my feel without smaking my head on the seat in front. For the second half of the bus ride, the seat was up more and I could reach my duffel where I kept my Benadryl. I took some, hoping that it would put me to sleep. Not long after taking it, I was sleeping in incriments of aproximately 10 minutes. It was better than nothing but when I got closer to Dharamsala and the sun started to rise, I wanted to look out the window and look at the view but I was too tired to take in much. I do remember seeing the bus winding around the rocky road around the mountain and the rock on one side and the big drop off on the other side. I've heard people complain about how close the busses come to the edge of the drop off but I didn't think it was too bad. I'm not afraid of heights so It didn't scare me when they swerved a little bit closer to the edge. I loved the view of the mountains from the window but I was so releived to finally get off the bus in Dharamsala!