Rats, maths and flowers!!

So far my stepping on dead rat count is 3, others recount stories of rats fighting in street, bed bugs, cockroaches but thankfully to date, only dead carcasses and lizards i have seen. I urge anyone who hasn't already read City of Joy to grab and copy or watch film, this puts all of above into perspective, main character of book lives with this and worse on daily basis, during monsoon wades through waist high effluent and his dr friend almost drowns in this, v humbling account of life in the slums which makes me feel like i am staying at hilton!!

Other volunteers have named a corner on local street - 'piss corner' men urinate here often, see it frequently around streets, not seen any women to date, but a real contrast against a population that bleaches their skin white (not kidding this is increasing phenomenon in india desire to look white, apparently parent's dissaprove of potential wives or husbands that are too dark, so people actually apply bleach to their skin and it works although have seen a few cases of mishap) and spends hours learning english to be and look european/american.

I have loaded some photos from the slum school, unfortunately images don't come up when i write captions so there were a few incorrect ones in last batch. Two train tracks run either side of the school, walking through the slum to school today, what a total surprise to find a pacman machine sitting in corner of one of the shelters, huts require solid walls and door, these are more roof coverings on sticks. Sadly a young boy at the school was killed while playing on the train tracks a while ago, tracks are popular playground for kids, the shelters are within arms reach of the tracks and business is frequently traded on the tracks and cleared on when train horn bellows. Maths and drawing skills have been on the improve, v v clever boy challenged depths of memory with complicated long division calculations, and my examples of daisies, sunflowers, lotuses etc paled into comparison to the class! Have massive admiration for teachers controlling a class of about 12 or so kids all with diff abilities and levels of concentration a real challenge, esp when 2 just wanted to fight all time!!

Have sampled my first sweet sugar syrup ball with icecream (golum), along with curd (doi) all hard work with running training slowly slipping away but still the jaelbi and more sweets to try, in name of sampling local cusine of course!!

A few local prices 750ml bottle of beer 90 ruppe (about GBP1.30)(NZD3.00)
Bottle of water 12 ruppee, cup of chai 3 ruppee, kathi roll 12 or 20 rupeee (all between 10p and 40p)
Blow out on yoga book 400 ruppee (GBP6)

take care, nameste xx