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Woah teaching is tiring.
So I've been teaching for just over a week now. I'm pretty shattered - even though there was a three day week-end I'm still tired. I think the heat got me as well so I've been extra careful - it went over 40 degrees at the week-end.
Teaching is going well though - the kids are all preparing for their graduation days (20th for the girls and 26th for the boys) so there's a huge amount to do - song learning, thinking of games to show the parents, trying to co-ordinate 30 hyper kids into a verb dance! I learnt most of the girls names but only about three of the boys (if you say Ganesh though about 8 of them look around). Some of them are super clever; if they'd been born in any other situation they'd be getting into the best schools. I have my favourite kids (I know I shouldn't) who are generally the ones who listen to my stories and teachings and at least pretend that they understand what I'm saying (there are a few problems as they've never heard an English accent before.) They've taught me one to ten in Marathi and have been taking me to meet their family at the bus stops and giving me various stange sweets and nuts and singing Marathi songs. It's all made me super happy!
After three days of doing morning and afternoon I completely burnt out and spent all Good Friday either asleep or near it. Then had the nicest fish dinner (first fish in over a month!) at a really good French restuarant. Saturday me and Kim did another movie called Namesake which was really tragic; everyone either died, was deceived or were left alone in the World. Then we did our typical day of eating unhealthy food and I bought a couple of presents. We went to the Osho ashram and saw the tour video (I still definately want to go there in my last week) and then went to the German bakery which does proper real fruit juices and the nicest cakes (I'm not really eating Indian any more - I've just discovered Yo China! and I caved in and went to McDonalds: Mcdonalds is considered really classy here - there are doormen and people to hand you towels in the bathroom but the foods still a bit crap).
On Sunday we did proper tourist stuff and went to old Pune. We visited the Dinkar Kelkar museum which took us three hours because there was so many random things (there was a whole case devoted to elephant shaped inkwells) and then went round Laxmi road which was really busy and very olde India. Then we went to Punes' "happenning" restaurant Touche the Sizzler. There I had an enormous tandoori chicken sizzling thing which seemed to have everything in and was stupidly hot as well as spicy. I got through half and was full and quite burnt.
So what do you do at half nine on a Sunday evening? You do what every wealthy Indian does and go to the mall! The place was packed with people just hanging out, it was really weird. It's like Pune's equivalent of the Powder Monkey just with no drinks and lots of shops and ice cream.
Monday I did the teaching thing in the afternoon - a horrible lady from the office came and was really rude about our graduation day plans, suggested a load of crappy games that didn't work, and was really condescending to the helper girl who doesn't speak English. She pissed off me, mega pissed off Shyla whose plans she totally changed and was really arrogant. Plus I got some sort of heat exhaustion so I was not happy in the first place.
I did both centres yesterday and was so tired but the girls did painting so all was calm. I never want to hear Cyndi Lauper's True Colours ever again or the Parts of Speech song x( Today I got a haircut - so I'm in no good mood but the morning class was fun. I've got about 230 photos and a few videos which I'll try and put up this week. Shyla's birthday is on Friday so we're having a party at her Aunt's mansion so I'm looking loads forward to that!
I keep bumping into this one rickshaw driver who tells me his life story and says he needs 4000 rupees to take his family to Kerala as there's no money here. It was really weird hearing it for about the fourth time in 3 weeks at 7am this morning. He's so not getting any money out of me though cos I spotted his whisky stash! The only beggars I give money to are the ones who don't grab, hit or chase me. It can be quite intimidating when there's a group of them and they all descend on you.
Hope all is very much well in Exmouthland. Tom
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