a touch of home sickness came up on me.

I got my Christmas present from my mom on Monday! And you will never guess what the best and most optimistic mom in the world sent me; PEPPEKAKEHUS or a ginger bread house. She said something about giving me some work or a project when I asked her on the phone about what she had come up with, and I promise you that she was right. The house did not exactly arrive in one piece, he he. It had had a hard journey as you can see from the pictures, but I have done my best to rescue the pieces and I think that I succeeded fairly well. And note that the candy, icing sugar and the cotton were also in the package from Norway! Nothing was missing.

But then I must admit that a touch of home sickness came up on me. Ohh, the snow and fresh air, sitting around the fire in our cabin in the mountains, all the food and the breakfast in Christmas morning, to actually spend several days together with my family without any disruptions of any kind: I miss you and look forward to Christmas in 2011!

Merry Christmas under the palm trees

So, how was my Christmas then? As I have expressed before is the tourist beach not my favorite habitat so another volunteer and I made a plan about spending Christmas on the turtle beach in solitude. The problem with the plan was that we could not really explain to the other volunteers why we did not want to celebrate together with them. I was even booked in on a beach hut because they expected that I wanted to come. So we ended up celebrating Christmas on the tourist beach. Christmas dinner was enjoyed in a restaurant where some of us got their food three hours after ordering it,the calamari was not properly grilled, the ashtray never came to our table and I never got my cognac. When we complained to the manager he raised his voice and begun arguing. In the end we got 300 Rupiee in discount on a bill on 5800 Rupiee (we were about 20 people), but after everyone had paid we discovered that they had overcharged us at least 300 Rupiee so there went that discount. So never go to Café del Mar on Palolem beach in Goa.

Of course I am very pleased to say; I told you so! We should have gone to the turtle beach. The evening continued with a walk on the beach to find a party or restaurant that did not play the same club/techno music that had accompanied our Christmas dinner, but this should turn out to be impossible. At one or another point Kathrin and I lost the rest of the group and decided to go to our hut, buy a beer and play our own music. I think this was the best decision I made that evening. We had a very nice time sitting in the plastic chairs outside our hut enjoying the view to a Christmas tree made by two branches of a local variant of pine with blinking red and blue lights.

Merry Christmas:-D

Sea turtle mama!!!

We have seen a sea turtle mama lay her eggs! After five weeks of not sleeping properly in the night because of patrolling I have not bothered to walk all the patrols lately so I was far away in dreamland when Mukesh woke up me and Kathrin and told us that there was a sea turtle on the beach. I think that the first thought of both of us were “ha ha, good joke, now let us sleep”. One would think that we would get up with a start, but both of us turned over in over in our sleeping bags and kept our eyes closed until our brains started working and we understood that there was an opportunity that he could be serious.

And there it was! We could not go close to it while she was laying her eggs, but when she begun to “walk” back to the ocean we could take pictures and touch it. She laid about 100 eggs. When she had disappeared into the ocean again the guards from the Forest Department moved the nest closer to the “turtle protection center”, which is the shelter we sleep in, to more easily survey it.

Why the turtle hatchlings were kept in a bowl.

I wrote earlier that I would try to find out why they kept the sea turtle hatchling in the bowl and if this could harm them. I spoke to the manager of the wildlife sanctuary and he told me that there was no problem to keep the hatchlings in the bowl. What might harm them are direct sunlight, strong lights and if they were kept inside the enclosure around the nest when they comes out of the nest because the net can harm their mouth.

Quality time with Sirwa

Sirwa has left me alone! She went back home the 18^th of December to spend Christmas with her family and to begin to work again after new year. Before she left we had an intense program of quality time ever day for two weeks. We had a list of things to do and when she left we had ticked of all the points on the list; cinema, going together to the turtle beach, kayaking, getting our legs waxed (ehh, yes), walking around in Margao, visit a spice plantation, take the local bus, bike to the super marked, take pictures, buying fruit at the local marked and buy train tickets for Stig and me to Kerala and Hampi. And now she is gone and I have to manage on my own. I look very much forward to see you again on Hidra in June, Sirvipirvi!

Jungle “trekking” and nights on the beach

And how is our work actually going...? Well, the situation on these projects are that there is not so much project. It is kind of OK because I worked a lot in Himachal, but it is a bit annoying too. IDEX is a serious organization, but in my opinion are the wild life-programs a bit outside their field. We have seen sea turtles and that have been great experiences, but we do not do any work here. The Forest Department has their people working here and they do their job. The same is the case with the wild life sanctuary. I think that there are some work to do if you are a super-volunteer who know what you are doing and are very independent and eager, but unfortunately are most of us unqualified, confused and disillusioned common-volunteers and we end up doing nothing.

What saves the stay here in Goa is that the group is very nice and we have a good time “hanging out” on the beach or being seven people picking grass for fodder for the deers in the rescue center and raking leaves off the road in the jungle. There is a play ground at the rescue center where we can climb, swing, hang up side down and do head stand and we also have lots of time to look after frogs, take night pictures on the beach and learn tola, tola Hindi.

And I have begun teaching English again:-) In the afternoon I go together with Amber for one hour to teach English to adolescent girls in the slum in Margao. The girls are very nice and eager to come to class. I enjoy it very much!

I am going to Thailand!

When I was still home my wish was to volunteer in Thailand working with issues regarding Karen refugees from Burma/Myanmar. At that time this sounded as a too big challenge and I did not know how I could approach it. After some time here in India it did not sound as impossible as before and I called my friend Deena who is Karen and I mentioned my idea for her. She was immediately positive and contacted a friend in Thailand and then it was done; I am going to Thailand the 3^rd of March and I will stay there until 28^th of May. You will have to read this blog for some more months;-) I will of course write more about this.

