drink lots of water and eat healthy foods!

Before leaving for Nepal, everyone was concerned with what the food would be like, if I would be getting enough of it, how safe the water would be, etc. I figured I would get sick of the monotony of the type of food after a few months and physically sick from some foodborne illness after a few months, but unfortunately both have struck early. Last Friday, all the volunteers went out for dinner and drinks at Shanhi Village, one of the two “upscale” restaurants we visit on special occasions. We indulged in French fries and spring rolls and Indian food and beers and tequila, a good change from the daal bhat we eat all the time. About 24 hours after our festivities, my body was celebrating those festivities by getting rid of everything inside of me. I couldn’t stomach anything besides a plain roti (Nepalese tortilla) and water for two days, but alas, after lots of rest and letting the bug run its course, I was fine. There are 11 fellows here, and 6 of us have had this nasty bug in the last week, and we’ve been spending our time tracking its pattern and determining its starting point. So, Brendan and Susanne ate lunch at Valley View, our other favorite restaurant laaaast Friday, and by Sunday they were not feeling so good. Caroline ate there on Tuesday, and by Thursday she was spending most of the day and the night in the bathroom. We all ate out Friday and I got sick Saturday. And this morning we woke up to the sounds of Amy and Nate getting sick, just two days after eating lunch out as well. There hasn’t been one single food to cause the sickness but there has been one drink: water. The water in Nepal, like most developing countries, is not safe to drink. At school and the home, we are lucky enough to have purified drinking water taps to fill up our water bottles at any time we want. Other than that, if it’s not sold in a sealed plastic water bottle, it can’t be trusted. Whenever we eat out, we order bottles upon bottles of the perfect and ever-so-thirst-quenching Nepalese water and melt at the sound of the seal being broken, indicating that the water is pure and safe. Or so we thought! After the many bouts of illness we’ve been looking a little closer at these bottles. How come some are filled to the brim while others are only filled to the top of the label? They are sealed shut but what’s that little stuff floating around the bottom? It seems to us that restaurants and shops recycle the bottles, fill them up with water, and use some device to seal the bottles shut, just like they do with glass coke bottles and beer all around the world. It’s a genius mechanism for saving money and a genius way to get all the foreigners sick! For now, it’s safe to say I will be bringing my water bottle filled with purified water from home everywhere I go.

This is a typical meal seen at lunch or dinner in all of Nepal. It’s called daal bhat – rice with some liquid lentil / bean goodness. Always expect potatoes on the side, and maybe some sort of vegetable if you’re lucky. Top with lemons and chilis for a little kick! My theory is, hundreds of years ago some aboriginal Nepali person threw rice and lentils in a pot, it was easy and tasted good and that person thought “okay this is what I and my entire country shall eat at all meals from now on!” and it stuck. It is very delicious and authentic, but it gets very old when you are forced to eat two heaping servings of it every day. I had a steaming plate of daal bhat right before I got the sickness, so I’m taking the week off from rice and potatoes, and eating mostly peanut butter and plain crackers and snickers bars until I can stomach the Nepali cuisine again. 

Call me Sunny

Namaste!

Everyone told me my time in Nepal would fly by but so far it’s been the opposite. I’ve already learned a lot, seen a ton, been stared at so much, been to a Nepali wedding and made memories that will last a lifetime…how can it be that I was 8000 miles away in Virginia less than two weeks ago? I have so many things to share and questions to answer, I really don’t even know where to start but I’ll give it a shot.

So I wake up around 7:30 every morning to the sound of a bell chiming and children screaming on their way to breakfast.  The volunteers eat about 30 minutes after the kids and breakfast is usually dry oatmeal, really buttery hamburger buns, or fruit and peanut butter if you’re lucky. During this time, the kids are busy cleaning and sweeping until they make the 90-second hike over to school around 9am. I usually have some down time after breakfast to lesson plan or read on the roof before going to teach English to one 2^nd and two 3^rd grade classes. I love my 3^rd graders but the 2^nd graders are, well, a nightmare. First of all, there are 30 of them in the class and there should never be 30 8-year olds in the same room at the same time. Ever. The class is only 20 minutes long – seriously do not ask me why – and getting through role call takes up the majority of the class time as it is! They’ve also had about 3 different teachers this year, which has truly hindered their learning and made behavioral standards non-existent. And what especially makes my job as their new English teacher especially hard is the fact that half of them hardly speak English. I discovered this problem when I told them to write 5 sentences using the words teacher, girl, soccer, clock, and goat and numerous students turned in papers that had “I am girl” written 5 times L The only good thing that has come from the students’ inability to speak English is a new nickname for me. The sh- sound doesn’t exist in Nepali (the name Shanti is pronounced Santi) and the suffix –annon is just weird, so I have become Sunny. It’s funny because I used to tell people that was my middle name when I was younger, now I just have to get used to responding to it!

