Ev Star

It’s been awhile since my last update and I choose to blame it on being sick.  Mad and I have both been sick for the last week or so and we really haven’t done much of anything besides sleep and rest and drink water and other such thrilling things. 

 We’re feeling better now though and even went out on Lake Pichola in Udaipur today.  We met a British couple and went out in peddle boats which was lots of fun.  It was really hot out eventhough we went in the morning, but I had a good time anyway. 

Anyway, I will update again soon with more interesting things to tell. 

xo Ev

So here we are in Kolkata.  Actually, it wasnt as easy as all that.  Our flight left bright and early yesterday morning and we had no electricity in our room!  Made for interesting (read: somewhat stressful) packing.  Anyway, we made it!

 So last I left off we were in Cochin.  After our evening there, the owner brought us to the bus station and we journeyed down to Alleppey.  Our accomodation in Alleppey was on an island.  We went  to the dock and got picked up in a long wooden canoe.  It was pretty funny to travel along with all our bags in this big old canoe.  The giant canoe had a motor and so with that we travelled to the island.  The place we were staying at was built kind of like a tree house.  We had decided to economize by staying in an 8 person dorm.  It didnt end up mattering at all as we were the ONLY guests in the entire resort.  It was kind of weird.  The place was pretty nice though.  One of our windows looked out at a lake and the other to giant rice fields. 

The next day we got on a boat (it was called a ferry but it was more like a big boat with a canopy with garden chairs set up underneath) and headed toward Kollam.  It is an 8 hour journey by boat and our guide book had said that you could get off half way and stay at an ashram for a night and then get back on and finish the journey the next day.  We decided to do that.  We both found the ashram experience interesting but also pretty weird.  The ashram was set up by this woman called Amma and her thing is all about loving everyone and she’s supposed to have healing hugs.  Anyway, there are huge apartment buildings at the ashram and a lot of the rooms are used by people or families who have moved to the ashram.  Everyday they gather several times for chanting, meditating and singing of songs written by Amma.  A few hours of the day are reserved for doing “seva” (volunteer work) and the rest of the time i think they just hang out around the ashram (it is designed to be it’s own community and you are not encouraged to leave the gates unless you are actually leaving).  It was mostly weird because these people seem to have deifyied Amma.  There are HUGE pictures of her everywhere (our apartment room was absolutely plastered with images of her), when they do the chanting and what not they do it in front of a throne like chair with a big portrait of her seated on it, and when they talk, most of their sentences start with “Amma says…”.  Actually the group has done a lot of good humanitarian work, so that is good, but the deification thing is still pretty weird to me.  Oh and also everything is sex segregated and you are not supposed to show any outward affection to other people, which seems a little strange as Amma’s whole thing is about love.  In any case, it was an interesting experience, but I think one night was enough for me!

After our night at the ashram, we took the boat down to Kollam and from there we took the bus to Varkala.  Varkala was gorgeous!  I wish we could have stayed longer.  We stayed in a little guest house really close to the beach.  When we woke up the next morning (we actually get up pretty early here…i guess because it starts to get hot pretty early) we walked to the beach.  There are huge cliffs leading down to the water.  We walked down a set of stairs to the water and went for a swim.  It was great!  Warm water, nice waves, beautiful sand leading up to the fantastic cliffs and not too many people (i think only because it was early in the morning)!

That afternoon we took the train down to Trivandrum.  The administrator, Shanti, at Shanti Bhavan school has a son who has an apartment in Trivandrum that he was not using and she had said that we could probably stay in it.  When we arrived in Trivandrum, we gave her son, Rajeev, a call and he kindly came and picked us up and drove us to his apartment.  What Shanti had not told us was that it was a two storey penthouse suite in an apartment building in downtown Trivandrum!  It was pretty awesome.  There was even a swimming pool!  Anyway, he showed us around the apartment and gave his friend a call and asked him to drive us down to Kanyakumari (the tip of India where 3 seas meet) the next day.  Altogether we had a pretty great time there!  Well, minus the power outage the next morning!