If anyone should happen to be interested...

I have just posted my Master Thesis in Culture Studies on my blog. You can fint it on the bottom of the right column. It is of course in Norwegian, though. I finished it in September 2009 at Telemark University Collage (Institutt for kultur og humanistiske fag, in English?). I think that it is interesting in this context beacuse I wrote about tourism, travelling in foreign countries, nature and culture meeting. The case study is done in Kyrgyztan, but the analytical questions can be asked anytime a meeting between two strange cultures takes place.

Baby sea turtles!!

So, finally time to see some sea turtles! And not a few either, I think they said it was about 80. While we drow to the beach the hatchlings decided to get out of the nest. Mukesh got a phone call from the forest department guy who asked where we were! "We are on our way, wait for us!" :-) When we arrived the turtles had hatched, but they were collected in a bowl to wait for the officer from the Forest Depatment and a reporter from a newspaper. It can be difficult to understand things somtimes when we do not speak the same language. Why did the baby turtles have to wait for the officer? And spend more then an hour in a bowl exhausting themselves before getting into the ocean? I will try to get an answer from Sameer next time we go there. It was a mixed feeling to release the hatchlings; it was great to get the opportunity to see it, but I felt bad for keeping them in the bowl and a bit lost or empty when they entered the ocean and were gone forever. The ocean is so big and the baby turtles so small, and there is no place for humans in this animals life. I hope some of them will come back to the beach to lay their own eggs sometime.

Going on patrol again

Oj oj oj, maybe we will see 90 baby sea turtles crawl out to the ocean tonight!!! One of the two nests on the beach we are patroling are supposed to hatch now any time. The sand over the nest collapsed (about 3 cm as it is supposed to do) two nights ago and that means that tonight is the night:-D There are 97 eggs in the nest. I have to go and get ready for another night on the beach. The last 10 days I have only spent 2 in my own bed, the rest on the beach waiting for the hatching. Because of the patroling we sleep about 4-5 hours each night so now the nest has to hatch so I can get some sleep! As I might wrote before I have got company of two other girls on the project and we all enjoy the camping on the beach.

Goa -time for some updates

My sea turtle project in Goa

Hmm, so what is my project? Well, after three weeks I think I have an idea. There are three parts of the project; patroling the beach, clean ups on the beach and information campaigns at governmental schools near the beaches. So this sounds like a project. BUT... There are already volunteers from the local community doing the patroling on the beach, the beach is clean and the students at school do not speak english. And a few more things; it takes more than one hour by car to go to the the turtle beach and there are no turtles. So where is the project?

Ok, it is not as black & white as this. Our patroling on the beach is not needed so I would not call it work, but we do get the opportunity to see turtles. Since 2005 there has been five or six nests on this beach, Galgibagh beach, each year. So far this year there has only been one sea turtle who has nested here, but the season lasts up to April so there is still time. This one nest is expected to hatch any day now, so we are at the beach every night and if nothing is wrong we will see about hundred baby sea turtles come out of the sand and crawl to the ocean. The patroling on the beach is always in the night because the sea turtles will lay their eggs under cover of darkness in the night and the nest will also hatch at night time. We drive from the camp after dinner at 9 pm and reach Galgibagh beach at about 10.30 pm and walk the first patrol. This is to early in the night for the sea turtles so the reason why we do this patrol is to remove any obstacles on the beach like tree trunks and such. So far we have not removed anything, but we usually sits down for some time to tell gost stories or gossip about the camp so this patrol is nice and some times very funny too. We go to sleep somewhere between 12 pm and 2 am. The next patrol is at 3 am and now we look for the sea turtle laying her eggs. She comes up at high tide and now that is around 1 am to 3 am and this is the time when it is a chance of seeing the grown up sea turtle. The last patrol is at dawn to look for nests, but we have not walked this one because we want to sleep and the local guys do it anyway.

This is what I have been doing on the project so far. I have been the only volunteer on the sea turtle project for these first three weeks, but I have been together with the guy on the wildlife project because he has also been alone and we have the same project executive from IDEX. So we have been on the beach in the night from Monday to Friday and in the morning we have gone to the wildlife sanctuary to do Nick's project. That project is suffering of the same "there is a project, but not really-syndrome" as the turtle project. From next week there will be four girls working on this project, so I will not judge it yet. Maybe there is a project there somewhere if only the volunteers are eager and stubborn enough. The wildlife projects for sure do not need us, but maybe we can pretend for a while?

Back to the sea turtle project again and the information campaigns and the clean ups of the beach. So far have I not done any of this. If I had been stubborn I guess I could have done something, but the lazy, unmotivated atmosphere in this camp and the ajustment to a new project have not given me any energy to do this. It is neather so motivating to be alone on a project, but not any more. Yesterday two new girls arrived in the camp and they will join me in the project. From next week we will prepare an exhibiton about sea turtles for the primary school. We will make posters about why they are endangered and how we should behave if we see sea turtles or nests. But how to run an information campain for students who do not speak English when we do not speak Konkani or Hindi? Aswani, our project executive, think that it will work out with the help of the teachers at the school, so we will try and see how it goes. This project started up last year, but I have not really got a clear impression of the volunteers experiences with the information campaign or if they actually ran any. Aswani has only been on this project for two months so he do not really know either.