The difference between the 2^nd and 3^rd grade classes is unbelievable! My 3^rd graders are excited about learning, have their ADHD slightly more under control, and their English is 100x better. It’s still difficult to get through the 50 minute class without losing my sanity or dropkicking a sassy child out the door, but I’ve really enjoyed teaching them so far and I’m learning a lot every single day.

In addition to teaching, I am helping rebuild the English curriculum for the entire school. We currently have almost 350 students in nursery through 9^th grade, but are in the process of building a completely new and awesome and sustainable and beautiful and modernized school just up the road. If we want to continue to expand and give these students a comprehensive education we really need to get rid of the kinks and disconnects between grades (ahemmm 2^nd to 3^rd grade), and I’m hoping to help with that. So if anyone knows anything about creating curriculums, I could use a lot of help!

When I’m not at school six (yes 6) days a week, you can find me at home with our 44 kids. They range from age 4 to 16 and I’m very proud to say I knew all their names within a week of arriving here. That may not sound all that noteworthy but I was not learning the names Sam and Matt and Erin, try Birendra, Sanju, Hansharaj, Bishal, Swastika, and 39 more Nepali names, plus all the kids at school and our aunties and uncles around the house! At home with the kids, I play lots of games, walk our two humongous German shepherd pups, lead yoga on the roof at sunset, braid hair, get my hair braided, clean cuts and infections, make sure the kids’ clothes are somewhat clean, run around the neighborhood, and play soccer. There is always so much going on and something to get done, never a dull moment here! The best part of the day comes after dinner when all the kids and volunteers gather for satsung. We sit in a circle and sing so many songs and dance (these kids are unbelievably talented) and congratulate others for doing something good and talk about house announcements or celebrate birthdays. It’s the only time of day where everyone is guaranteed to be all-together, as a family, and it is truly special. 

I hope this give you a little idea of what I’m doing over here! There are so many things to share and funny stories to tell, but as my dad says, “French food”… a little at a time.

Ma timilai maaya garchu,

Sunny 

 all the fellows dressed up for a wedding

 roof view

 kalpana & goma

 sunset never gets old

hello! 

Big Girls Do Cry

After 8.5 hours in the Istanbul airport, and 6 more hours on the plane, I was really looking forward to breezing through security with my visa from DC and enjoying my day in Kathmandu. At the desk, the security officer (side note: there is no way to tell who is a security officer and who is just a regular old Nepali man, as the officers seem to where whatever they want to work) asked me when my visa was issued and I was so confused why he was asking, as the issue date was listed right there on my passport. Can't this dude read? Well, it turns out that the security officer can, in fact, read and the reason he was asking was because the Nepal Embassy of DC wrote September 23rd as the issue date but forgot to write a year. I insisted that my visa was issued this past September and the Embassy probably didn't write the year because...well, isn't it obvious that it was 2013?! To make a long story short, I waited almost 2 hours trying to get the issue resolved, even tears didn't help. I was told I would have to go to the Immigration office Sunday morning at 11am to retrieve my passport, which was quite unfortunate because I was supposed to catch a 9am flight to Surkhet the next day... welcome to Nepal! 

Even though I was 7 hours late, Rijen (the travel agent for Kopila Valley fellows) was waiting for me outside the airport. He drove me to the Buddha Garden Hostel and said he would help me figure out the visa junk in the morning. I was feeling super frustrated and sad and scared and already missing home and I almost resolved to going to bed at 5pm. But thanks to a little note Erin stuffed into my backpack before I left, I mustered up the energy to shower and venture out onto the streets of Kathmandu. I walked around for a while, exchanged my dollars for rupees, and even had dinner with an ex-Kopila Valley fellow who happened to be in the city for the night. Talking to someone else besides myself and getting some physical activity after sitting for 30 hours straight really helped my mood, thanks for rallying me from afar, Bear! 

