Last week at Children's Home

I know we have both said it many times, but still - time flies! I cannot believe I have soon been here for 8 weeks.. It makes me quite sad thinking about that I most likely never will see these children again, but I hope that by being here we have managed to contribute with something good, and that they hopefully will remember us for that :) At least they have given me a lot, and I am really thankful for having this chance!

Still, I have to admit that this work takes a lot of patience. And for the ones that knows me, I was not given as much of it as my better half.. But by quietly count to ten (or twenty, several times a day maybe..) I have managed quite good, I dare to say :)  And mostly it is also due to language problems. I see that the small children do as they are told, if they are told in tamil, but me not speaking tamil makes me loose some authority, and that's when I should have had that extra dose of patience... But I have tried to look at it more as a challenge, rather than an obstacle, which have worked quite well :) At least there are constantly children around me, wanting to play games, show me their tricks or just chat - and I still have a lot of fun together with them, so I take it as a good sign! :)

Me and the cool guys ;)

Reading practice

My little angel

But only having one day left of this way of living is also kind of strange. A lot is different from the days at home. Apart form the fact that it is constantly people surrounding me here, it is very nice to have a break from all the studying, and not feel bad if I lay in my bed reading for 2 hours :) That is not something one does too much at home, without feeling guilty... And as long as I plug in my mp3, I don't hear the calling outside either (sister, sister, sister, how are you, sister... :)

Another thing is the fact that we are served all our meal here, ergo we have not touched a pot or an oven since the beginning of January. I kind of miss the cooking, but still it is nice with a break from that too. We have been lucky and Lakshmi, our chef, makes all kinds of good vegetarian Indian food for us. One can feel quite spoiled at times! But we also paid a lot to be here, so don't feel that bad for having it this way for a little while ;) And we also have to work a little bit, because eating with our hand instead of knife and fork can be a challenge at times.

Idli, rice and sambar

We get bananas for every meal!

Our breakfast: Idli, sambar and, my favorite, coconut chutney.

Lunchtime!

 Another new experience, and a daily routine, has been to wash my clothes my hand. Oh, how I miss my washing machine!! I do not think I have quite got the technique, but at least they are a bit cleaner than the first loads I did. But it is such a big job! The other day I washed for like 1.5 hours, and was so happy about my work. But when I was to put them up, I only had 8 items - so disappointing!  This make me really admire the housewives in times before the washing machine, and wondering how on earth they had time to do anything but doing laundry ;)

A challenge for me has been to deal with a the insects and bugs here. I am not the worst, I believe, but I still jump quite bad if a big thing shows up unannounced (which most of them do!). But after these weeks I have learned to, well, not like, but at least accept, that geckos is a good thing. I now have one in each three of my rooms, and don't mind it at all. I called them Maxima and Maximus, the third one is nameless at the moment.. But when the cockroaches come, I need to call in MiHee to secure the room before I go to bed ;)
Still, one of the things I look forward to in Norway is that it's almost none of these, and the ones we have (like vevkjerring), do absolutely no harm :)

Maximus

 There are of course many other things that is different here, but these are a few of the daily things that contributes to making this a new experience.
The last couple of days will be spent with the children, handing out the things we have bought ( I will make a smaller post on that!), and just enjoying the time I have here.I have also already started to look forward to the next part of our trip, so it will not be too sad too leave, luckily :)

Have a nice day!

Anja


PS: For you( like my dear mother) who do not know how to comment if you do not have an google account:
When clicking on "post a comment" you only choose "anonymous" in stead of google/wordpress etc, and you can write the comment without any trouble :) Only need to write the letters you see in the box (that is only a security thing) and write your name right after the comment, so we see who it is from.
Thank you! :)