At least there is the cleaning up and litter picking on the beach. Galgibagh beach is clean after Indian standards, but a bit up from the beach and into the vegetation there is a lot of plastic litter. The other beaches in the area are like the ones we went to in the north of Goa with "hairless beach apes" (see "Weekends on Goan beaches"), restaurants, shacks and litter, so here it will be enough to do. The recycling of plastic is not very common here in India (or it is kind of; the cows eat everything), so after collecting the plastic litter we will make a big fire and burn it all. Hm, environmental awareness? I think that it is better to collect it and burn it than to leave it, but if someone has any views on this, do not hesitate to comment on it.

The IDEX camp and my project




Walking around in Margao with my camera

Here in Margao I decided to take the walk in the alleys right away and not wait for the last day of my stay as I did in Palampur. Margao is the second largest city in Goa, but as Gao is a very small state it does not mean that it is very big. According to wikipedia the population was 78.393 in 2001. I really like the city, and as Sirvej always has a lot of shopping to do, anything from printing pictures to sew dresses at the tailor, we have walked alot around there. This city is really a mix of everything just like Palampur and everything in India, but in a very different way. Goa was a Portuguese colony up to 1961, so you have the Portuguese heritage as you can see in the architecture. Margao is a quite modern city and you can find anything you want to shop there.




Weekends on Goan beaches

Goa has become a very famous tourist place in India the last 15-10 years. Why? I do not know. OK, it probably has something to do with the white beaches, the green palms, the blue sky and cheap shopping. Unfortunately has my mother been too succesfull in teaching me that beaches only means sand in your eyes, ears and towell. I guess that the beach is not my favorite habitat. But as we are in Goa and all the other volunteers seems to love the beach it is impossible to avoid it. And, by the way, I chose a project where I am working on the beach! The turtle that beach is very nice, so I guess that it can not be the sand that is the problem for me. Then it must be something else and what it the difference between the turtle beach and the other beaches? "Hairless beach apes frying in coconut oil"! Those who do not know this phrase have missed out on the best cartoon ever; Sherman's lagoon! Go out and buy it now;-) I am always thinking about this cartoon when I am walking on the beach between the sunbeds with people frying in the sun with a drink in one hand, money in the other and an Indian woman by their feet giving them pedicure.

Anyway, the first two weekends we spent on the beach. First we went to Baga beach and the state capital Panjim in the north of Goa and the next weekend we went to Palolem in the south. As I wrote abowe Goa is a small state and it takes about 3-4 hours by bus to go from north to south. Our camp is located almost in the middle so it is easy to go by bus to every corner of the state. And so we have! It cost about 20 rupies (3 NOK/0,4 USD) to travel one hour by bus and the busses are running all the time. And if there is no bus you can always get a ride on a motorbike that is going in your direction.




I hope this blog was not to long to read. My ambition is as always to write often and not so long, but as you see I am kind of failing on that one. I hope you still will follow my blog and it is very nice to get comments, even if it is only; "Hi, I have read you blog."

Good bye to Himachal Pradesh

OK, I know that it is much easier to do things right away before they build up to be big projects. For example is it much better to wash your dishes right after you have eaten instead of leaving it in the kitchen for a week and then spend two hours washing. And it is better to study everyday instead of reading the whole curriculum in two weeks day and night before an exam. And it is better to blog every week than to postpone it, but I think I am not the only one who have discovered that doing things right away just does not always happen:-)

I have figured out how to show the text to the pictures in the slideshow, but the text do not show properly when the internet is slow so I removed it again. Therefore you still have to go to Picasa to see it.

And I am sorry for spelling mistakes. I do not have spelling- and grammar check on my computer. I am using the Dictionary, but sometimes I publish a bit to fast.


Chandigarh Rock Garden

I have to begin with our last weekend in Nort-India. Oh, it feels so long ago. It is strange how the feeling of time changes with a new environment. We, the usual Norwegian gang and Safia from England, went to Chandigarh, a city just across the state border from Himachal. It is on the border between Punjab and Haryana and functions as a capital of both states. This city is famous for its modernist urban plan and architecture and is supposed to be the cleanest city in India. Its plan was made by the swiss architect Le Corbusier, or there was several architects involved, but Le Corbusier gets the hounour in the short version of the history.

We took public bus (which we are getting more and more fund of) from Palampur, 9 hours in the night, and then spent one night at hotel there. In total we spent 18 hours on the bus and 32 hours i Chandigarh. I had struggled with a cold for some time wich came back every time my immune system was not on top and this weekend I felt a bit nocked out. We saw the city by hiering a taxi for 5 hours and driving around to the sights. My favorite was definitely the rock garden made by Nek Chand; a sculpture garden made entirely from industrial and home waist and spread over an area of 160,000 sq m.





Last-day-party with the girls from English class

The community visit gave new life to our English class and all the girls began to come again. I think we all felt that we got a better understanding of each other after the visit. The last day we had a party with all the girls, sa usual some brothers also showed up and a mother and a grandmother too. We had alot of fun and alot of food. At the community visit we had booked time to get our legs waxed by one of the mothers who do this as a profession (I do not know what that is called, not even in Norwegian, beauty-something?). So we went to their home after the party to get our legs waxed and we ended up having dinner there and get dressed up as brides.