The next morning, Rijen's dad took me to the Immigration Office at precisely 11am to retrieve my passport. To get a sense of what an immigration office in Nepal looks like in Nepal, picture a 3 story cement building built in the 70s that hasn't been cleaned, vacuumed, sanitized, or organized since it was built, and there ya have it. I was shuffled around from one story to another, one office to another, and told to "wait just 10 minutes" every 30 minutes or so. One officer would read the report that explained the situation at hand was that the year wasn't written on my visa, then he would pass the report to another officer who would read it and tell me the issue at hand was that the year was not written on my visa, then send me to another room to pass the report to another officer who would read it and tell me the issue at hand was that the year was not written on my visa then send me to another room to meet another officer who would read the report and tell me the issue at hand was that the year was not written on my visa.  This went on for TWO AND A HALF HOURS until some officer read the report, wrote 2013 under the issue date, and I was on my way. Welcome to Nepal!

I got a quick tour of the Thamel district, Durbar Square, and a Buddhist stupa, before heading back to the airport for one more flight. The max weight limit for luggage was hefty 20 kg and with precisely 57 kg, I was told I would have to pay 4000 rupees. This time the tears helped and somehow I convinced Buddha Air to let me bring three times the weight limit for less than $20! My flight was delayed 2.5 hours of course, but my kindle and some Nepali food that resembled Vietnamese pho helped me keep my sanity. 

I landed in Nepalgunj at 7:30pm, and was greeted by Prakash who would drive me all the way to Kopila Valley. He and I passed the time talking about anything and everything, our conversation went like this: Prakash would yell (literally, yell) some Nepali phrase at me, then I would either laugh, say I don't know or count to 3 in Nepali, for which, Prakash would respond by laughing, yelling another Nepali phrase at me, or practicing the 4 words of English he knew. The best exchange was when he said, "I make one and one baby, a ladies and a gents!" - another way of telling me he has two kids, one girl and one boy. We stopped at a couple security checkpoints along the way and on the side of the road of some village for Prakash to grab some dinner. While he shoveled some undistinguishable yellow goo and rice into his mouth, I asked to use the bathroom. I have seen some rough looking squatters in my life (remember India?), but this one, this was the sultan of swat, the king of crash, the colossus of clout of the most disgusting squatters. I have never had such a horrid and overpowering stench infiltrate my nose like the smell that escaped from this bathroom. It was so bad I could not even get without 10 feet of it; instead, I wrapped my scarf tightly around my face three times and popped a squat behind the "bathroom." Once Prakash finished eating, we were on our way, and I fell asleep to the soothing sound of Nepali electronic music blasting in my ear. Two hours later, I arrived at Kopila Valley Children's Home and School! It was 10:45 so the kids and Maggie were already asleep, but I was graciously greeted by a couple of fellows who made the 63 hours of travel seem insignificant. 

I cannot believe I'm actually here and I cannot wait to share more about KV, stay tuned!

xoxo, shannon

 buddhist stupa 

art class outside of the stupa

Next Chapter

And I'm back! For those of you who kept up with my blog during study abroad in Ecuador and the hardest 6 weeks of my life in India, thanks for returning. And for those of you who are new to the dreadhead diary, welcome! 
I wanted to write the cliche "night before I leave" blog entry the night before I left, but instead I was making CVS runs, hanging with friends and family, and putting off packing as long as I could. So, greetings from the Istanbul Airport! I am only 1/3 of the way to my final destination, but I'm pretty surprised I made it this far...
First, it was the fact that I was still packing 5 minutes prior to our scheduled departure to the airport. Second, it was the uncontrollable sobbing in my mom and dad and sister's arms that almost caused me to crumple up my boarding pass and cancel this trip. Third, it was my "50 lb" bag that actually weighed 100 lbs. See, the Kopila Valley team had asked me to bring just a few supplies - you know, 30 pounds of screws and nails, 15 books, 2 dog leashes, 200 pages of construction paper, children's scissors, some dog toys, a couple of boxes of reduced fat CheezIts, coffee, sriracha, the usual. All those things + my year supply of shampoo (jokes), really put my bag over the allotted weight. Luckily, dad anticipated this as he almost threw his back out loading my bag into the car and gave me an empty suitcase just in case. I tried convincing the Turkish Airlines desk clerk that all my time on the phone with the airline's customer service reps this week had actually been worth while and I was allowed to bring up to infinity pounds worth of luggage, but that didn't work as my bag was still over the TSA maximum by 15 kilos. He told me my bag wasn't going to go to Kathmandu, and therefore, neither was I. Matt and I quickly rearranged, transferred the tools and books and dog leashes to the extra bag (thanks Dad!) and told the clerk my three bags were light enough. Perfect! Now all I had to do was shell out $220 to check a third baggage. Just like magic, I burst into tears again when I heard this news (at least I already had mascara running down my cheeks from emotional goodbyes) and somehow convinced the clerk to check all three of my bags, for free, "just this once." Voila! 
So one more tearful goodbye, 15 hours, 2 sleeping pills, one coffee, and 5214 miles later, I've made it to Turkey. Unfortunately, my flight to Kathmandu has been delayed; what was supposed to be a quick 3 hour layover has turned into 8 :( I'm making good use of this 1euro wifi though, and if I don't die of boredom, I should be in Kathmandu in a short 13 hours, and in Surkhet 35 hours after that! 

