Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hi all! Us again. We've now been in India for two weeks and are well in the swing of things. We had a good week of volunteering last week. On Tuesday we went to the school and played games and sang songs (well tried to at least). Heads, shoulders, knees and toes and the hokey cokey went down very well! We had our first Keralan cooking lesson with Santha in the afternoon. We made chippatis and dahl which we preceeded to eat immediately. We went to the school again on Wednesday-more songs and games, and went to the teachers training college in the afternoon. That was scary because we thought we'd be teaching english nursery rhymes to a group of about 5 people but when we got there we were taken into a room full of trainee teachers, eek! We did our best to remember nursery ryhmes from our childhoods and promised to print more off the internet for next time.
On Thursday we met up with Hanna who's volunteering for Kerala Link at Joyatis school which is for children with learning difficulties. She arrived the week after us but we'd met her once on a training day back home. She came to Thiruvalla for the night and it was really nice to catch up and hear all about what she's been up to. We went to Mavilakerra with her on Friday, which is about 40 mins away. We were going to get the bus but the owner of an english language institute in Mavilakerra called John Sir has taken Hanna under his wing as she's spending some time there talking to the students, and he sent a car to pick us up! We then got chauffered around Mavilikerra all afternoon and they even drove us to Kollam, we felt very spoilt! Hanna was really craving freedom as she'd had this 'service' all week so was very pleased when we finally said goodbye to the driver in Kollam.
We had a lovely weekend, we spent friday night in kollam by the beach which was beautiful. Afew minutes after we arrived the owner said, 'come outside, come outside' and we went out to see an elephant in the street, it was very sweet. We thought the hotel was nice but under Hanna's pillow was the biggest swished cockroach! Needless to say we were all a bit edgy that night. The next day we did an 8 hour boat cruise up the backwaters to allepey. The views were beautiful and it was interesting to see fishermen and families living by the waters. It was so relaxing that we all forgot to put suncream on and realised we were all an attractive shade of pink when we got off the boat. Note to mums-lesson learnt, won't be repeated promise! We stayed a night in Allepey in a nice (cockroach free) hotel and looked around the town and did some shopping on Sunday before getting the bus back to Thiruvalla.
We went to the girls home and mental health half-way home again yesterday. We did pot painting with the women and played lots of silly games and did dancing with the girls. We are really enjoying working in those two places particularly because it seems they really enjoy it when we go there.
We're going to go to Mavilkarra on Thursday to spend the day with Hanna at Joyatis school and the english language institute. Then we're off to Trivandrum or Thiravanathrapurum for those that can say/spell it for the weekend, with a stop at Kovallam beach to try and even out our weird looking tans!
Hope you're all good, lots of love Beth and Carly xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- comments