good morning miss!

so, after a good rest (24 hrs of hard sleep), i awake feeling much better and ready to work. since our orientation day was cut short, we call our project coordinator to see if it will be continued today. we're told to go to school #1 and see what happens as no one has time to show us to the 2nd school so off we go. as we approach the school and as we enter into each classroom, the kids all shout in unison"good morning miss" in the sweetest sing songy voice imaginable. this alone makes my trip here worthwhile! we're first brought into the nursery level class to help the teacher assist some of the little ones with their work. sadly, they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing (and i don't think they should at their age) so it's somewhat useless but they're soooo adorable, i just love being there and pretending to help them. their constant pleas for our attention "miss!" "miss!" show that they love us being there too. after the lesson/work session we're told to do rhymes with the kids. silla and i are a bit rusty on our rhymes and it goes pretty quickly so i suggest i read a story to which the teacher agrees. i read one story (penny the dog) and it seems to go over really well with the children grinning from ear to ear and laughing hysterically with a look a kid at home may have on christmas morning when i show them the pictures. it was priceless! i then read a longer book and can tell i'm losing their attention as they don't understand but i keep going b/c i have no idea what else to do with them. they laugh at me and there's a bit of chaos but what can you do?! we're then given class 4 to teach but have no idea what they know or need to know. soo, we wing it doing our best to make the hr useful. after that we go home for lunch and then come back for "library" where kids come to play and also can do their homework. we don't have a plan as we've been ill so the kids stare at us looking for an idea. so, we decide to play football and have a great time playing with these little gems!! we then come back for some quiet game playing; silla leads them in a game of hangman which they enjoy... it's fun. we return to the house absolutely exhausted and a bit overwhelmed but feeling pretty good.

day 2 on the job we thought we were supposed to be taken to school #2 but never got the call so we headed back to school #1. we arrived there at recess time and were told we could go to the field and play with the kids so off we went for frisby, skip rope and some other games with like 40 kids!! we get on to the field and are greeted with our "good morning miss"! all the kids want to hold our hands or to be on our team or just to have our attention for whatever. it's a bit chaotic but so much fun! the bell rings and the kids all rush us, wanting to hold our hands or wherever they can grab on... i'm dripping with children and loving it! we're then given class 3 and start teaching something but, before long are called out... we're supposed to go to school 2. so off we go. school #2 isn't as nice as school #1. the rooms smell like basement, are dank and dark with little natural light (windows are boarded due to past trouble), there is no bathroom (this is lacking at the other school as well) and many of the kids sit on dirty blankets on the floor. it's very sad and i sooo want to help but they have a strong advocate and plans to have the school fixed thanks to an irish company that started a trust so it's hopeful things will get better soon. we're brought into each of the classrooms to greet the children and are then brought to meet the teachers and headmaster where we're asked for ideas on how to better the teaching in the school. they want us to give them ideas on how they can change their curriculum and teaching techniques! we have no idea what to say as neither of us are teachers... we give them a couple of simple ideas and then we're given two classes to teach. we take the students outside and make up some lessons which help us realize how little confidence these kids have and that their english skills are quite weak. we end the day with rhymes and games (i taught them the little teapot song but kept changing the words around b/c i wasn't sure exactly how it went and i kept forgetting how i had sung it before). ugh! later that afternoon we went back to library at school #1. this time we had some word find puzzles we had made up and a couple games like "spin the pencil" with flashcards of stick figures doing silly things so each time the pencil pointed to a student, they were shown a card and had to perform the silly act. it was great fun and they really enjoyed just being silly! i then tried to organize something like pictionary but this was chaos and wound up in a chalkbag fight... white faces, chalk in the eyes... mayhem!!

anyway, i won't bore all with all the details but in short, i'm having a rewarding experience and really love these kids and wish everyone could see the conditions they study in. it's so unfair as on paper their school has been fixed but the money has gone the way of govt corruption and it just breaks my heart. lesson to all: appreciate what you have because we all have so much!

i've posted photos of the mtn view from glenburn and tea pluckers at work. it's really beautiful to see, tea pluckers with their colorful umbrellas dotted through the brilliant green tea bushes and ohhh the himalaya!