So, what the hell am I doing in Istanbul? Where in the world is Kathmandu? Why am I even heading to Nepal? I'll make it short and sweet: Kopila Valley Children's Home & School was started by Maggie Doyne (modern day Mother Theresa as my mom calls her) in 2008. My sister told me to start following Maggie's blog back then. Seeing Maggie on the back of a Doritos Bag really sealed the deal and I've been a fan ever since. Came to my senses and realized a fellowship at KV was a way better opportunity than joining the circus in Italy. I hope to be in Surkhet for about 10 months to a year, although that time could change upon arrival. I'll be teaching English at first, then maybe coaching, helping with the curriculum, and doing whatever is needed around the home and school. I'm extremely blessed and excited about this next chapter in my life. It should be filled with many trials and tribulations, but I know I will learn so much, see a beautiful part of the world, make unforgettable friends and memories, and hopefully be a great big sister to the children at KV! 

I hope you keep up with this blog and please check out Kopila Valley and Maggie's journal at http://blinknow.org/about-kopila-valley/

I can't believe all the support and love and well wishes sent my way, thank you all so much!

For now, xoxo, shannon

DC - ISTANBUL - KATHMANDU - SURKHET

Hampi-ing around...

I’ve only been in India for 3 weeks now, but it seemed weird that I hadn’t taken a weekend trip since I went on adventures literally every weekend in Ecuador. So my AIESEC friends and I planned an excursion to Hampi, India because we had heard great things about the little town. At first, there were 3 of us going on this trip, but when we arrived at the bus station, somehow our AIESEC Hampi group had grown to 13! All of my apartment mates and some of their project partners came along and we represented 7 different countries total… pretty cool, huh? There is no direct bus to Hampi so we took an 8-hour bus from Hyderabad to Bellary. After all my crazy South American overnight bus rides, this sleeper bus was a piece of cake – although all my inexperienced travel buddies thought the bus was too cold, too long, and too uncomfortable. They couldn’t even hold their bladders the entire 8 hours! Clearly not on my experience level… sorry guys. We arrived in Bellary at 6am and let me tell you, Bellary is the REAL India. Extremely dirty, extremely poor, and extremely sad. We met Sofia there, then piled 4 people in each auto, and drove 3 hours to Hampi for only 100 rupees per person (that’s just over $2)! The ride to Hampi was so uncomfortable, but it was beautiful – wide-open spaces, palm trees, quaint villages, and monkeys!

Once we got to Hampi, we were bombarded by men urging us to get in their taxis or buy their tour packages or stay at their hostels, which was all super annoying, but we found a great guest house off the main road for 100 rupees per person! Hampi is a small religious village located in the Vijayanagara ruins and it is filled with temples, markets, tons of creepy monkeys and amazing views! It has turned into a tourist site, but thankfully we went during down-season so we were some of the only white people there. After grabbing some lassis, we began exploring Hampi by climbing the ruins, seeing the Virupaksha Temple (Hampi’s main attraction), and enjoying the awesome weather. The views are hard to describe because I’m not sure what exactly I was looking at – a bunch of rocks spread over a massive palm tree-filled desert? Doesn’t sound too great, but the pictures are proof of how cool it was! After spending all day outside and getting the worst farmer’s tan possible, I got a 30-minute full body massage. It wasn’t the best massage ever, as I was laying on basically a tarp and I was so dirty from the day’s activities, but it was pretty darn relaxing nonetheless. After the massage and a quick shower, my friends and I went to Mango Tree for dinner. We got to walk along the river and into the jungle to the restaurant – it was so cool! – and then we sat on pillows on the ground, outside, under a gigantic mango tree and had a delicious meal. We were so tired from all the traveling, walking, and sun that we went to bed right after dinner and I had one of the best sleeps I’ve had in India!