Walking around in Palampur with my camera

Palampur is as most other towns; it has two main shopping streets and as a foreigner you get stucked in this main streets. The last day I figured out that I should bring my camera and have a look at what was behind the shops. And how I wish I was a professional photograf, or at least knew more than I do. It is just to begin to practise. There was so many nice motifs. The alleys are a mix of new and old, asphalt and gardens, rich and poor houses and details, people and animals and suddenly someone asks you to take a picture of their doughter. Of course you are happy to take the picture, but you can not print pictures for everyone who ask. But then I thought; why not, I have time if I do it right away. So I went to a photo shop and gave them the photo files, but the shop keeper could not print it before the next day and I would leave for Dehli the same night. Ah, bad luck, so I left the shop. But then I thought that the girl could collect the pictures her self. So I asked him to print the pictures anyway, paid the 20 rupies (2,8 NOK) and got his business card. When I went back to the girl and her family to give her the business card they invited me in for chapati and pickles. This could not happen in the main street. Now I just hope that she got the pictures because during the whole time we could not understand a word of what the other said in their language.




This time it was our time to be on The List; the departure list.

And to say good bye to Bundla camp and spend 40 hours on train to get to next stop: Goa!
 .

I am ready to go to night patrol!

This will be the first night on the turtle project, so I am really exited.
It is just the problem that the driver is not ready...
He has not gotten the message from the camp manager that we are going tonight, so I do not know what is happening.

Community visit

Two weeks ago we visited the girls in our afternoon class at their homes. We visited them to encourage them to continue to come to class. The last week we had only had about five girls in class compared to up to 12 girls some weeks earlier. We did not really know what were expected from us when we went to community visit; was it not a bit unpolite to invite our selves to someones house to tell them to send their children to our class? Well, our plan was to show ourselves to the families so that we could smile and say that we were happy that their doughters came to class. Maybe the goal for us actually was a more selfish one about seeing some Indian homes. We have a feeling of living in a Western buble in our big, white house and we do not have many oppourtunities to visit Indian familes.

We have got to know the girls quite well after spending the afternoons together with them for so many weeks, but still we felt that we knew very little about their life outside of school. Especially one girl keeps on commenting about how easy everything is for us because we are white and rich and she is perfectly right, but that is also why we are here; to experience how privileged we are in many ways so that we maybe also will realise that we are.

All the girls comes from the same community and seems to be related in one or another way. All together we visited five houses. Both they and us were a bit unsecure about what to say and do, but after some cups of chai everyone became more talkative. They showed us their albums with family pictures and we tried to understand the family relations. It was impossible because an uncle is not only an uncle and an aunt is not only an aunt and your neighbor can be a mommi and your cousin can be a sister and a friend can be a brother. I have given up to learn all the different relations an Indian can have even though Rahul, our project executive, have tried many times to explain.

This is a part of the language and cultural barrier between us. There are so many things that I do not understand here. Or, I rather say that I do not understand anything at all. That is how it feels. Now as we are leaving Palampur and our projects in four days I wander if I have experienced what I came here for. I chose to travel with IDEX because I knew that I would live in a camp with other volunteers and that everything would be arranged for us. The reason why I chose this was that I wanted to stay in surroundings that was not to challenging (as for example to live as the only volunteer in a host family) so I could choose my personal projects and what to spend my energy on. I think now that it was a right decision because I have had the possibility to focus on my English teaching at the school and I think I have done a reasonable good job. On the other hand have I spent alot of time in my room with my two Norwegian room mates sitting on internet on our computers while eating Norwegian (and Swiss) chocolate. Have I spent too much time in our Western bubble? Does it disappoint me that I have not managed to understand more about India after so long time here? I do not think that it is possible to avoid the Western bubble unless you decide to "Go Native". And maybe the cultural barrier actually had feelt more oppressive if I had lived in a host family because the differences had come closer and not been held an arms lenght away as now.

It is not any easy answer to the question about how to experience and learn most about a culture and the answer does often seem to be furthes away when you are in the midle of it. Even though I do not understand Indian Culture (if there is any such thing) I have had some glimpses into it and I also would never want to miss out of getting to know Sirvi Pirvi and Ida Pida Pøne in our Norwegian Cave and all our Western touristing around.

After reading through this it sounds as if I am on my way back home to Norway wich I am not. I am just moving on to next stop in Goa. But I am ending the part of my time in India where I expected to be most involved in Indian society. In Goa I am planning to work with sea turtles and read books, but as I have experienced here it is not possible to imagine in advance how things are going to turn out.

In the post before this one I have posted alot of pictures from the last three monts that have not found its way to the blog yet. I have not regretted one moment that I bought and brought a SLR camera to India. There are so many motifs everywhere which makes it is a pleasure to carry that big, clumsy thing around with me. (I think its name is Bernt, but I have not decided for sure yet.) I hope you will enjoy the pictures and THANK YOU FOR READING AND COMMENT ON MY BLOG! I really like this part of the Western Bubble;-)