xoxoEv

Our last week at Shanti Bhavan has come to an end and we now find ourselves at a lovely homestay in Cochin , Kerala.  Our first real “travel” segment has begun!  Hopefully we will master the art of backpacking soon.  We have so much stuff that it’s like backpacking plus several bags.  Oh well, i guess it is early on yet and after a few days of lugging our stuff around we will start to weed out things we really don’t need.The last week of school went on as usual.  On my last day of class with my grade 3 kids, the students got to ask me anything they wanted about me and Canada and so on.  There were some nice questions like: ”Miss Evy, are there any shops where you live?”  ”Yes” ”do you sometimes buy bubblegums at the shops?” ”Yes, sometimes”Other questions included wanting to know what my parents names are (a lot of kids wanted to know!  mom and dad, you are kind of famous at Shanti Bhavan now!), they wanted to know about my ‘baby’ brother (i tried to explain you weren’t quite a baby Al…)And they wanted to know about silly things I used to do when I was a kid (they greatly enjoyed hearing about how Al and I used to have flying practice where we would tape highly aerodynamic wings to our arms, jump off our beds and flap wildly…practice makes perfect, right?!) On Sunday night, our last night at the school, I went to the school kitchen and helped make dinner.  It was fun!  I rolled out millions of naans with the other kitchen staff members.  If I get a chance to go back to Shanti Bhavan, I would try to help out in the kitchen more often.On Monday morning, after the school assembly, Mad and I got to go to see Baldev Medical clinic.  I’m so glad we got to go see it!  It is another one of the George foundation projects.  Pretty much it is a clinic for all the rural village people in the area.  There are government health centers in India, but they are not run very well and people do not get the medical care they need especially as it is rare that a doctor is even there!  At Baldev, they are using a computer program that was invented by Dr George.  It is called EDPS.  The program is kind of like a big flow chart.  The technician using the computer asks the patient basic questions about their symptoms, once those have been put into the program, the computer comes up with more pertinent questions.  The computer keeps coming up with more questions to ask until a general diagnosis can be made.  It will then give suggestons on how to treat the ailment with over-the-counter drugs which can be given to the patient without a doctor’s prescription.  If the patient needs to see a doctor, the computer will say that and so an appointment can be set up when the doctor will actually be there.  It seems to have been quite successful so far.  Furthermore, the clinic has field workers that specifically work with pregnant women and children under the age of 3.  The field workers go from village to village to collect information on these people.  Then the field worker brings the information back and puts it into the computer.  The computer then notifies when children need to get their immunizations, it shows if a pregnant woman has not gained as much weight as she should have, etc. Then the next time the worker goes out, she can focus on the patients who need the most care (ie by bringing high protein supplements to underweight pregnant women, etc).  It was very interesting!  Again, if I go back to Shanti Bhavan, I’d be very interested in helping out there as well.As I was saying earlier, Mad and I are currently in Cochin.  We are staying at a homestay and the family has been very nice and helpful!  We arrived by train at 4 30 in the morning yesterday and one of the owners came to pick us up (so nice we didnt have to try to figure out how to get to their place at that time!).  After resting for a few hours, we went downstairs and were served idlies with chutney, bananas and chai.  Then the grandparents (there are 3 generations living here) drove us out to their beach home (we had a choice of staying there as well but it would have been more expensive).  The view from their beach home was fantastic!  The only other people on the beach were fishermen.  It’s neat because there were two larger fishing boats (by larger i mean like oversize wooden canoes) that stayed out at sea.  When they caught enough fish to warrant a trip back to shore, 2 or 3 men got into a small wooden boat with the catch and paddled back to shore.  We could watch the action from the balcony.  We were also able to go for a swim!  It was great!  We had a giant beach pretty much to ourselves!  After our swim, the grandparents cut up a watermelon for us which we ate and then they put us on a bus to get to Fort Cochin.  Actually that required a bus trip and then a ferry ride (a ferry ride on which i lost my hat to the wind).  We spent the rest of the day walking around Fort Cochin (I especially enjoyed seeing the chinese fishing nets!) and then in the evening we watched an unfortunately fairly poor dance show.  After the show we took a ferry back to the mainland and then took a rickshaw back to our homestay. Today we are off to Alleppey by bus.  It should take about an hour and a half to get there and then we will have to take a boat to get to our accomodation. Ev

