Sister Sister Sister!

 This is my prechool class going a bit crazy with fingerpaints! I had some christmas balloons (snowmen and santa clauses my sister sent me and i hadnt used yet, sincethey don;t celebrate christmas whats the difference that its April!) so i bought some paints, blew them up and let the children decorate them with fingerpaints! Very messy but so much fun! They looked very colourful after but i probably should not have worn my white Sari...

Papaya ans custard apple seaon gas now finished but hello watermelons and mangoes! Outside the watermelon stand by the road side the children have made a swing out of the sign! Adorable!

Saturday Night

I seem to have accidentally adopted the role of dance teacher at the hostel... However my dance skills are extremely limited so i basically let the children provide the creative thinking and think up the dance moves and i just put it all together. Last week we used my Ipod and speakers and made a dance to Saturday Night by Whigfield. Classic 90;s disco dance waahey. It was a lot of fun. 

I gave them toffees to hide in their caps (which the borrowed off the boys) and at the grand finale they threw into the audience causing much excitement.

“If you haven’t been to Mysore you just haven’t seen South India”

A quote from lonely planet I read on the comparatively fast sleeper train for a weekend trip to Mysore this Easter. I would argue South India is full of many treasures and Mysore is just one of them but being a ‘medium sized city’ it had the right ratio of tourist attractions to tourists yet doesn't have the extravagantly crazy rush that bigger cities like Chennai engulf you with.

The most impressive attraction was Mysore Palace which you are unfortunately not allowed your camera inside of as I found out form a tall Indian man with a gun. I didn’t argue. 

The design of many buildings in Mysore is actually quite impressive. Aboveis the exterior of an Art Gallery we visited.

We made friends with a couple of Indians who showed us some of Mysore’s more hidden secrets on their bikes. Mysore is also renowned for its silk exports so the first place they took us to was a silk factory weaving threads of silk and gold into expensive Sarees on machines over 100 years old.

The second place was a friend’s house who owned an incense business. It smelt divine. An old woman sat on the floor rolling the strong scented incense round thin bamboo sticks and I asked if I could photograph her. She rolls 6000-8000 sticks every day.

The next day en route to the market we got caught up by some mendi artists working on the street. It took about 45 minutes for 2 men to decorate all 4 of our arms but as you can see it was well worth the wait, I even got them to write my name on my palm.

The market was just like any other Indian market just a lot bigger. Here is one vegetable seller; 12 tomatoes for 10Rs (12.5p).

For sale here is Kollam (that’s how it’s pronounced not sure about spelling). Coloured powder that in Tamil Nadu is used to make intricate beautiful patterns outside your house to ward off bad omen (and make your doorstep look lovely). In North India and perhaps Karnataka it is used in Holi festival where they throw coloured powder at each other. Unfortunately I missed out on all this fun but there is so much to see, do and experience in India you couldn’t possibly do it all in one year volunteering. 

Sevalaya

Sevalya has now organised a ‘cultural program’ for the children every Saturday at 7pm. This is basically where all the children from the orphanage get together, form an audience and watch performances by each other that they have prepared during the week. I think this is an excellent idea bringing them all together and giving everyone a chance to express themselves. So far it has been a complete success. I thought I’d organise something for the preschool children at the hostel (aged 3-5) to perform so we put together a “clap action performance” where I said a simple English word like elephant, mouse, butterfly etc. and the would do the action with 2 claps in between to make it into a rhythm.  They were a lot more nervous in front of everyone but I think they enjoyed it!

The following week I taught a song with some older girls at the hostel (aged 11-14) and choreographed it into a ‘story dance’. It called ’10 little green frogs” and consisted of them all jumping into the circle on the line ‘and one jumped into the pool”. Even if some might not have understood the words exactly they learnt it very fast – it takes me weeks to learn songs in Tamil!

Last Wednesday there was an exhibition of all the preschools work for parents and sponsors. Here is some of the artwork from a paper doll making activity I did with them using waste cloth from the tailoring room. They each made mini versions of themselves and learnt the word for ‘dress’ ‘shirt’ and ‘shorts’.