Around the block and everyday life

Food experiences

Garden flowers

Small and cute

Wild flowers in the Himalayas

"My" henna tatoo on Idas back

New weekend trip; this time to Manali

We, the three norwegians and tre other volunteers from the new group, Katharina, Simone and Mary, went to Manali last weekend Thursday 4th to Sunday 7th of November. We had a very good time as you can see from the pictures even though the beginning was not exactely as planned. As travellers and not spoiled tourists we wanted to take the bus and not a taxi. We got information from some other volunteers that there was a night bus leaving at 11 pm from the bus station. The bus would most probably be 45 minutes late so we should wait until it showed up and we should wait by the road on the opposite side from the gas station. OK, this sounded fine so we ordered a taxi to the bus station at 10:15 pm from our camp. We wanted to be early in case the information was not all correct. When we arrived at the bus station at 10:25 pm we had alot of time so we bought some food for the 5-7 hours drive (different people would tell us different time) and talked to the guys in the store about going to Manali. At 10:43 I asked them about the bus to get it confirmed. The answer was: No time! No, no, bus Manali 10:45 from Old Bus Station. 2 km. And the guy pointed up the street. Ehh, I did not even know that there was another bus station and we had told them half an hour ago that we were taking the bus to Manali. We called the other volunteers and asked about the information again. They of course said the same as last time: 11:45 opposite the gas station, and we decided that they had to be right. They had after all actually been there. So we sat down and waited for the bus. The taxi drivers at the bus station continued to tell us that there would not be any bus now, but we insisted on waiting: six girls wrapped in blankets in the dark at 11:15 pm. Of course no bus came! So six girls wrapped in blankets had to get two taxies and go by taxi to Manali. The result was also that we arrived in Manali at 4:30 am so what else to do than to find our guest house for the next night, wake up the owner who did not speak English in the midle of the night, get a room and go to bed. And we can now confirm that it can be really cold in India, I guess 10 degrees Celsius. Another part of the story is that we had only booked room for three girls because Katharina, Simone and Mary had just decided to come with us. We was not only arriving a night earlier than booked and in the midle of the night we were also twice as many. It was Ida and I who talked to the owner and we did not dare to say that we were twice as many as booked so we got one room with a duble bed and the pictures tells the rest... Click on the picture to go to Picasa Nettalbum to read my comments to the pictures.

What am I doing right now?

I am making dessert for our Diwali celebration. Anyone who recognise the chocolate cake, and maybe the fruit dessert?
It is not so easy to find the ingredients here in Palampur, but now I am begining to know which shop to go to. And the kitchen is not as my own either, but after some failing I am begining to figure things out because a life without the chocolate cake is a life without chocolate cake. Say no more;-)

Paragliding!

Click on the pictures to see my comments to the pictures in Picasa nettalbum.

Trying to teach English and enjoying it

I think it is about time to write something about my volunteer work here in India. This is my eight week of teaching Maths and English in Bindraban governmental primary school. The school has classes from 1st to 5th grade and it is about 10 children in each class so the school is not very big. There are only three teachers at the school which makes it 0,6 teachers in each class. The first four weeks we were four volunteers in this school and right now there is only me. We teach English and Maths to 1st and 2nd grade in the morning. In the afternoon I teach English in bridge class for girls from 5 to 18 years. The school is quite nice, but if someone had picked it up and placed it somewhere in Norway it would of course not meet our standards; It is amazing what you can get used to. There are only three classrooms so we are two classes in one room and one other class always sit outside. The students have reading books for Hindi and copy books and they are supposed to have pencils and rubber, but I never understand where all the pencils and erasers disappears. So every day we bring a box with pencils, sharpeners, erasers, chalk and colours together with English books, Maths books and the worksheets,memory cards and flash cards we make all the time. The children have desks and plastic chairs, but there is no desk for the teacher in our class room. By the way, there is one thing I never can get used to; the concrete floor is so uneven that all the desks are (how to say...) tilting. It is really annoying me, but the children don't seem to worry about it.

I never planned to work with kids here in India. I wanted to work with women empowerment and that's why I chose India and this particulare camp. The information we got before we arrived recommended to prepear by learning some songs and games in English for the children, but of course I didn't do this because I was not supposed to work with kids. Well, now I have learnt at least five songs for kids in English and even more playground games, and the songs are haunting my brain 24/7:

"Say good morning, say good morning.
How are you? How are you?
Time to start the lesson, time to start the lesson.
Now, now, now. Now, now, now.
Namaste! (Shouting)"

In the beginning I didn't understand how I was going to survive working in the school. I did feel that it was getting a little bit better every day so I hoped that after a while I would feel more comfortable (as you can read in an earlier post of my blog). I was right, but it took me about four weeks before I felt comfortable. After three weeks I felt that it was OK to go to work, but that I couldn't teach the children anything and I still wanted to sink into the ground every monday morning. Many of the volunteers are working only for three weeks. I am very glad that I stay here for as many weeks as I am. I think that it makes a big differense. I guess that this is not that important if you are doing other things like construction work, environmental avareness campains or when working with animals, but at least I think that it is important when working with and being so close to young children.

So I never planned to work with kids and now I have been with them monday to friday for eight weeks and what has happened is that I look foreward to go to school everyday! I don't have to prepare so much now as in the beginning because I basically know what I am going to do the next day. I know the children and I know what to expect from them. This means that I know that they are going to drive me crazy when we play Memory cards by picking up the cards before we have started playing, I know that they will bite of the tip of their pencil, tilt their head to the side and ask; "please, ma'am, please, sharpener, please", I know that they will start to work in the back of their English book and match the picture of a cat with the word "butterfly", and I know that if I have their attention for five minutes it will be a miracle. But I also know that they will shout my name when I come into the classroom in the morning and give me high five, I know that I will have five kids hanging in my arms when it's playtime, I know that they will help me carrying the little blackboard when we go outside, and I know that they will proudly bring me their book and show me when they have finished an exercise.