It’s hard to believe, but we just have 1 week left at Shanti Bhavan school.  I’ve had a lot of fun there!  The kids are very cute and are also very outgoing.  They like to talk and ask questions all the time which makes it fun to be with them.  Every evening at dinner Mad and I go sit with another table in the dining hall.  It’s been neat to have a chance to talk to all the different students.  We’ve heard lots of stories about what they do for their birthdays (a favourite topic with the little kids!), their favourite books, movies and sports, about their families and all about the things they do at school. 

We did not go to Hosur last Saturday afternoon to use the internet because we discovered that there is no electricity every 3rd Saturday of the month in this area.  I had a couple of classes saturday morning, including environmental science.  It was fun because apparently in grade 3, environmental science means going on a nature walk and so I embarked on a journey with my 19 students.  They took me to ‘the rocks’ which are a couple of big rocks behind their dormitory which we climbed all over.  It was pretty fun!

 Saturday evening was the month end performance for students from preschool to grade 5.  Miss Berni had asked me if I could teach the students a dance, so Mad and I made up a line dance routine to the song ‘Man I Feel Like a Woman’ by Shania Twain.  We had rehersals throughout the week and then the kids performed Saturday night.  They did a great job!  The kids’ house mothers got jeans and plaid shirts for the boys and plaid skirts and white shirts for the girls which definitely added to the effect! 

On Sunday, Mad and I took a rickshaw from the school to Hosur and then caught a bus into Bangalore.  I didn’t have a chance to update my website because i went to the travel agent to book train tickets and flights for Mad and I.  I’m glad it is done!!  Trains seem to fill up really far in advance. 

This week at school the children have been preparing for sports day.  The actual event was this morning (it started at SIX THIRTY AM) and it was huge!  The kids marched in formations and then did routines with coloured pompoms (there were 4 house colours, red, blue, yellow and purple).  Then the races began!  The preschoolers and kindergarten kids did races where they had to do things like build a tower out of blocks and then run to the finish line, or put on a shirt (buttoning it up was very tough for them and a few kids started to cry) and then run to the finish line.  The older kids had running, cycling and skipping races.  It was all very thrilling especially as all the staff and volunteers were divided into the houses as well (i was in the purple group).  We all dressed up for the event in our colours and cheered loudly!  I am happy to report that my house won!  After the races were over we had breakfast and then the prize ceremony.  There were prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for every event for every grade…needless to say it took awhile, but it was fun.  The kids were excited to get the prizes (notebooks, folders, pencil sharpeners, etc.). 

After all that, Maddy, Jacques, Micheline (the couple from montreal) and I had to give a presentation on Canada to the whole school.  They like to spring these presentations on you, usually at the end of assembly so that you have no choice but to go up and do some sort of a presentation on the spot.  This time we actually had 1 day of notice, so we prepared a presentation including lots of acting (canadian wildlife, dogsledding, flying by airplane and so on).  On top of that each one of us had a category: history, geography, arts and culture and industries & wildlife to talk about.  The presentation was successful and we ended it by handing out canadian flag pins and pennies to all the students and staff. 

Mad and I are spending the afternoon in Hosur while the kids get the rest of the day to relax and watch videos at the school.  We are at the internet place now, but we will probably go out and do a bit of shopping shortly.

