Varanasi Ventures

After Holi things returned to a normal pace around the town and school. I've continue to enjoy helping with the English classes in the morning and then take off quickly before lunch. The cook, Bharti-mam, does not understand why myself and Nadine, the other volunteer, do not like to eat mushy white rice and salty/watery dal every day. The afternoons are my time off, I usually hunt out some western food and attempt to shop to bring goods to sell back in Canada for the school. As much as I like shopping everything is a fight. Everyone claims to have the best quality and if you talk to an Indian they always say that you could have gotten it cheaper. Either way I think I have some nice silk scarves.

Nadine and i decided it would be nice to take the kids out on a few adventures. The first of which was taking half of the hostel kids out to a movie. By the time all the rickshaws arrived we we 20 minutes late. It was probably a good thing as, despite asking before hand, the movie "Happy Elephants" did not contain any happy moments and was all killing and fighting. Thankfully the 3 year-old has vision problems and was focused only on the movie popcorn and pop with ice in it. The other kids were so happy as they are never allowed to see movies like that.

The next Saturday Nadine and I selfishly wanted to go to a pool as it is in the high 30's here. So we took all the kids to Hotel Surya in the "nice" part of Varanasi ( I couldn't tell the difference) The kids had never seen such a nice pool. The hotel was quick to try to rid the pool of the mass of children and kept complaining that they were not in swimming costumes. Nadine and I stood firm and we stayed as long as we wanted. And we had so much fun!

We made it back to the hostel in time to watch India vs Sri Lanka in the Cricket World Cup. As I have completely no idea about cricket I couldn't even understand the score and thought that the kids were just not speaking English properly when they kept telling me the game would last 6 hours. The streets were totally dead all evening until 1030 when they officially won. We ran to the roof of my guest house and people were lighting off fireworks in every direction.

The next day we took the other half of the kids to a much more appropriate movie. Which was 3 hours of musical montage's and so much overacting that Nadine and I had no problem understanding the plot. The best part was the escalator in the mall. The kids were so frightened to step on it and we had to help each kids one by one. Then during intermission I took the girls to the bathroom and when I reminded them to flush they were so confused. I showed them and they all ran to watch the fascinating flush toilet! It was so great!

My last week is coming to an end and I am already sad to be thinking about leaving. But I am also excited as being here has given me so many ideas of how I can continue to be involved from from home. So stayed tuned for lots more fund-raising schemes!

Must go it is time for lice check! My count is on rise and I need to get mine and the kids numbers down :)