I have eight students in my group in the morning class which last from 9:45 to 12:00. We have devided first and second class into three groups and one volunteer is responsible for each group. I am teaching the group with the slower children and this means that I teach basics like ABC, counting the numbers 1-10 and 2+2=4. Some of the children know most of the letters but don't understand spelling and some of the children have problems with following the dots to make an A. So the day is spent by practising writing letters and number, playing Memory game, recognise and match letters on the blackboard and counting stones. In the afternoon, 15:45-17:30, my two Norwegian room mates, Ida and Sirvej, and I teach English to girls from 5 years to 18 years. In this classes we focus on conversation in English and to actually use the language. We have one topic every week and the topics have been my self, family, hobbies, clothes; so really basic English. The girls know quite many words, but they don't speak much. We have a project executive who helps us to translate Hindi and English and in that way we can have conversations. The girls are quickly bored and prefer to play badminton, but we try to keep their attention at least the first hour. After that it's PLAYTIME:-)
　

Trekking in the Himalayas II

5th of October:

Where to begin? I have catched a cold and my voice is just half of what I need for a school day in Bindraban gov. school. Yesterday we came back from a five days trek in the Himalayas and now it's morning and I am going to work in 1 1/2 hour. It was lovely to sleep in "my own" bed again after five nights where I have been woried that I would wake up with bluemarks on my hips because of the hard bed. But where does the story begin? It begins with the hike we went on two weeks ago arranged by IDEX. The whole volunteer group went for a hike from MacLeod Ganj and slept one night in the mountains at a camp site called Triund. The last post on this blog is the pictures from that trip. (If you click on the pictures in the slidshow and follow the link to Picasa you can read my comments to the pictures.) As you see we had a great hike in a impressive landscape. Before we went there I had already decided for my self to go back for a longer hike and I had checked out some of the companies that arranged trekking from MacLeod Ganj. This was something I already thought about back home in Norway. At the hike with IDEX we had a very nice guide and the food was great and everything was good! We (Ida, Sirvej, Vegar, Mathias and I) decided to go for a five days trekking from 29th of September to 3rd of October with the same company and the guide Mool Raj. This was all inclusive wich means that the trekking company provided us with tents, sleeping bags, food and what else we would need and we also had people carrying all this things for us. We only carried light backpacks with our own clothings and other personal pickpack. The service was without limmits, they even washed our dishes for us. Since I acctually have a Master degree in analycing this kind of trekking I was prepeared for this, but it was anyway difficult to know how to act when you are in the mountains and you are supposed to sit down and relax while someone is setting up your tent and put on pillow cases on your pillow for you. We slept for two nights in tents in the mountains and two nights we spent on home stays in villages on the other side of the mountain range wich we passed.

Very unfortunately Mathias got a flu and could not come with us. We missed you, Mathias!

We skipped four days of work and started on Wednesday from MacLeod Ganj; a small town where the exile government of Tibet holds place together with i big crowd of Indian tourists and foreign backpackers. It takes two hours by bus from our IDEX camp in Palampur and it costs 35 rupi (=5 NOK). This is a great place for shopping, but after 2 days the last time we were there I had enough of the place. We were only eager to get to the mountains and when you take a look at the pictures you can understand why. We had so many experiences during that short week!

Click at the slidshow to get to Picasa Nettalbum and read my comments about the hike!
　

A Sunday Hike to Baba's Temple

On Sunday the 26th of September we went for a hike in the hills north of our camp. Our plan was to go for a short walk to The Waterfalls wich we though was one hours walk from the camp. We followed the river upstream and after a while we started to wonder how far it could be. Then we met two Americans (the first white people we have seen in Palampur) who could tell us that it would take us three hours to get to the waterfalls. Well, so we would miss lunch this day, but get a nice walk instead.
The next person we met was Baba, a Hindu priest, and we should find out that without him we probably would never have found the waterfalls. He came down the hillside and lucky for us Sara who speaks hindi was there and then he decided to walk up the hills agan to show us the way. With Sara as translator we learnt that he was a Hindi priest and was responsible for the tempel by the waterfalls and that this tempel is very important in this area because it is in honor of the river that brings water to the valley. He has lived in the tempel alone in the hills for the last ten years, but he walks down to the town everyday. When we walked down together with him we saw that he was highly respected and appreciated by everyone we met. He was also very kind and hospitable to us.
This Sunday we met again some of the contrasts that India can offer. They are building a hydro power station in the valley and near the station by the river we passed the shelters for the construction workers and their families;  shelters made by corrugated iron (?) and poorly dressed and dirty kids running around. Up in the hillside near the tempel we walked on the two years old construction road for the power station. The tunnels in the pictures is for the power station. Along the road we passed several shelters left by the workers; India offer a hard life for some of it's inhabitants.
It took us three hours to reach the tempel and the waterfalls, but it was worth every drop of sweat we sacrificed up the steap trail. I think the pictures speaks for itself. First we dank tea and ate boiled corn cobs and biscuits in Baba's house/tower before we had a swim in the ponds by the waterfalls. In the end of the day we had to hurry back to the camp before the staff started on our dinner so we could tell them that we would eat out on a restaurant. We still had time to take pictures of a goat in a tree posing for our cameras. We live an easy life here in India.

Trekking in The Himalayas I

This is pictures from when the whole group of volunteers went to MacLeod Ganj and trekking in the Himalayas the 16th to the 19th of September.

Click on the pictures to go to Picasa netalbum to read my comments to the pictures. The pictures that I am on is taken by Josep Maria Ribas.

Into the Woods

After visiting the tea factory on Saturday we explored the Himalayian Woods on Sunday. Those woods are not to mess with!

It was a sunny and beautiful morning as we decided to explore the hills north of our camp, but the rain season is still here and the weather is unstabile. When we started walking the fog had covered up the hillside and who knows what it was hiding...