 xoEv

I am currently sitting at Coffee.com, an internet cafe in Pondicherry.  5 volunteers, 1 teacher and maddy and I decided to rent a van for the weekend and come visit this French seaside town.  The ride was not the most comfortable (there were 3 of us squished in the very back seat with no leg room whatsoever, there were HUGE potholes all over the place that caused the VAN to bottom out a number of times, and there were buses driving in the wrong lane (aka head-on crash pending at all times).  We made it none-the-less.  We first dropped off the retired couple from Montreal (Jacques and Micheline) at their place and then the next stop was the place mad and I were to stay at.  Unfortunately, though we had reserved a room a week in advance and then called to confirm before embarking on our drive to Pondicherry, there was no room for us.  It was 10pm.  Our van had left, we were hot, tired and had all our stuff with us.  We argued for a while and finally got a single room and did not have to pay the extra fee they wanted to charge us to put a spare mattress on the floor (with no pillow or blanket).  It was stressful and irritating, so we think that next time we make a reservation we will ask what our room number is and maybe also ask for the name of the person who we are speaking with.  It’s really not fun to arrive in a new place at night time and not have a room to stay in.   

Anyway, today has been nice, we walked from our hostel to a restaurant for breakfast, then we walked through a few of the streets of Pondicherry and found this internet place and now we are about to embark on a heritage walk of the city.  I’m excited to walk on the beach!!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention.  At school I am co-teaching the 3rd grade with Bernadette (or Miss Berni as she is called).  The kids are super cute and VERY eager to learn!  They call mad and I Miss Maddy and Miss Evy.  It’s kind of funny!  Maddy is teaching classes in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades.  I have also been reading bedtime stories to the preschool kids.  They are very very cute! 

A funny story from my classroom, Miss Berni was teaching the students about renewable and non-renewable resources and how the school uses solar energy and that if we use up non-renewable resources there won’t be any left.  The kids thought about it for a while and then were like “but it’s ok, god will make more!”.  They were pretty pleased with their realization.  Ms. Berni, slightly flustered, told them, “well yes, god will make more, but it will still take him millions and millions of years”.  It was pretty funny.

That’s about it for now!

xo Ev

So two weeks in and i’ve already managed to get sick.  ew.  Well actually I think it was food poisoning, but it lead to having a fever and fainting and other unpleasant things.  Luckily Nimisha’s uncle who we were staying with is a doctor, so he gave me some medicine and i’m feeling fine now. 

Anyway, on the morning of January 31st, mad and I got driven to the train by Nimisha’s uncle and their driver.  We were in a two tier sleeper car.  It was kind of exciting to sleep on a train!  Actually, because I wasn’t feeling well I slept about 20 of the 25 hours of our journey (long trip!).  When I wasn’t sleeping though it was nice to look at the scenery and to talk to the woman sleeping on the bunk below me.  Her daughter lives in Kenya and she had just been there for a visit so she told us all about that.  She also asked us questions about Canada like how many climates are there?  which is kind of hard to describe as it is different all over.  She also wanted to know what a blueberry tastes like….umm sort of fruity?!  The train ride went well, and when we arrived at the Bangalore city junction we got picked up by Shanti Bhavan’s driver (Shanti Bhavan is the name of the school we are volunteering at for the next month).  It took about two hours to drive to the school.  The school is in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, pretty well in the middle of nowhere.  It has a huge campus with fields of palm trees and banana trees.  In fact our room in the volunteer house (we have our own room with ensuite bathroom which is very nice) looks out at palm trees. 

So far the kids seem great!  They call us aunties which is kind of funny, but it works.  The students are all from villages of “untouchables” and the aim is to educate them and give them an opportunity to change their situation and hopefully to spread what they learn to the other people in their villages.  We went to visit an untouchable village yesterday.  It was weird to have a group of foreigners troop around like looking at a zoo, but on the other hand i found it interesting to see where the kids come from (we met the parents and siblings of a couple of the students).

Mad and I don’t know our schedules yet, but it seems we will be teaching classes, doing some one on one work, reading bedtime stories (the youngest kids get 15 minutes of bedtime story in their dorms every night), sports and games and so on.  It should be lots of fun! 

We will only be able to use the internet on Saturdays as there is no access at the school. 

Bye for now!

xoxoEv 

As my title suggests, the last few days have been busy!!

