Well it's raining in Delhi, it feels quite homely - just like an English summer. It's the festival of Holi today and tommorrow, the 'festival of colour', which means you cover everyone you know in coloured powder and probably have a big water fight. Since it's raining it's a bit of a damp squib so far, but apparently tomorrow is when it really gets ( Read more... )

We had a few days off last week and went to Pondicherry, the former French colony. The city itself has some historical interest, a cathedral, a botanical gardens and a museum. What we really went for, though, was the food. South Indian food is tasty - lots of forms of fried wheat with spicy curries - but often completely devoid of vitamins! So ( Read more... )

We arrived in Chennai at 9am on the 20th January, and were met by a very small, very friendly and completely disorganised man called Venkat. Over the next couple of weeks we spent a fair bit of time phoning Venkat (and getting someone completely different who spoke no English), waiting for Venkat (for up to three hours after the time he'd promised ( Read more... )

Back in Delhi we had new students and a new volunteer, Andy, who had just joined us from the UK. Andy worked alongside me in my class because he was supposed to be taking it over. I was sad that some of the students from before the New Year hadn't stayed on, but the classes were still good. On Friday 13th we had a lesson about the supernatural and ( Read more... )

It's been ages since I wrote anything in this journal, which I'll have to put down to busyness and general incompetence - ah well, here's an attempt to fill in the gaps ( Read more... )

Less than a week until Christmas but it doesn't feel very Christmassy here. We'll try and make some sort of Christmas breakfast on Saturday though.

The Red FortOn Saturday we went to see the Red Fort, the most significant historical site in Delhi, which is a collection of marble pleasure palaces surrounded by high red-sandstone walls. Built ( Read more... )

The Jain ParadeThere's a large Jain community locally and they've been celebrating a 15 day festival. Last Sunday we heard the now-familiar sounds of a parade starting up in the street outside. Out in front were four white horses in red and gold livery, followed by a noisy brass band in uniform. We all rushed out onto the balconies when someone ( Read more... )

I've been here for nearly 2 weeks now, it's been very busy and at the weekend I was struck down and ended up making offerings to the stomach gods! But I'm in good shape again now. So here's a general update/introduction ( Read more... )

I've arrived in Delhi, exhausted after 36 hours in airports and on planes, but all in one piece. The house is nicer than I was expecting - we have a clean bathroom with (squat) toilet (I like squat toilets though, and they're actually better for your colon than western ones, so good news all round...) and a big balcony overlooking the street - a ( Read more... )

We're counting down the days to departure - all jabs jabbed, malaria tablets taken, we're now just visiting relatives and picking up a few final useful bits and pieces, making laminated cards with basic English verbs on them, etc. Finished the training last week with a final session on groupwork (a bit of argument or 'storming' in a maturing group ( Read more... )