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Hello!
For the past few days we've been in our little routine, so nothing MIND BLOWING has happened. We've made a couple friends through volunteering at Salaam Balaak - Franzi and Rachel. Franzi is from Germany and Rachel is from Manchester. We travel with them everyday on the metro. Today Rachel had to take one boy from the smaller boy shelter to the bigger shelter where we work (because the smaller one is only for holding the boys for a short period and if they have to live with Salaam Balaak - like if they don't want to go back to their family, or their family can not be found - then they go to the big shelter where there are about 150 boys who live permanently) so he travels with us now every day on the metro. He was so cute today, because he obviously had not been on an escalator before, something we do without even consciously thinking about it. He stopped at the bottom and just looked at the moving steps, with people piling up behind him because he was holding them up. And he didn't look so confident at the other end when he had to get off (just kept his feet on and kinda shuffled off). And the whole while on the escalator he just stared down at the steps. We had to take a lot of escalators on our journey to the shelter, sometimes he braved it and sometimes he took the stairs. There's nothing we could really do to make him more comfortable, he just has to get used to it.
We spent the morning using activity books with the boys; books that we get from the local stationary shop for Rs 80 which is just over a pound, but its golden because it keeps them entertained for hours. It has things like 'heavy' and 'lighter' objects, word searches, maths, dot to dot etc so it keeps them sharp on numbers and letters, animals etc. Then for lunch we went to the hospital - St Stephen's - which is over the road, just to have a mosy. Nothing significantly different but then we didn't see much because we only went in the corridoors. Their coffee was good tho....
And then in the afternoon we played Pictrogram - a game the boys have taught us (which gives Ellie and I a hell of a lot of exercise for the day). This is what they have managed to teach us....but our understanding is a bit sketchy (we get shouted at a lot by the boys but don't really know why, so there's CLEARLY something we're doing wrong!). So you have a pile of flat stones on top of one another, about 8. You have a ball and you're in two teams. One team is 'batting' and one team is 'fielding'. The batting team takes it in turns to knock down the pile with a ball. If the fielding team catches the ball from the batter at any point the batter is out. If the batting team knock over the stones, then they have to run, and the fielding team have to hit all of them with the ball. The batting team win if one of their team can pile the stones back up again before being hit, because once you are hit, you're out of the game. Ellie squeeled loads and they took the mickey out of her!! Its fun anyway! Although today we played it with about 10 kids which was HARD work because they have arguments about stuff you cant mediate coz u have no idea whats going on, or what they're sayng! So we split it up in to two groups. Then we got bored; Ellie played cards with some boys and I played chess with some others.
We took some photos of the boys, which are so lovely, and we'll upload them soon (meant to do it tonight but we'll do it tomorrow). There are loads of pop-up barbers too - so men balancing mirrors on the wall on the street, using a chair and giving blokes wet shaves, we took a picture of that too.
On our way back to the station, we saw a poorly dog :( we asked a passer by who we could call but they didn't know, so we gave him water and the hotel guy - Pulkit - called a charity that care for poorly dogs and they picked the dog up and took him to the vet. That's what I'm going to write happened anyway. In reality, knowing Pulkit and India's nature of street dogs, its likely no one did anything and Pulkit just told us that the dog was saved to appease us. But I'm gonna believe the former :D especially if we walk buy tomorrow morning and the dog isn't there.
Ooh and on the metro back, a group of about 10 older women in Punjab's came on the train with massive sacks balanced on their head, and put the sacks down then some sat on the floor and some stood and they were all chatting and laughing, and then started singing some song/chant together. Very strange. Ellie was like "probs India's version of 'all the single ladies' by Beyonce"! Jokes.
Ooh and on our way to post our post cards today, in the market there was a horse, with a man and two babies on it, which were behind some men with drums. The horse, man and babies were all dressed up all fancy and what not. I've just asked a man in the hotel and he said that it was a ritual to celebrate a new marraige, quite interesting. Of course Ellie photo's this occasion and the pictures will be up soon!!
Ellie, Rachel and I all had dinner today in Sam's Cafe which was alrite. Pizza all around followed by Nutella pancakes! YUP we are soooo cultured!!!
Lots of love and hugs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- comments
Fay babies on horses? looking forward to seeing this! haha