On Tuesday and Wednesday we did volunteer work with Smita’s eldest brother.  He started an NGO that has two branches to it.  He first started with doing blood drives to get blood for blood banks in Mumbai.  It is kind of crazy as there are 55 bloodbanks in the city and now he is pretty much the central agent for them all.  He runs blood drives at colleges and different businesses and then distributes the blood to the blood banks that need it.  The other side of his NGO deals with a blood disorder called thalassaemia.  I’d never heard of it before, but it afflicts a lot of Indian people.  The problem is that a lot of people are thalassaemia minors and don’t know it, and if two parents are thalassaemia minors their kid might be a thalassaemia major which causes huge problems.  The kid will need a blood transfusion every 15 days for the rest of their lives as well as have an injection every night that lasts 8-10 hours to remove excess iron from the blood.  So, what Vinay (smita’s brother) does is he goes to colleges and gives a lecture on thalassaemia and then the next day he goes back with a group of nurses and does a testing camp where the students can be tested for free (normally it would cost about 400 rupees).  The first day Mad and I went and listened to his lecture and then the day after we helped out with the testing camp.  Mad was in charge of writing down the students’ names and phone numbers and so on, and I numbered the bottles and wrote the students’ names on them.  It proved to be a bit difficult as we are not familiar with Indian names.  Even worse, when the students spelled them out for us it was difficult to understand what letters they were saying.  P, B, D and so on all sound kind of similar especially when you are not used to the accent!  Anyway, we made it through and just over 500 kids got tested which was great.  After that, Vinay, 2 of his co-workers (they kind of joked that they used to volunteer with Vinay during highschool because they got free food at the various colleges but now they have made it their profession!!) and Vinay’s driver decided that instead of taking us straight back to the apartment that we’d take a little trip to downtown Mumbai (it’s at least and hour or so away).  We had never been into downtown yet so it was lots of fun.  Especially because we we had 4 middle aged Indian men as tour guides.  They were hilarious!  We went to the gateway of India and then drove around the city a bit looking at the various sites.  They then decided it would be a good idea to go out for beers.  All in all it was a great time!

Yesterday, Thursday, we went to a Bollywood movie soundtrack release party.  The whole thing was kind of ridiculous but definitely an experience.  In preparation we had gone out shopping with Smita and Minti and bought fancy salwar kameez outfits, bangles and sandals (i ended up with man sandals that i swear are made from camel hide…i guess indian girls dont have size 11 feet).  So on Thursday morning Mad and I ironed our outfits, painted our toenails, put on make up and all that sort of stuff.  Then at about 10 30am (weirdly for us, this thing was a morning event) the driver drove us to a hospital where we were to meet a surgeon and a politician (the politician being a cousin of Smita’s and the surgeon being his friend).  It turns out the surgeon is the head of the neurosurgery department and his wife the head of the gynecology department…and he is a bit of a nut.  In any case, off we drove with the surgeon (who is called “doc”) and the politician cousin (his name is krishna) to Film City.  Once we arrived in Film City we could see sets being built and general film stuff which of course got Mad all excited.  Our actual destination was a place called Whistling Woods International Limited (i’m still not entirely sure what the place is, but apparently at least part of it is an international film school).  In any case we arrived and followed Doc around.  He told us he was the trustee of the place and that we could do anything we wanted.  We soon learned that he meant it when he ushered us into some private elevator against the protests of the front staff.  They were like “excuse me sir, that elevator is not for guests”.  Doc loudly replied, ”I am not a guest!” and up we rode…to the private office of the film director of the film for the launch party we were at.  Apparently Doc wanted us to meet him before he came down to join the launch party.   Anyway, after that we went back down to the lobby where there were tons of photographers and so on and stood around waiting for all the guests to arrive.  Doc introduced us to lots of people, including bollywood film star Anil Kapoor, and always referred to us as his Canadian friends.  It was kind of funny.  Actually what was most funny, was that he kept trying to be in all the pictures.  Anyway, after all the pictures we went into a theatre where there were speeches, a film segment on the making of the movie and the music in it, a small concert by the singers of the soundtrack and then this ridiculous opening of the CD.  There were 6 cds in this HUGE gift box wrapped in a giant bow that they ceremoniously cut open on stage.  I think my favourite part was the concert…i really enjoyed the music!  After that we went out for lunch with “Doc” and Krishna.  Krishna wants to take us out one night before we go (apparenlty he is in with the party crowd and goes out every night…) and “Doc” wants to set us up to go sunbathing at a five star hotel and then the two of them will pick us up and take us out for lunch.  Who knows if that will happen but it would be both fun and funny if it did! 

