What's been going on the last week.

Well, I haven’t been in India long, but I’ve experienced quite a few things already.

It’s been amazing so far. I’ve had people come up to me saying my name and asking where I’m from. Everyone has been nice!

I live in a dorm called East House some 5 min walk away from the school. There are 20 students total in the dorm. 9 of them are grade 12’s (called seniors), the rest of us are grade 11 (called juniors). The dorm is single story, so to get anywhere you need to move through others bedrooms. I share a bedroom with 2 other students. Their names are Luca (from Germany) and Ganesh (India). Our room is located on the side of the house, so people don’t go walking though it much.

The view outside out window

In the room I have the top bunk, a desk near the door and a wardrobe off in the far corner. 

Since I was the last to arrive at the room it seems fair that the better places would have been taken.

It took me a while but now my desk is full of books and toiletries, I am yet to buy enough cloths though.

A funny thing about the house is that there are sun roofs in every room to wake people up.

We have a kitchen and a lounge room with TV in the dorm. In the evenings there’s movies so some of us watch those. A lot of people make 2 minute noodles.

There are constantly car horns going outside our window, and the some of boys stay up till after midnight. I still manage to get my 8.5-9 hours of sleep each night though.

The power and internet at times cuts out randomly. It is especially hard for Luca, whose computer doesn’t have a battery. 

Luca when the power goes off

The Internet is ok, as in I can get work completed but it is unable to hold a video Skype call to Melbourne for long. It is a lot worse when it is raining though.

There is a lady who comes to the dorm who cleans and washes up after us. 

This was the morning after everyone had some noodles

 For our laundry, there is a man who comes on Wednesdays and Sundays, take ours dirty cloths and gives us back clean cloths from before. There is a fee for each of the cloths items to be washed. For a doona/quilt is 22 ruppee, about 50c Australian. I am constantly surprised by how cheap items are, I can’t help but go beyond my usual shopping standards and buy several items.

Since arriving at KIS I have so far gone to a dance called a ‘canteen’, delivered lunch to an old persons home then visited an orphanage. Tomorrow is my first proper day of school.

I’ll first tell you about the trip to give lunch and visiting the orphanage.

KIS is a very well resourced school in a town that has a long way to go.

To solve this, the school does charity work to the local area. It also provides IB students at the school a change to get their community service hours up. 

One of those charities involves taking excess food from meals and delivering them to places of care in Kodai.

On Saturday, they were taking the food to an aged care centre. We brought some rice and chicken curry. They came in large steel drums.

To get to the aged care centre we took a 4-wheel drive. The car didn’t have specifically allocated seats, it was designed to be able fit in up to 5 in the back row of seats (it was the same width as a standard 4 wheel drive). The people coming on the trip were 5 students from Kodai (myself included), a staff member from the school who organised these things and 4 others (possibly tourists with some link to the orphanage). All 10 of us needed to fit into a standard sized vehicle. The only way to get around in some comfort is by using a 4 wheel drive because the roads are so uneven. 

The solution? 4 in the front (driver included), 4 in the back seats and 2 riding in the boot of the car. There were no seats in the boot, so you had to sit on the risers that gave the wheels room to move, right on top of the suspension. When we were travelling to the aged care centre, then the orphanage I was jammed in the middle. The drive was very spectacular. The centre of Kodai is the lake, and everythings slopes down to face it. The roads travel around the lake between houses, making a sort of ring effect. You could look out and see the lake and the other side of the town. The roads were very thin, and at points were quite steep.

 In places, the tarmac is replaced with some interlocking tiles. These areas were mostly in places where there was steep mountain side beside the road. This leads me to believe that the tiles are there to let water drain away easily, and not cause pot holes in the road. There are also speed humps, that made sitting in the boot terrible.

Anyway, through much squeezing and being whacked against the window, we made it to the aged care place. It was just like a house, run down, not much furniture, steel roof. We tipped the food contents in the drums to some large bowls. We talked a little with them before we got back into the car and left.  

Another up and down and bouncy trip pasted as we arrived at the orphanage.

It had a dirt road leading up to it, and then a dry front yard. The inside was similar. There was a concrete floor, with long sets of tables and chairs in the first room. All the children were sitting down eating light fish curry. Some were sitting around a sheet of plastic on the floor. We went through and looked at the rest of the house. There were renovations going on in a couple of rooms. They were actually well painted, with pictures of faces and flowers on the walls. Besides the main area the floors were dirt and dusty. There was a cement mixer in a corner, with some woman tending to food. The kids were all happy, smiling at us and waving. One of the tourists went around, taking photo’s of the place. He tried to take a photo of the kids eating on the plastic mat, but a couple of them turned away in embarrassment. They talked about how much it’d changed. Our driver was talking with the kids, making them laugh. I’m so glad he’s my Social Experience teacher.

After that it was time for us to leave. We slowly backed out the door waving and saying goodbye. It was another boy from school and my turn to sit in the boot (if you can call it sitting). As we were leaving some of the boys came out with cricket bat and ball and started to play on the road.

It was a great experience, my first with helping the people. I am hoping to be doing a similar trip once a week.

That Saturday evening was the school canteen, a dance for the senior students.

It was a very casual event with people mainly putting on some better cloths, I came in my semi-hiking shows, green jumper and jeans (as my mum would expect). It was an amazing evening. There was fundraising outside selling food and drink. The canteen was inside Alumni hall, the school main hall used for assemblies. There was a DJ desk up on stage and several different lights around the place.

The event was from 7-9 non-stop. There was a lot of similar music that was played to the normal dances back in Melbourne, things like Nikki Minaj and LMFAO. People went crazy when Psy came on though, as I had expected. I’m sure all the Koreans were singing their hearts out to Gentlemen and Gangnam Style.

There were a couple of ‘boom lacka lacka lacka’ songs, but everyone didn’t doing traditional dance such as changing the light bulb while patting the dog.

I managed to become sick on wednesday. Since then I have had a painful stomach which hasn't lessened up. I don't know if it was food or altitude, but if it does persist I will go to the school's health centre called 'the dish', short for dispensary. 

It has taken me a while, but I feel like I am  becoming more and more comfortable in the school each day. In the week I have signed up for the school advanced band, and had a rehearsal for that. Also I went to the church service on Sunday morning last week, and said that I'd like to play drums for them. 

I am slowly recreating the life I had back in Melbourne here, with a lot more chaos and exploration to do. By busying myself, I think I am coping with the fact that I will miss taking part in all the activities back home and the people. I don't know how I will feel when it is time to leave all this again, whether it will be more difficult due to the that fact that I have lived and shared these experiences with people I live with. 

Sorry, getting a bit side tracked. 

Anyway, soon I will put up a post about my every day, school schedule and how I've been getting used to the sudden change in lifestyle. Also, a deeper blog which talks about my thought on India and how they've changed is on the cards. It may take me a while, but life is slowing down and I might be able to chip away at it.

It took a while at first to see what things were, but now I feel like I can get used to this.

If you want any more details, contact me at: comanduash@gmail.com

Thanks for all the support too!