Sunday morning we got up early and took a 4-hour bike tour in “Royal City” right outside of Hampi. We had neon colored bikes with bells and a personal guide named Jacques… it was so touristy and awesome. Four hours on a bike with a guide sounds awful, but it really was great because we got to ride through beautiful places and stopped at about 6 different temples or ruins along the way. Jacques did bore me sometimes but I learned that the reason Hampi has so many rocks is because, accordingly to legend, it was completely underwater 300 million years ago and the seafloor boulders still remain! We had a well-earned lunch after the long bike ride, shopped in the market, showered, and then headed back to Bellary to catch the bus home to Hyderabad. It was a quick trip (only about 36 hours in Hampi!), but I feel like we squeezed in everything important. A break from all the pollution and traffic of Hyderabad was fabulous and our first weekend trip was definitely a success!

Two more weeks in India then it’s on to Thailand to wreak havoc with my middle sis, can’t wait J  

laterzz, 

scm

auto ride from bellary to hampi ... beautiful! 

HAMPI! virupaksha temple on the left. 

some of the girls

meditating in zen world. 

couldn't resist ...

bike ride: Ganesha statue

ruins

being tourists :)

the Indian tourists loved this so much that they kept asking me to do handstands so they could take pictures!

you know I LOVE MONKEYS! 

indian dress up

I should’ve written this blog on Tuesday or Wednesday because I literally did nothing for those 48 hours. See, there was a taxi strike because the drivers wanted to raise the rate per kilometer so they all refused to drive for two days and all the stores and shops were shut down because they were afraid people would rebel and wreak havoc all over the city. Thanks crazy Indians for two days in lockdown! I did get some well-needed sleep and went on some nice runs around the neighborhood and planned some trips, but I was quite antsy. So, this is a 3-day work week, which is bittersweet: work is hard and tiring, but I love the kids and I realize my time in the orphanage is going to be up before I know it!

I’ll start by telling you what we did this weekend…

Teresa has two Portuguese friends who work for AIESEC in India: Sofia who works in Bangalore and Ines who just arrived and is also working here in Hyderabad. Sofia came to visit this weekend and we rescued Ines for that disgusting cockroach-infested apartment to go on some Hyderabad adventures. On Saturday, we went to the Birla Mandir Temple, a Hindi temple completely made of white marble! We had to leave everything behind before entering the temple – shoes, cameras, phones, and underwear. Kidding about the underwear, but unfortunately, cameras seriously were not allowed so I have no pics. But google it! It was absolutely beautiful and the view of all of Hyderabad was amazing! Once again, WE were the tourist attractions, but I’ve really gotten used to it at this point. That night, I was feeling very tired and a little bit sick (some of you know the reason behind that one!), so I ate some food at the apartment and went to bed early.

On Sunday, I got up early and went for a run around the neighborhood, before Teresa, Sofia, Ines, and I headed out for Charminar. Charminar (means “four towers”) is this great little market centered around the Charminar, a beautiful building actually with 4 towers. After a great adventure getting to Charminar that included a broken taxi, some walking, a few failed attempts at negotiating with taxi drivers, and a few bus rides, we made it and climbed the curly stairs of the Charminar to see an amazing view of the city. See the pictures for proof! We bought some samosas for lunch, some scarves to cover our shoulders so we could go in the temple, and then spent the rest of the day in the market. Honestly, it was not as amazing as I had hoped or as great as everyone made it out to be. Yes, it was a huge market with everything, but everything was tacky and breakable and every store had the same crap! But still, it’s a must-see in India so I am glad we went.

