So a month has nearly gone and I am still having a fantastic time. I have had many more experiences of
Bangalore
and India in General. I still love the teaching and the kids are still
absolutely fantastic. The last few weeks we have been given more
responsibility with the kids. We are currently running English
assessments for the whole school. At the moment we are completing
Jayanagar and they we will be going onto the other 3 schools around the
city to do the same assessments. These assessments will tell the
teachers whether or no the children need extra help. We have been giving
the children stickers for coming out of class disregarding whether they
are doing well or not which they absolutely love.
On Sunday a reporter published an article in the Bangalore
times about the school which was really good to read. It makes you
realize the backgrounds which these children come from and how different
they are at school.
We have explored the city now to great extent and
found the best places to shop and eat. We have also been away now twice
at the weekends which has been really good. Last weekend we went to
Pondicherry which was an 8 hour bus journey away. It is on the west
coast of Bangalore near Chennai.
The bus journey on the way was quite good. We were on a semi-sleeper
bus which means the seats just reclined. Some of us slept well but
others didn’t sleep well at all! When we arrived, we had no
accommodation booked so we got in a Rickshaw and asked him to take us to
a cheap but clean Hotel which he did. It was reasonable; al that
mattered was having clean rooms and hot water which it did. On arrival
we slept for a while as we were all pretty tired. We had a good
breakfast and relaxed for the day on Paradise Island which was lovely.
In the evening we went to a lovely restaurant which did amazing French
food (Pondicherry is a French town). We had an early night as we were
all still tired from the bus journey and doing nothing during the
day!!!! We had a few problems when we arrived back that night as we were
told we were going to be chucked out our rooms at 6am as that was the
time in which we arrived but in the end we managed to decide that if
they kept out deposit of about 3 pounds that we could have our rooms
until midday!
On Saturday we spent the day relaxing again. We
had a late breakfast/early lunch in another little French restaurant
which was lovely and very cheap although the service was quite bad!! We
hired bikes and visited the local Ashram which was lovely. On our way
there we met a guy called Mali who was from Mexico. He was about 60 and
he asked us to stop by on our way back past which we did. He was lovely
and he told us all about his life!! For the rest of the day we took a
rickshaw to 2 other beaches just out of town which were both lovely.
Sadly our weekend in Pondicherry was over after this and we had to get
the night bus back to Bangalore.
I did not enjoy the journey home as we were on a sleeper bus and I felt
very sick lying down on the bus! I did not sleep very well but caught
up on some sleep when I got back home to the apartment!
This weekend coming we are going on an adventure
camp to see Tigers and Elephants which should be amazing. There will be
20 of us going and I can’t wait. We will be camping as well which will
be an experience and we have camp fires and rafting organized for us
which will be good.
I am still enjoying my home stay. The lady is
lovely whom Deepa and I are staying with. She cooks us lovely food and
looks after us well. At the moment she has her 2 daughters over from
Australia for the week which is really nice and hopefully tonight we
will be going out for a few drinks together.