Today was a little less busy.  In the morning mad and I booked our flight from singapore to Thailand (18 Singapore dollars…woohoo!) and a couple nights at the Hive hostel in Singapore for the next two times we are there.  We also have found the group we will probably go with for our trek in Nepal.  In the afternoon we went out with Minti to downtown.  We went to the Prince of Wales museum which was great!  We also walked around and looked at some of the fabulous architecture left over from the days of British rule.  As Mad pointed out it is kind of weird to be so into architecture that was designed by British and built with Indian labour…but it is very beautiful!

That’s about it for now….i’ll try to make my next post a little shorter…

xoEv

Hi everyone!

Last time I wrote we were still in Singapore, and actually we still had another full day and another sleep at the Hive hostel before leaving for India. 

 Our second day in Singapore we decided to tour the city by means of the “hop on” bus system.  What it is, is a bus service for tourists that has buses that drive all around town with stops at the major attractions.  It worked out well for us because for $3 we could have a basic tour of the city in a day.  From our hostel we walked to Little India (not far from where we were staying).  Little India had a lot of shops selling clothing and jewelry as well as fruit and vegetable markets and also a number of temples.  We took some time to explore the area and then got on our first “hop on” bus which brought us to chinatown.  Chinatown had a lot of outdoor stalls to look at and a few malls.  We walked around Chinatown following a walking guide pamphlet we picked up at a tourist info centre which mainly wove through the outdoor stalls.  We also went into one of the malls and went to a couple of travel agents to see if we could find a good deal to fly from singapore into thailand.  We haven’t quite decided yet how we are going to do that but we got the names of some of the cheaper airlines so we can keep checking for deals.  After that, we got on the bus again and drove back to Little India.  This was quite a long ride but was very interesting as we got to see a lot of the city.  I especially enjoyed seeing the large old colonial style homes.

The next morning we were up at 5 as we had to catch our 7 40am flight to Mumbai.  Unfortunately the subway nearest our hostel didnt run early enough so we decided to save some money and walk (instead of taking a taxi to the airport) to a subway station from a different line.  This proved to be a bit hot (it doesnt cool down at night much!) and tiring, but it worked out none-the-less. 

When we arrived in Mumbai, Nimisha’s (maddy’s friend) uncle (Manu) and driver (!) were waiting for us.  The driver was holding a sign saying “MADELEINE” on it which was kind of funny.  I was kind of confused and thought the driver was Manu’s son.  Ooops.  Well, i figured it out soon enough.  Anyway, we drove to Manu’s apartment which is located in the suburbs of Mumbai and we were greeted by his daughter Minti.  She is really nice and has a great sense of humour.  We sat around and chatted for awhile and then, as per Manu’s request, she ordered pizza for us for lunch.  It was pretty funny!  I guess they were worried about what we would eat.  very thoughtful of them actually.  At that time Manu’s wife (Smita) came home from work (she is a teacher) and so she ate lunch with us.  She’s also very friendly and also really funny.  It made for good conversation.  The rest of the afternoon mad and i rested in our room (Minti and her brother Samit gave up their room for us…we felt bad, but better than the parents giving us their room which was the other option).  In the evening, Smita, Minti, Maddy and I went out to a market type place where they were selling Indian clothing and crafts.  It was a lot of fun!  After that we met up with Manu, Samit and Samit’s friend for dinner.  There was SO much food!  Actually, that seems to be a theme here.  TONS of food and getting reprimanded for not eating enough.  Though we get some leeway because they figure we’re not at full eating capacity because of the hot weather. 