good first impressions 9/22

the trip to Glenburn Tea Estate from Darjeeling proper proved to be quite an endeavor... 2.5 hrs down a rutted, washed out, very steep and narrow, treacherous road. my roommate, silla, is a 20yo from iceland and we learn we'll be staying with the assistant manager of the tea estate and his family who are originally from south india. the wife, kala is reported to be a very good cook... bonus! our first day we woke very excited to be oriented and to hear more about the project and tea estate. we're told that the following day we'll be taken to see 2 schools of the tea garden and the medical center and what we want to do for our project will be up to us. as luck would have it, i wake up in the wee hours of the a.m. feeling like death rolled over, vomitting and the works. i'm extremely disappointed but come time to meet with our coordinator, i do my best to pull myself together, put on a cheerful face and keep a positive attitude as i really want to make the most of my experience here! we visit the first school which is very bright and lively and the kids sooo adorable (mostly nepalese with big round brown eyes) i know i'm going to fall in love with all of them! we then visit the medical center. i'm holding together o.k. but with waves of feeling really awful. so, we see the womens' ward in the med ctr and suddenly and violently the sickness also hits my roommate, Silla. she's hurled over the porch banister losing the contents of her stomach to the bushes. she composes herself and we continue down the road to the village center... as we're walking the sickness hits me full on again and i have no warning to the "accident" i have on the street. without a word i start waddling quickly back to the medical center outhouse... i've never felt so awful and not sure what i'm going to do at this point to make myself presentable. it becomes very evident to our project coordinator that we're both unfit for the full tea estate tour and we're sent back to the house for some rest. the next near24 hrs were spent in bed sleeping! a very disappointing first day on the project...

In the raw

So I made it to delhi and am not sure why a place so crowded, congested, noisy and chaotic with insane horn honking and pollution, touts using the same lines to lure you here there and everywhere for a commission, a place where the streets smell of urine and incense, a place where every time your tuk tuk stops little kids are grabbing at you begging for rupies as their parents look on to make sure they're doing their job and your tuk tuk has not taken you to where you wanted to go has struck my heart so but it has. I guess i'm in love with the pure rawness of it all. Yesterday i had my first two auto rickshaw rides and despite the lonely planet warnings, i managed to get ripped off by both just as i swore i would not allow to happen. On my first excursion, the driver jerked to a stop in the middle of a busy intersection claiming to be out of gas and instructed me to get out and hop into another rickshaw he'd flagged down. We're in the middle of a busy intersection... what else am i to do?! i've agreed on a price with the first driver but of course i wind up being charged more by the second driver despite my arguments. During my second ride, for which a police officer assisted me in the bargaining of a fair price, the tuk tuk chugged and clattered to a stop just minutes down the road and the driver claimed to have broken down. Again i was sent away in another, being charged a higher fair. i've loved every second in the tuk tuk's tho. for some reason the way they weave in and out coming so close to hitting one another, buses, motorcycles; the way they high-beam each other and honk to move others out of their way; the way they tear down one-way streets in the wrong direction, etc is exciting to me and i love just experiencing this foreign city streaming by... the colors of sari stalls, pumping of punjabi beats, smells of incense and curry and all the oddities of a place that seems hasn't changed in centuries with the wind whipping thru my hair. these are my first experiences in india and my senses are overwhelmed... i've read that india is an assault on all the senses but until i arrived, i had no clue what this meant...
one thing i'm struck by is the male dominance here... i mean, i expected to be a minority as a white tourist but i guess i hadn't expected to be the only woman around in so many places. sometimes i feel uncomfortable and exposed but other times i feel empowered... i'm so grateful to have been born an american woman that CAN go out and see and do what i want to see and do (as long as i can convince my driver to take me there). sadly i don't make eye contact with many people (a lesson i learned in morocco) and not many people that don't want to scam me talk to me. the poverty is quite extreme but i somehow feel safe here. i just can't explain it...

today i started my day with a walk led by a former street kid of delhi who was brought into salaam balaak trust and has reformed his life now working for the trust as a guide. all proceeds from the walk go to the trust which provides shelter and education to street kids here. i visited places in delhi not many tourists see and i find difficult to describe... communities living in tiny ramshackle shelters on the railway where a baby is being bathed directly on the rails of the operating tracks while another naked infant lies on a tall table with no supervision, "contact points" where kids are encouraged into the shelters and off the streets, the shelters themselves where loads of kids sit on the hard floor which is their classroom during the day and their bedroom at night and where they have just a tiny locker to store all of their worldly possessions... words cannot describe. the poverty is astounding and seeing all these kids living such hard lives in such dangerous and unsanitary conditions is difficult to stomach. please check out the website for salaam balaak trust.

sidebar: the emotions of the day have been overwhelming but, as we passed thru a narrow alleyway near the old delhi train station on the way to the boys shelter, i couldn't help my nose from being tantalized by this amazing curry smell wafting thru the air. i soo wanted to stop and investigate the contents of the huge simmering pots but then i quickly remembered my destination and how these kids are hungrier than i'll ever know and ashamedly continued on.

anyway, power shortages are quite common here so before i lose this post, i'm going to sign off. i have so much more to tell but for now, i'm loving india in all it's chaotic wonder! (i have also escaped to some beautiful and serene monuments, temples and gardens so it's been a good balance). tomorrow i'm off to darjeeling! anyway, i hope all is well at home and i'm thinking of you all! cheers!!!

p.s. photos are of tuk tuk chaos on the streets of delhi (sooo many near misses and my favorite thing is going the wrong way down a one way and playing chicken with other auto rickshaws, motorbikes, trucks and whatever else is on the road) and truck on my way from bagdogra to glenburn tea estate ... the trucks have eyes!