Get Some India (email #2)

Following my first and last mammoth email (which was more whale than email), I have also decided to send shorter, shaper messages more punctually. That should help more with the attention span; but my definition of 'short and sharp' may differ slightly… So here goes!

Where I left you guys off in my last email, I had just spent my first glorious day teaching at the Bilwhara Government School. I had 6 perfect, well behaved, 7 year old Indian children in my class, who would gladly repeat the days of the week after me, complete connect-the-dots worksheets, and then colour them in silently. And they said cute things: like when we were counting numbers, one of my shy girls, Narayani, thought that the number after eightynine was eighty ten... (all together now: 'Awww!') But on the flipside, I have 3 really bright boys – Gopal, Jagdish and Khylihal. Gopal is already doing multiplication without help, Jagdish knows words like 'giraffe', 'universe' and 'globe' without me teaching him, and Khylihal can do 30 subtraction problems in his head in 4 minutes. Perfect class?

Well.

The NEXT day at school, total chaos reigned. And it wasn't the 'fluid chaos' that I have observed in the streets. It was as if this tiny tribal community had cut off Columbia's crack supply and fed it to the children in their daily dahl. My class MORE than tripled to 19, and. They. Were. Little. Terrors!! Poverty line or not, this was crazy! Every class in the school (1, 2, 3, 4/5) had about 20 students each, making the school grow from 25ish to 80ish over night. They threw rocks at me (that's right, I got stoned!) (but of course not in the ganja way!! Although 150 rupees/ $4 will apparently get you a 20min tuktuk ride from Hatipol to Bedla, AND a spliff); they were climbing over us to reach our bags on a high shelf, and when they did they rustled through them and BROKE mine; they attacked us with thorned branches that not only left us scratched and now scabbing, but tore holes in our clothes; and then we decided that we had had enough. So we literally fled to our tuktuk, climbed in and started to drive. Well they followed us. They ran after the little chugging, 3 wheeled vehicle like their life depended on it, then JUMPED ON THE BACK and refused to get off! So we swerved to try and throw them off, which worked. It felt a little like a bad gansgter movie, or the sequel to Octopussy, the James Bond film that was filmed in Udaipur (and that plays on repeat at many restraunts). But then they started throwing their shoes at us, and some landed on the roof! So one of the guys had to climb out of the moving tuktuk and throw the shoes back to them – if we stopped they would have caught up!

That arvo we all fell asleep we were so buggered form the 4 hours of teaching torture. But it's become better now. We saw the principal beating the children before class the next day at school, so I guess they were told that if they misbehaved that we would beat them too. Which is terrible. It's actually the only way that these teachers know how to discipline them. We're trying to turn around not only their English, but their manners and their self control – they now all say "Didi! Rubber PLEASE" and "THANK YOU GORCHA", and will obey what I say (but only if I say it in Hindi…)

So that takes up our time until about 2o'clock in the arvo. Mostly we go into town (Udaipur, which is about a 20 minute tuktuk ride for 5 rupees, about 13 cents) and chat with the locals and drink chai. The trick is not feeling forced into buying everything! And damn, they're good sales folk… Walking around is an experience in itself – just listening is amusing! Some favourites- Good Morning! (at 6pm)- Thank you Sir!- What is your good name?- (and my new favourite which happened an hour ago) - Will you do fancy with me?

You can't make this stuff up people!

Recently I have also started vi sting the houses of the local people who work in our accommodation - namely, the cook Meenaji, and the two helpers, Dhana and Tulsi. Although there is a large language barrier for the latter two, I found that the best way to break the ice is 2 fold: a pipe cleaner and a bouncy ball. Bring these two out and they will be entranced for hours while you sip ginger-infused chai and make large hand gestures. When you feel like you've smiled and nodded enough, pretending like your understand, then you just say danyavard, take some photos and leave! And if you're lucky (like at Meenaji's house), they will do henna! I currently have my entire left arm covered in the most beautiful pattern... It curves all the way up my pointer finger from my forearm. And you would never believe it, but it smells of cardomon pods! Look out for it in the next bunch of photos - it should last about 2 weeks as I applied lemon juice to it before...

A quick word on photos - if you don't have facebook, I would recommend signing up! I am putting all of my photos up there, and it is very easy to use and access. www.facebook.com . Just ask my mum! Then search for Georgia Frances King, and then you'll be able to see the photos! Please feel free to email me if you have any queries...