After we left the last houses in the village behind us we found a narrow road that we decided to follow, but we were soon to find out that there was tings that were crawling around in the gras and bushes. It was Ida who commented on the blood on my leg and asked if I was hurted. I had not felt anything and could not understand why I was bleedning before Ida felt something on her leg too. A leech had attached itself to her leg and was sucking her blood! We looked around and saw several leeches on the ground together with several other suspicious creeps. We decided to end our nice breake and keep moving.

The fog was all the time getting thicker in the woods. We kept on walking until we found an old ruin. What could it be? The place had a strange aura of oldness and loneliness. We looked around for a while before we took a look in the water... Three water spirits streched their arms out towards us and tried to grab us from the green water!

This was not a place to stay...

I ran as fast as I could away from this green old place, found my self a tree and hided until I was sure the water spirits didn't follow us.

Fore sure; those woods are not to mess with!

Far away up in the hills we found the main road again. A bit shaky from our exploration of the woods we sat down and calmed ourselves with some Ferrero Rocher chocolate. We met a Indian couple having a picknick and they could tell us that there was one bus on this road every day, and that it would soon come. What a relief. After 10 minutes the bus came and took us back to the camp for 10 rupi (1,20 NOK). And what a happy ending on a scary story!

How to get time to blog?

I'm sorry for not blogging more! I had big plans for blogging this weekend, but then we went to Palampur, had a wedding party for Sirvej's friend in Norway, I cooked some dessert for the whole camp, went on a 7 hour hike where we met a priest and ate dinner at a restaurant. So you see, it's not easy to get time to do the blogging.
Today I had again plans for this blog, but now I have just spent 2 2/1 hour on decorating Ida's back with henna tatoo.
Tomorrow we, the four Norwegians, are going on a 5 days hike in the Himalayas up to 4500 meter above sea level, so no blogging this week either...
Then you know that when I am not blogging it's because I am very busy having a good time (and working as English teacher and prepearing next days classes)!

Where does chai come from?

From Palampur Tea Gardens! (among others)

Palampur, the town where I live and work, is known for the tea gardens that suround it. The gardens are own by one man who had a clever great grand father (I don't know if it is all of the gardens or just many cause I don't always understand everything when I talk to Indians). The great grand father managed somehow to retreave all the land around Palampur from the British and now the great grand son is a very wealthy man.
The town also have it's own tea factory. The tea "industry" employes about 500 people in this area. First the new tea leaves are picked from the gardens and taken to the factory where it is dried in big containers by hot air. And then I don't really know much more then what my pictures show, but it is probably possible to find out on the internet...
Well, the first weekend we visited this factory and they let us come in and look around.

Chai!

They serve us chai every where here in India. Twice a day in the camp, 2 pm and 8 pm, along the road and in the Himalayas 3250 meters above sea level. I love it with lots of ginger, sugar and milk!

So, what am I doing in India?

I am definetly not on holiday, not at all. I have just finished my preparation for tomorrow's English class and the time is 10 pm. The last hour I have been drawing pictures of fruits. We are going to show them to the pupils when we teach them the names of banana, mango, coconut, orange, pineapple, apple, lime and watermelon. (OK, it's not only fruits.) Yesterday I was doing preparation until 9:30 pm, finding a text for the adolesent girls to read. This volunteer thing is not just travelling, fun and nice experiences, we are actually the only teachers the kids have in English. This is hard work.

We arrived our work area on Sunday the 5th, just to discover that we are living in a kind of a hotel building with nice rooms and a beautiful view. The town Palampur is located in the foothills of the Himalayas, where we are surrounded by green forest and in the North the scenery ends in steep mountains. The weather is hot and humid now in the rain season, even here on 1200 meters above sea level. Today was the first day we could see the peaks of the mountains since they have been hidden in clouds and mist for the last 2-3 months. But now the rain season is comming to an end, and the sun has been shining the whole day.

It is only now in the evening that the rain has started to pour down again, followed by thunder and lightening, which has resulted in power black out. I had to draw my fruits in the light of a head torch. So even if we live in a hotel where we are served hot meals three times a day we don't feel spoiled. For the next 5 months I am going to do my laundry by hand and shower in water from a bucket on the floor. But we do have hot water from a tap in the end of the corridor. There are four volunteers sharing each room, but every room has it's own bathroom, with western style toilets, a sink, a tap with cold water, and two buckets on the floor for showering and laundry. Our group consists of 20 volunteers living here at the moment, with young adults from Germany, UK, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, USA and Norway.

The IDEX staff is only made up of Indians and consists of project executives, intepretators, the camp manager, house keepers, and drivers. I am not sure how many they are, but if our work as volunteers is failing, we are at least employing a bunch of people. So something good will come out of these projects anyway. They are making our life here as comfortable as possible, herding us around like sheeps, and do their best to make our volunteering useful. The kitchen is provideing us with healthy, nutritious and tasty food. So far I am not bored by Indian food, I actually like it very much. And my stomach is not giving me any trouble, as many others have had. There have also been some girls fainting, some with fever, eye infections, urine infections and head aches these first three days. So we are taking care to wash our hands properly.

On monday the 6th we chose our work placements. First we visited all the different places, and then we decided where we wanted to work. As I wrote earlier I had planned to teach adolecent girls in English and computing, but these classes are both in the afternoon so I had to choose another one in the morning. All the morning projects involved working with kids, so now I am teaching English in first and second class (5-6 years old) in Bindrabad public school in the morning. In the afternoon am I teaching adolesent girls in English. Well, maybe not only adolesent; the girls are from 6 years to 18 years. That makes quite a big gap in English skills. Because of the difference in skills we have to prepare at least two different programs for each lesson, and each lesson last for 2 hours. That is why I have spent the last evening preparing.