On Monday, Teresa, Sofia, and I showed the kids the movie “How to Train Your Dragon”. The kids are still adorable and hilarious, but man, they can be annoying! It was nice to have Sofia there - one more person to draw little pictures in the children’s notebooks! After the taxi strike on Tuesday and Wednesday, we went back to work on Thursday and it was kinda a weird day. When we arrived, all the kids were sitting in perfect rows, perfectly quiet, in clean clothes with combed hair, and the orphanage looked like it had been swept and organized… definitely not a normal occurrence! We found out that the men who built the orphanage were coming to visit, so everything and everyone had to look their best. I asked the leaders if we could sing and dance while we waited for the builders to arrive, and they looked at me like that was the most absurd question ever. Yeah how dare I suggest the kids be having fun when the orphanage builders arrive?! So we waited for the men to get there and when their car pulled up, the leaders scrambled around the orphanage and started passing out chalkboards and new reading books to a couple children here and there. It was so…what’s the word… disgusting and awful? … to watch the orphanage put on this show for the builders. But the kids got some bananas and chocolates from them, so I guess it was kinda worth the fakeness? After the weird visit from the builders, we did are typical routine of stretching and dancing. For some reason, they love to stretch and think it’s the funniest thing when I make those “getting out of bed and stretching” noises. They also love dancing to Justin Bieber’s “Baby”. We have this funny dance and seeing Indian kids singing the lyrics to J.Biebs is awesome, in my opinion.

Friday was a special day. After working at the orphanage, Teresa and I went over to Rada’s house – she is one of the women who works downstairs and calls India all day asking for donations for the orphanage, and she loves us. She took us to her house where her daughter was waiting… she didn’t go to school because we were coming over! Then Rada tried to kill us by way of over consumption: first, it was oranges, apples, and other fruits, then vegetables, then a massive pile of noodles and veggies, then a hunkin portion of rice and sauce, then more fruit. She had noticed that I didn’t finish my lunch the day before at the orphanage and made a comment that I don’t eat a lot, but I guess she didn’t get the picture, because when I said I was extremely full before I finished the pasta AND rice, she seemed surprised. Indians eat A LOT. And they serve their guests EVEN more. And they get offended when you don’t finish your meal. That was bad news for me and I apologized numerous times for physically not being able to fit more food in my stomach. After the feast, she took us to a little market store where she insisted on buying us earrings and bindis (little forehead dots), and then dressed us up in her sarees! It was fun to play dress up, but at the same time I was a little uncomfortable. Not only because her saree was cutting of the circulation in my muscular man arms, but also because I just felt too too pampered and waited on hand and foot for the entire day. Two hours after the time we said we had to leave, we finally left. It was such a nice day with Rada, but we had to run home, quickly pack our bags, and by 9:45 pm we were on the bus on our way to Hampi – my first weekend excursion in India!  

 teresa, nilu's cousin, nilu, and me at the orphanage!

 charminar.

 view from the charminar!

 in the charminar

 little kiddies

 this is what you get when you give a 5-yr old a camera...

playing indian dress up! 

All Work & Some Play

I am beat. Seriously. Mentally, physically, and emotionally I am drained. Maybe it’s because Teresa and I have been teaching and playing with and trying to control over 50 children for 5 to 6 hours everyday by ourselves, maybe its because AIESEC Hyderabad continually tries to push my buttons, or maybe its because I’ve only been sleeping a few hours a night in 90+ degree weather on a piece of wood. I guess it’s a combination of all three. At times this week I have been in the best of spirits, at other times I’ve wanted to cry, at other times I’ve wanted to punch people, and at other times I’ve been laughing at how many things have gone wrong… an emotional roller coaster to say the least.

I’ll give you the low down on work at the orphanage:

Remember how I said I didn’t think I could make much of a difference by simply playing with the kids and teaching them a few new words here and there for 6 weeks? Well, I was wrong. I feel like I have already made a huge difference in these kids’ lives. Teresa and I usually start the class by having the kids stretch and touch their toes and clap their hands, simple exercise like that, but man do they think it is the best thing in the world (that’s probably why I love working with kids – anything I do, they think is so cool or smart or funny; a total ego booster). Then we dance around the orphanage to Justin Bieber or Britney Spears or the Macarena or all 3, and then follow up the dance sesh with some “Itsy Bitsy Spider” action. After we get some of their energy out, we do some real teaching. From world geography, to English to math – we teach it all – and we have learned that using the laptop and blackboard together is the best plan. The kids think the laptop is the coolest thing ever, so, for example, Teresa will pull up a picture of a basketball and hoop on the laptop and the kids yell out what sport they think it is as I write on the board and they write it in their notebooks. After lunch and some more dancing and games, we do individual teaching, which means the children bring up their notebooks and we write exercises in whatever subject they want to work on. “Madam, drawings drawings!” is the most popular request I get, so I spend a lot of the day drawing pictures of cars, houses, animals, fruits and the children write the word in English. I’m out of ideas so if you have any more ideas of little pictures I could draw, please send them my way!