We occasionally do special things too. Like we've organized Yoga in the mornings before school for a week. And there was a 40 degree day last week, so we paid a tiny amount of money to use one of the high class hotel's pool for a day!! Or there is 3 day festival to celebrate the matrimony of Lord Shiva and his wife on at the moment. So last night, I went in by myself to have a peek around. I'll put photos up – the colours were like nothing I have ever seen before! Dancing… Music… Fireworks… If we're out past 7.30ish, we'll usually just have dinner out on one of the rooftop restraints or at a hotel. You have to be pretty careful about what you eat out naturally – but sometimes you can eat things of the streets and they'll be fine. Yet other times, you'll order something Western at an up market restaurant, and like one of the Aussie girls, contract a parasite and be so sick for a week and half that you can't even get out of bed to go to the bathroom, nonetheless see a doctor. She had to get antibiotic injections on her bed!

But I'm luckily all fine so far. SO FAR. I'm the only one in the slum apartments that the volunteers live in together (20something people to 2 apartments) that hasn't got sick yet… If Murphy's Law prevails, I'll be next.

Cue the Jaws theme song.

Then on last Friday, I was subject to my first 'party'. So what do you get when you combine Kingfisher longnecks (King of beers) that are $1.60 each, and bottles of Indian rum that are under $5 in a room with Hindi music, Uno, foreign drinking games, and 2 Aussies trying to represent our fine drinking nation against 7 Danish girls and guys (the heaviest drinking youth in the world apparently)??

I tell you what you get: PLASTERED. Me and one of the Danish guys were stubborn to see the night out to the end and lasted the longest… I think we were drinking for 9 hours straight, because the power was cut for 6 hours that day due to a rouge pre-monsoon storm that broke down some of the fake walls in the house! So what did we do? We cracked open the beer.

Then last night (Friday - it's been a week since I've written I guess!) we had another party to farewell the 7 Danish people, 1 German and 1 Belgian that have been staying with us. Except I replaced beer with Indian gin. Yummy! I asked for a small bottle (as women are not allowed to buy alcohol, we have to ask the boys), but apparently, like my emails, my perception of 'small' is different to most. They came back with a 750mL bottle! That'll last me most of my trip methinks. They don't have tonic at the local store (the size of a pantry about 10 minutes away), so I mixed it with Limca, an Indian lime fizzy thing that is like a sour lemonade - perfect combination! We all eased off a little due to last weekend's repercussions, which meant that we were in a mind set to learn lots of international card games to bring back home!

3 new girls have come to join us now - Anna (who is the other girl from Sydney who is with Antips), Taz (a real ocker sheila from Adelaide who is a HOOT!) and Neha (who is of Indian descent, but has lived in central London all of her life). So on Monday, we will go from 15 to 6 people! It'll be mighty lonely, but a little more squashed, as we won't be using the second apartment anymore. But it also means that Meenaji will be able to cook more complicated specialty food as there will be fewer to cater for... Yummy :)

Food-wise, I have moved from the observation stage in the kitchen to the hands on stage! I even made the malkai koftas from scratch yesterday (potato balls filled with raisins, cashew and this Indian clotted cream type substance...). We will be having cooking classes at some point, so I'll be able to whip up all of the yummy things we're having over here for you guys! already loved chilli, so my palate has had no trouble adjusting, but your stomach is a little different... Eating so much masala at every meal is still not quite normal for my body! Breakfast is Western-ish, with Indian style porridge and toast. Lunch is a wet curry, and dry curry, a type of rice, chappatis (or naan/parathas occasionaly), a type of fruit, fresh tomato and cucumber, and the world's most amazing yogurt! Dinner is the same style, expect minus the yogurt and fruit (but we often buy our own fruit - 1 rupee gets 5 bananas, 5 rupees gets 4 chickoos, 10 rupees gets a mango, 20 rupees gets a pineapple, 30 rupees gets a papaya!)

I'm not up to street food yet - it's generally safe, but not until your stomach is completely comfortable... I can't wait!!

I'm going to go treat myself to a shower now! Well, to a bucket of water rather... You lose ANY sense of hygiene here very quickly! aside from hand washing and aquim - that is now addictive... Good habits form quickly I guess! Until next,

Namaste!

Xx