Bangalangalore

In between the two weeks of summer camp, my group and I took a weekend trip to Bangalore. It was an interesting trip....

We ended up taking a 12 hour non-ac bus ride through Friday night into early morning Saturday. Can I just tell you how much you should not do that? I think what was so terrible about it was that I felt like ripping off all of my clothes if there was ever a second where there wasn't a slight breeze wafting over my body. And that happened pretty often. And then when it came to sleep I wasn't able to recline my seat all the way because the dude behind me had his child on his lap. Fortunately for me, I am small in size so I was mostly able to curl up like a kitty in my seat, but it wasn't ideal. Oh, and if you had to potty you had to wait until the bus made a stop, and there were no guarantees of it being where there was a restroom. Luckily I woke up when they were refueling, so I was able to take advantage of my first paper towel-less squatter toilet. It was just like peeing in nature. nbd.

Bangalore was a beautiful city. If you weren't aware, it's the city where all the over-the-phone jobs are outsourced. And it's known to be the technologies center of India. Anyways, it was a very clean city with lots of trees and fresh air. Or at least more fresh than Hyderabad. When we arrived we found ourselves in one of the most ridiculously crowded bus stations I've ever seen. It was basically busses on busses on busses all lined up next to each other. Weaving through them was kind of nerve wracking as I nearly got squished by one or two of them.

For the rest of the day we cruised the city, hit up the pool at my hotel (where about 11 dudes across the way were staring at us from their balconies), rode the metro, and finished the night off with some TGI Fridays (where every night is a  bumpin techno dance music Friday).

The next day was our last day in Bangalore so we wanted to do something kewl. And that kewl thing was driving out to see Mysore Palace where we were to ride elephants and camels and enjoy a fancy tour of the palace. It was a three hour drive out so we had to leave early to make out 8 o'clock bus back to Hyderabad. We left around 9:30 but got there a little later than we expected due to a flat tyre.

The palace grounds were pretty cool.  I can’t give any interesting facts about the place, but it was a beautiful. I actually got in cheaper than the rest of my team because I was Indian. I've never used my brown skin to my advantage before so that was cool. But we rode elephants and camels, and it turns out that the bathrooms cost money to use! I guess that's what most places do....It was fun riding the elephant though. The dude that was giving us the ride let us sit on it’s head to take pictures for a lovely fee of 50 rupees. That’s like a dollar…..so we did. The texture of the skin is such a weird thing. I don’t know why I was expecting something relatively soft, but that was not the case. It’s skin was tough and it’s hair stiff. Such an impressive animal.

After the elephant ride we hit up the camels which was neat (kinda like ridding a horse) and then we cruised what was cruisable of the palace. So much gold and beautiful architecture. It was so different compared to Blenheim Palace (I visited there when I was in England)….but kinda blows my mind know that people live in places like that.

 

Anyways, It was getting late after we toured the palace and we didn’t want to miss our buss back home, so we took off. On the way home our driver randomly pulled over deciding that that was the perfect time to fix the tire that had blown out earlier that day. It was pretty frustrating because we didn’t know what he was doing until he got the process going so we sat there for a good 30-40 minutes waiting on him. It nearly made us miss our bus which was insanely stressful. Just trying to figure out where we even really needed to be for the bus was ridiculous.

That’s just the way things go here in India. You never really know what to expect. Like how when we boarded the bus, we found out that two busses were combined into one because one of them went out of service. So some people didn’t have seats and slept on the floor. By God’s grace most of my team, except my country director Ben, had a seat. It was nutso. But the ride home was fine as I was actually able to get some good sleep....All was well for Meera in the land of India.

 All is well for Meera in the land of India. And that's all for Bangalore.

!!Summer Camp!!

The past two weeks have been real great. I mentioned in my last post that I was going to be running a summer camp for kids in the slums. Last Thursday was actually my last day with them. In addition to that, I participated in a program called GLOW for teenage girls as well as took a weekend vacation to Bangalaore, visited the Gandhi Hospital, etc. I will post separately about Bangalore and the hospital so you can check those out.

SO...the summer camp was kinda crazy. I initially planned on working with a group of about sixty 5-11 year olds and had every day planned out before we began. I was to give them notebooks which we would review the ABC's, math, colors, and English. We were gonna dance our pants off, play some games, eat some treats, and be awesome. Most of those things happened, but everything was not as I expected.

The first day of summer camp I planned to get my group of 60 kids put into groups where we would give them their notebooks and decorate them. When I showed up however, there about 70-80 kids ranging from the age of baby to 15. I was totally thrown off and had to readjust my schedule completely. Besides not being able to directly communicate with the kids, (they speak Telugu but we had some translators) it was hard/sad because I couldn't give notebooks to all of the kids...even the babies wanted one. So instead of handing them out to specific kids, we danced and played games like duck-duck-goose and down by the banks. The kids went bizonk over duck duck goose. They were all pointing to themselves because they wanted to be the goose so they could get up so they could giggle as they ran. There were almost a few head on collisions with  the other groups playing around us. It was such and interesting fun day, and I realized that from that point on, things were going to be quite different in the sense that I had no idea what to expect. Ever.

The following days after the first two got better. We were able to bring order the children, though there was a wild child or 4 that refused to comply with most instructions we gave. But we learned to go with the flow. Some days fewer kids showed up, allowing us to pay more attention to each child, while on others we found that the ability to sit still and focus replaced the urge of being rambunctious hooligan children, or vice versa.

The kids were really awesome. I've never interacted with a group of kids like them. Not just because they're Indian and could hardly understand English, but because they came from living conditions unlike any that I've been around before. Some lived in small one room cement houses, but others lived in little shacks and tents. The roads were dirt and most of the children walked around in their bare feet around garbage and nasty puddles. Not to mention all the turds lying around. So many turds. I even saw a child pooping off the side of the road as we took the bus to the slums.

It was hard seeing this because I felt like they were my little cousins and I want so much more for them. Things are very different here, but as lame and cheesy as this sounds, I really have been able to appreciate what kind of life my family and I have back home so much more.

Soooooooo overall summer camp was pretty awesome. It was stressful but rewarding all the same. I came to love the children as they listened ande leardn what we had come to teach them. They were sooo precious.