The most difficult thing about work is trying to keep the attention of all 50+ kids, ranging from age 3 to 12. Really is there an activity that 3 year olds up to 12 year olds would all enjoy? It’s hard, especially since we have very little help from the orphanage workers, but at the same time, it’s awesome, because Teresa and I are in charge when we are there. Another task we are still trying to deal with is the beatings and physical punishment by the adults. The adults beat the kids with sticks and because of this, the kids think it is okay to beat each other. It’s not the kids’ faults, they do not know better, and they simply see the beating sticks as a sign of power and control. I got in a fight with the Founder this week because I saw him pulling the ears of a 3-year old because the kid licked his chalkboard instead of cleaning it with his hand. I told the Founder he was fat, stupid, ignorant, abusive, and did not deserve to run an orphanage. No no no I didn’t really say that but I sure was thinking it! We have come to an agreement: they will try not to beat the kids when we are there, and in return we will teach the kids discipline and morals. I just agreed to this because I could not stand to talk to this awful human being anymore, but really, who does he think he is telling me I need to teach the kids morals? He is the one showing the kids that hitting is the only way to solve problems. Ugh I could go on and on all day, but I wont. All I will say is this issue will continue to bother me every day, but hey, at least when we are there, the abuse is not. 

So not only do I feel like I have taught the kids A LOT, but I feel like I have become one of the first adults in their lives that they love, trust, can count on, and look up to – and that makes me feel very good.

Teresa and I have fallen into a pretty nice routine. After working at the orphanage, we usually walk over to the local market, pose with Indians who are amazed at the paleness of our skin, and buy some tea and fruit or samosas for under 20 rupees (that’s like 50 cents for delicious food)! On Tuesday, after work and the market, Teresa and I went to Golconda Fort (it means “Shepherd’s Hill” in Telugu)– a touristy place that was mentioned in the top 10 things to see in Hyderabad. The 13th century Golconda Fort was built by the Kakatiya kings and then was later made into a massive fort with granite walls by Qutub Shahi Kings. It has 8 gates, 87 bastions, and this really cool acoustics / sound transference thing that allows claps heard at the entry gate to be heard clearly at the top of the hill! We posed with more Indians and got to see an amazing sunset over all of Hyderabad. On Wednesday night, we got in touch with our sensitive sides. The lady who lives downstairs is kinda like a minister and leads meditation every morning and night. So from 6 to 7:30 we sat in a calm room, staring at a red light, and listening to soothing music and sometimes I have difficulty focusing (or not focusing) on my thoughts, but this time, I felt fabulous! Mediation was followed by a super delicious Indian meal made by the minister and then some skype dates with friends and fam. After work and the market on Thursday, we went into the City Centre to see an Indian band called Phoenix perform. They did covers of songs that I love – including Bob Marley and The Cranberries – they were very good and had probably one of the best guitarists I’ve heard in a while! We also met some really cool people from AIESEC there and got our picture taken for the newspaper, so it was a pretty successful night. But Friday was a pretty tough day. Not only was it sooooo hot, all the kids wanted to do was hang on me and touch me and hit each other and wipe their grimy hands on the computer, but on top of that, it started monsooning while Teresa and I were in the auto with no windows so we got absolutely stoked! And all I wanted to when I got home was take a shower and relax and go to sleep early, but no. Instead, the AIESEC boys gave us a little surprise by telling us we were moving to a new apartment at 8pm THAT night. He said it would be nicer living conditions and closer to our place of work. So we packed up, headed out, and 300 rupees/ 45 minutes later, we were at our new house. AND SURPRISE: it was worse than we imagined! The girls living there said they hadn’t had running water in 7 days, there was so kitchen / refrigerator and the closets place to eat was 15 minutes down a dangerous road, there were no beds for us, and there were cockroaches everywhere! This is when I started laughing because there was absolutely no way this could be real life, like why would AIESEC ever let their interns live in a place like this? We told AIESEC we would stay the night there, but in the morning – adios awful apartment – we were going back to our original apartment, where we had showers and beds and food.

That’s the weekly update! It’s been a rollercoaster ride thus far, but AIESEC promised an unforgettable experience filled with leadership opportunities and excitement so at least they are following through with that part of the deal.

Peace, love, and roaches,

Shannon  

 soni, rhani, and me

 view from golconda fort

 madam and the boys

 birthday surprise at the orphanage

 the phoenix performing at hard rock

 peace & love baby

riding in the auto in the flood