Flights

For anyone who's interested, Air France flights Dublin to Delhi is under €500 for the first two weeks in September.

School: Day 1

Cuisle, Fiona, Daragh and I took an auto-rickshaw to Batra Hospital, then walked down the busy road to our school building in Sangam Vihar. The building is at the very bottom of lane 2 off this road. Inside it has been newly converted, into a school of four classrooms divided by partition walls. Daragh and I are working with the teachers, Monu and Sangeeta, while Fiona and Cuisle are with Usha (who is filling in for Sumon) and Shalini.

The first day was hard work. We arrived at eight but there were no kids there yet. Only at quarter past nine did we have enough children to start class and after that more still strolled in. We taught from 9.15 to 10.30 ("lunch-time") and it felt like forever. We were constantly looking at eachother for things to do. In the class, we covered Introductions, Emotions: I am happy, I am sad, I am angry, I am tired. We also did numbers and simple sums which they already knew! So we quickly moved onto a song: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I Caught a Fish Alive. It took is the whole day to get them to remember "once I caught a fish alive." We kept going back to the song, back to the emotions and to My name is... Then we played "The Ball Game" which was very successful.

We all sat in a circle and threw the ball to each other. When we caught the ball, we said our name. First Daragh and I demonstrated, but the kids soon caught on. Daragh and I then sat back to back in the centre of the circle, so that there were two semi-circles. As the kids got the hang of it, we moved onto the full sentence "My name is ___________". It was really good practise and the children really seemed to enjoy it.

I think I got the better semi-circle though. I got lots of the older girls and the quieter boys, whereas Daragh was workins with most of the boys. The ages in the class are as mixed as their abilities. We have 3 year olds to 14 year olds. It's so hard to keep them all interested! The older ones seem to be easy to please however, and it's probably why they stayed in school so long.

After the lunch-break, we moved into Sangeeta's class. Her's is much smaller. While there were about 26 in the first class, there were only about ten in this one. It's totally baffling to me why they split the classes like this. They're definitely not split due to ability and clearly it's not a numbers thing either! It was great to get a second chance to teach the same stuff though. We were able to recycle everything again in this class! And it all ran more smoothly as there were much fewer kids too.

That afternoon was really exciting. The team got back to the apartment and we all shared our stories and experiences. There were a lot of laughs about names and incidents. We had names from Roxanne to a boy who claims to be called "Saddam Hussein."

The Apartment

We first arrived in the apartment in the early hours of Friday (17th July) morning. First impressions were mixed. We're living in a place called Greater Kailesh 1 and it is quite a wealthy area. As we walked towards our building, bent over with all our luggage on our backs, we could see lots of lovely houses. There were security men, or drivers, standing outside many of them. After climbing a set of narrow, marble stairs, we finally made it to our front door and into the apartment. The living room is lovely.

You step into a big room with three couches around a coffee table; a desk in the corner, with a very old-fashioned computer on it. Then there is a bit of an arch that leads into the eating area. A big glass-topped table is surrounded by about six chairs. With the stairs to the left, the dining table is almost under the stairs. To the right, opposite the table, is a small kitchen. There are three bedrooms on the first floor and one upstairs. Upstairs there's also a roof terrace area, to which we haven't found the keys yet.

I'm sharing a bedroom with Fiona and Mags. We have two beds and one mattress on the floor. Mags kindly offered to take the mattress for the time-being but this'll be reviewed if it turns out to be too uncomfortable.

Each of the bedrooms has an en suite, which is great. Unfortunately there were two problems with the bathrooms when we first arrived: they were disgustingly dirty and there was no water! After a full day's traveling, a lot of people had trouble coping with the filth, not to mind the toilets that wouldn't flush and the hands that couldn't be washed (never was hand sanitizer more appreciated).

Most of that stuff has been sorted out by now though. Evie contacted the estate agent and the next morning we realised that the water is hooked up to the electricity. When the electricity goes, the water goes, but usually the electricity doesn't go for long, so it's not a problem, there's usually enough water to get through it. However, when the electricity goes, you have to flick a switch to get the water back on, which is something we didn't realise before. I'm not quite sure how it all works, all I know is we've had water ever since. And the one time we didn't, we just had to run into the hall, press a button and it came back!

As for the filth, Fiona and I got incredibly excited when we found a shop that sold rubber gloves, toilet brushes and buckets! We bought bleach and sponges and a new shower mat and curtain. Although Fiona and I started the job, Mags went at it for real yesterday and it's sparkling now (or as close to sparkling as you can get in India). Let's just say we don't wear flip flops in the shower anymore!

Suas in Delhi

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