Wednesday, June 8, 2011

We're still settling in and getting used to things here in India, and I'm still loving (almost) all of it! The best part continues to be the family we are living with.  I now have 4 more brothers, and whenever we're at home they are always saying "sister look, sister look!"  They are so much fun.  It's like a perpetual state of babysitting. :) I love just sitting on the couch or one of the beds with them all around, or losing in chess or playing catch with them.  They're great.  Velma keeps teaching us more and more about Indian culture, specifically all of their singers/actors/actresses.  I still don't completely understand, but they apparently have music videos for songs, but the people in all the videos are only pretending to be the singers--they are just actors and actresses, and the real singers aren't very famous.  I would say it seems weird, but then we saw a commercial for Lady Gaga, which eclipses most of the oddities of any culture.

We went to a slum school yesterday, one that Gil owns.  The kids are not actually in school right now, as they are on summer break.  Still though, about 20-30 kids from the area all came so that we could teach them some things while we are here.  We had no idea that we would be teaching, so Katy and I were just making it up as we went along! We covered all the basic vocab topics we could think of: body parts, fruits and vegetables, counting and age, countries, months and days.  Then we did some math because , as Cady Heron said "It's the same in every country. (That's beautiful)"  They asked us to give them homework at the end, so we assigned them some multiplication problems.  That also meant that Katy and I had to go home and figure them out too.  :/

The other 2 volunteers got to our house yesterday.  They had started out in one of the orphanages for about two days, but couldn't stand it.  Apparently there weren't showers and the toilets didn't really work, and it was just terrible.  So now we're all staying together and we'll be teaching together. Telma is from Iceland and Rica is from Denmark. 

It does seem that we are getting used to the heat! At least it wasn't the first thing I mentioned!! The power has gone out a couple of times at home, which means that the fans, our only way to keep cool, also stop.  It usually is only for about 5 minutes, but sometimes it's been up to half an hour . Once it comes back on and we get the fans back, we feel like we are in heaven.  It's funny how your perspective changes so quickly!

The four of us (Katy, Telma, Rica, and I) are probably going to go into New Delhi this weekend.  We're planning on maybe staying at a hotel so that we can maybe go swimming or cool down somehow.  So hopefully we'll get wi-fi or something and be able to upload pictures!

4 comments:

  1. Carly, you have such a great attitude about new things and trying experiences. Thanks for keeping us posted on the adventure. I am very jealous!

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  2. What great stories you are going to have. Praying for you! Love you!

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  3. Thank you both! It has only been a week and it has already been more than I expected!

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  4. Love the impromtu teaching part! You go girl!

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