The next morning we were up pretty early (still a little jet lagged I guess).  We had breakfast (they bought us cornflakes) and then we packed up all our stuff.  At about 11am Nimisha’s other uncle, his name is Tata, came to pick us up.  We drove with him to a site called Kenheri caves which was really cool.  We drove up a mountain to a place where Buddhist monks had once carved out caves to live in.  The amount of work put into it was incredible as they not only carved out caves but decorated them all with statues.  After that we had lunch at McDonalds (no hamburgers here!) for indian style chicken burgers (Tata phoned Manu to ask where he should take us for lunch…)  After that we drove to his apartment and met his daughter Titli and wife Rina.  The three of them together make one of the cutest families ever!   His daughter was very sweet and friendly.  She’ll be coming to Canada next summer so it will be lots of fun to get to show her around.  Rina, the wife was also super cute.  She dressed Mad and I up in her saris and jewelry which was great!  She also showed me how to cook alu paratas.  They are thin potato bread pancake type things.  We ate them for breakfast with sweet kurd.  Maddie filmed it all so you’ll probably get to see that sometime.  We stayed with that family for 2 nights.  The first evening we got there, they took us to a Indian carnival.  We only stayed for about 10 minutes and it was to see the most ridiculous act ever.  We climed up this big, rickety flight of stairs, and at the top everyone was standing around a big ring that looked down into a circular pit with walls coming up at 90 degrees all around.  Inside the pit were 3 SUVs and 3 motorcycles.  Somehow the guys running the act got the cars and bikes going fast enough that they drove up the walls at break neck speed and zoomed around and around almost up to where we were standing.  It was nuts!!  Apparently there had been an accident the day before……

The next day we all piled into Tata’s car and drove to the neighbouring city of Pune to visit his nephew Anabil and his girlfriend Yashwanti.  It’s not exactly a short drive…I guess it took at least 2 hours to get there but Tata is a big fan of driving and it was nice for us to get to see the scenery.  On the way there we stopped a couple of times.  Once it was to drive up to a place called Tiger Point.  It was beautiful!  We could see for miles around.  There were a lot of people there selling food and asking for money which is hard to know how to deal with. 

Once in Pune, we went to the apartment of the nephew and girlfriend for tea and then we went out in a rickshaw to a temple.  Actually we went to two temples that were side by side one for Ganesh and one for one of his parents, I forget which one though. In any case, it was really neat!  Anabil and Yashwanti were really nice and we are hoping to go visit them again. 

The next day we went out shopping and mad and I each got a salwar kameez (i don’t know how to spell it) which is an outfit that girls wear a lot here.  We are planning to wear them when we take the train and any other time we want to stand out a little less. 

Today we are back at Manu and Smita’s place.  Minti is going to take us out this afternoon to a temple and a beach and then we are going to a restaurant in a mall this evening for dinner.  It should be lots of fun!

Both families we have stayed with have been over the top nice and generous to us.  It’s been a great introduction to India for us.  We have been given so many tips and ideas on what to do and also what not to do and what to be aware of and so on, i’m sure it’s going to be very useful information for the rest of our trip!

Hopefully my next update will come a little sooner!

xoxoEv

Hi everyone!

This is my first attempt at posting on this site Al made for me…hopefully it works!! 

Mad and I left Sunday afternoon from Vancouver and we have now, on Tuesday, arrived in Singapore.  The flights were long but we were both able to sleep a lot, so that was nice.  Once we arrived in Singapore, we got our passports stamped, picked up our luggage (nothing lost yet!!) and then went to line up for customs.  We are not sure why, but for some reason we got ushered out of the customs line-up and got to by-pass it altogether.  We then made our way to the train station that is located in the airport and bought cards called ”EZ-link”.  These cards wil allow us to use the mass rapid transit system while we are here now and also when we stop here on our way to south east asia and again on our way to Frankfurt.  At the moment we are sitting in the Hive (the hostel we will be staying at for the next two nights) making use of the free internet while we wait for our room to be ready (it is still only 9 30 am). 

That’s about all for now!  I think you guys can leave comments on this site or you can always email me…I want to keep up to date on everything at home!

I’ll post again soon!

xo Ev