In the morning class there are 17 kids, and in the evening we have 12 girls joining the class and it is not as if we only are assistants for the teacher. There are no other teachers in these classes. Indian governmental schools are underfunded and there are too few teachers for all the classes, at least in this school. I don't know if they would manage to give the pupils a teacher if we were not there but we are anyway holding the classes in groups of three or four volunteers. The only help is an interpretator from IDEX, because the children of course do not speak English, and an executive, also form IDEX who go through our plans every morning. My expectations of how much we could be of help was very low before I got here, and now I also have to wonder if even my best might not be good enough. Well, the first day was better than I feared, and today was better then the first day. So I hope I will get to grips with this when I get some more experience. I will be doing this for the next ten weeks, so hopefully I will survive and it will be easier after a while. At least I think that our efforts are better than nothing for these kids.

And, ok, I have to admit that the kids are adorable.

Himachal from a car window

Taj Mahal, Agra

Amber Fort, Jaipur

First impressions of India in pictures

First impression of India

It is really something special about walking out of the air conditioned airport, and to enter the Indian air for the first time; the heat, the humidity, the smell of the traffic and humans and garbage and fire, the sounds of a strange language and traffic in crowded streets.

My first impression of India is actually quite as I expected. Our plane landed on Monday the 31^st at 06.30, and we met a man from IDEX at the airport. We went by taxi to a hotel in Delhi, where we met the rest of the group of 16 volunteers before driving to Jaipur, The Pink City. Indian traffic is crowded, with pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, scooters, cars, rickshaws busses and trailers. And along the road we could see people sleeping in shelters or only on a blanket. Poverty is striking, but after a closer look, much of what seems to be garbage or ruined homes are not. In many cases, the houses are not finished, and about to be built. What immediately gives the impression of being an all surrounding mess, are peoples’ lives, and it is the strangeness that makes it look messy to us.

And so far most here are strange; the food, the bathrooms, the classrooms, the traffic, the beds and all the people. But the food is tasting great, the bathroom is working with shower and water closet, it’s nice to sit on cushions in the classroom, we survived the traffic (I actually did not think that I was going to die even once in seven hours), it is so hot that we don’t need more blanket on the bed, and the group of volunteers are very nice even though I don’t know them very well yet, and IDEX are taking rally good care of us; herding us like a flock of sheep.

I will not start to work before Monday. Until then we are taking some classes in Hindi language and culture, and about the work and locations in Himachal. We are also being “herded” around to some attractions, like Taj Mahal on Saturday and Amber fort and elephant riding tomorrow, Thursday. Here in India it is perfectly fine to be “herded” in the beginning. I believe I am going to have enough chances later on to get lost on weekend excursions.

What am I doing in India?

I have spent the last year on Hidra, and this has been very nice and relaxing, and now I think it about time to see the world. Hidra is, without doubt, the center of the world (one is always in the center of one's own physical world), but it can be nice to see some of the outskirts of our globe too (where some billions of people live).
So I am travelling, not because I need a holiday, but maybe because I want a challenge. Since I am not travelling to relax, and I want to stay for a longer period of time in one place, I think that volunteer work is the best way to spend the next five months.
I first heard about Atlantis Youth Exchange a year ago when they had a stand at my university college during a career day. To travel with Atlantis seemed to be a good way to encounter the world. It is nice to know that I will travel together with three other Norwegians to India, and that there will be a person waving a sign saying IDEX (Atlantis' Indian partner) when we arrive at the airport in New Delhi. I am sure that I will find enough ways to challenge myself in India, so I don't need to begin my travel by being fooled by a taxi driver, robbed and ending up in a lousy hotel. I prefer Atlantis' way, with a one week introduction course, learning some Hindi and being dressed up in traditional Hindi clothes.
I have chosen to join two different projects in India. I will spend the first twelve weeks in the state of Himachal Pradesh in the northern part of India working on a social development project. The next eight weeks will be spent on a turtle conservation project on the beaches in Goa. So it's two totally different places and projects.
The project in Himachal Pradesh is located in the village/town of Palampur (1440m. above sea level). It was established in 2005, and has now lasted for 5 years. The volunteers are working in schools, kinder gardens, orphans home and with women empowerment. I wish to work with the women empowerment part of the project, which involves teaching conversational English and basic computer skills. All the volunteers, up to 20 people, live together in an international volunteer camp. So I will not only meet Indians, but also youth from all over Europe.
The camp in Goa is situated close to the Majorda beach and the town of Madgaon in the southern part of the state. Here I will also live in an international volunteer camp, and the volunteers will work on many of the same kind of projects as in Himachal Pradesh. But I have chosen to do something different here; I am going to rescue baby sea turtles (Olive Ridley turtles), which means to pick and remove plastic garbage from the beach. But it also involves to run awareness campaigns among the local population and tourists, and to guard the preserved natural nesting grounds.
I will write a closer description of the projects and the camp sites later. This is about all I know now. And it's not definite that I will work on these exact projects. The first day in Himachal and in Goa we will visit all the different projects, and then decide where we want to work. Maybe my mind will change, or maybe there will be different needs in the local community.
My time in India ends the 9^th of February when my flight leave for the Philippines where I will visit my father and Aireen. To get a visa here I needed a flight ticket out of the country, so I have a return ticket to Norway the 3^rd of March. But this ticket is changeable, so time will show if I will change it or not.
And at last; it might be that I don't have internet access in the camps…

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