My origami group got jealous of another volunteers juggling class doing a performance on the stage in front of the whole secondary school (1500 students) and asked if we could do an origami performance. Origami is not something usually done on stage but I didn’t want to say no so I arranged a little routine last Saturday. They came on to the stage, said “konichiwa” (hello in Japanese) each made their favourite origami (mostly the crane) and presented it saying the English name. They finished with “sayonara” (goodbye). This photo above is from the run-through and below on the stage

We also decorated the auditorium with origami birds (notice them hanging above). They went a bit crazy with feathers and sequins but had lots of fun. Considering they had never used them before the final pieces were really beautiful.

I rearranged my timetable a bit so I can spent more time in the primary school because as you can see they are adorable! I took a snall groups from the preschool class for ABC colouring which they seemed to enjoy - especially the stickers! Above we have Pushpa and Giri and below is Dashini

As one of the chapters in my classes text book was on letter writing I set up a pen-pal letter exchange with my sister Orla's yr5 class and my 5th standard class. It took a lot of patience and one to one work but managed to get them all read and replied to in 2 weeks. They were so excited to get letters from England and spent alot of time and effort beautifully decorating their replies and ask me every day when they will get a 2nd letter.

Not all the children are at the same level in English so teaching can be very challenging. I went to the hostel one evening to help Subash and Lakshmi one to one as their just wasn't enough time in class to get round everyone.

8 of the 12th standard girls will unfortunately for me leave Sevalaya after their final exams have finished in 2 weeks. It will be a very sad goodbye as i have spent a lot of time with them over the past 6 monthes, I promised to print this photo of us all together before they leave.

Origami Madness

I have started an after school Origami class for the childre, took a while to get names and permission slips but it had been running for 1 month now and i think they are enjoying it! Due to limited resources we use newspaper but i bought felt tips and glitter to decorate the final pieces :) Also thank you mum for sending me some coloured paper - they love using this! We started simple and they each made a house then decorated it to look like their own (sort of) We then put them together to make,,,, Kasuva Village!

In a diffferent session we made peacocks, being India's national bird they were very eager and didn't use the glitter glue very sparingly.. must have taken a few days to dry but looked gorgeeous nevertheless!

A ponder round Pondicherry

Not gunna lie; the best thing abut Pondicherry was the food. It is an ex french colony, with lots of cafes selling to our absolute delight REAL croissants, baguette ,coffee crepes etc etc and after 5 months on a stable diet of rice I'm sure you can imagine how exciting this was for us. This is Rose, me and Riby trying to hold off from eating our first croissant for a photo. The streets were eerily quiet, all named "rue.........." the most locals spoke both French and Tami, the houses were in traditional french architecture with cute shuttered windows, it was only the pestering autodrivers and a Hindu temple with a elephant that reminded us we were in India.  A lovely stress-free break from what can be a very stressful job teaching!

A lovely stress-free break from what can be a very stressful job teaching!

Pogaloow Pongal! Pogalooow Pongal! Happy Pongal :)

These are some of the elderly people from the old age home making preparations for the first day of Pongal. This is a festival celebrated in the south of india whereby you give thanks for the harvest. They make detailed patterns on the ground with powder and after fill it with colours. These designs could also be seen outside all the houses in Kasuva Village. The plants on the background are sugar that we took down and chewed after the festival. Very tough but incredibe sweet and juicy.
It is tradition to cook pongal (a sticky rice dish than can be savoury with black pepper and potatoes or sweet with sugar dried fruit nuts and cardamon( outside on a new painted pot, see the terracotta bowls under unlit wood. Then, as the water boils over (indicating it is now time to put the rice in) everyone surrounded and shouted as loud as they could "pogaloow pongal, pogaloow pongal".  The kids were so excited it was a loud happy atmosphere :)

 On the second day you give thanks to the cows. So we decorated them with flowers, leaves, colored paper etc etc, and fed the bananas! The one on the left is from Kasuva Village.

The founder of Sevalaya is seen below giving the first one, up until now i had no idea cows could eat bananas but they seemed to love it!

On the third day you should clear your house of any waste from the year and burn it outside. However most of our waste nowadays is plastic which isnt so nice to burn.. so instead of doing this Sevalaya conducted an "anti-plastic-burning ralley" in which other schools from different villages were involved. I accompanied them marching for 2 hours with placards and chanting "plastic ay ira car ay" which i think translates as burning plastic causes cancer. It was very well organised and i was impressed by the kids 'green' spirits.