Start a blog that goes back in time :)

Okay, so being the unfortunately lazy individual that I am, I just decided to start a blog after already having been in India for three weeks. Buuut, my slight OCD drives me to post about all the adventures that I've already had while in India. So what I will do is make a post for each week I've been here, except for the first week, which I'll do two posts for (sooo much happened!). I'll still be posting about my day to day activities, but i'll throw in a back-in-time post on slow days. This one will basically summarize my first week as a teacher in India and will probably be quite long and chaotic since I'm going to try to remember everything (it seems so long ago!). Okay here goes...

Park where I run

These first few days in India have been amazing!...and definitely very interesting in many ways. When I arrived in Indira Gandhi International Airport, I thought to myself,  'oh, this isn't so bad! this heat ain't no thaaang'. Well, that was foolish of me. As soon as I stepped outside, I was drenched...in my own sweat. I can't even describe the heat; it's so intense! And this is why, after one week, I am proud to say that I have adapted very well to the super hot climate! The area that I am staying in is so lovely, and in the mornings, I even go running around the park nearby. My thinking: if I can handle running in the heat here, when I go home, it'll be easy cakes!

First night's homemade dinner:
rice with lentils in a chili sauce
and sugar-covered yogurt. Soo delicious

I'm staying in a guesthouse with two other students from the UK, Sam and Jake, who will also be volunteering with Asha as English teachers. It's great, like living in an apartment. I feel so fancy when we all just chill in the kitchen and cook dinner, like real grown-ups. The living situation is definitely ideal: I have my own room! Jake and I arrived on the same weekend so Sam, who has already been in India for a month, showed us the giant (and I mean GIANT) mall and the cool markets and took us to the park, where we just sat and relaxed in the evening before dinner.

Auto rickshaw!

At the start of the weekend, I was so nervous at the idea of being an English teacher who knows absolutely no Hindi (except for the basics that I learned on the 14 hour flight here). I was also worried about how I would be getting to my slum. So you can imagine how nervous I was when I was told that I would be teaching at a slum that is pretty far away, Mayapuri. For this week, someone has been going to and from the slum with me so I can learn the bus routes. On the first day, I didn't have to take the bus because Asha paid for me to take an auto rickshaw, which was quite the experience (driving in a vehicle...with no doors or seat belts...on the crazy streets of India...yikes!). I rode with this really nice woman, Vidya, who, like many of the people here, just stared at me and asked about my hair the entire 30 minute journey there. It was pretty hilarious though because we actually managed to carry on a conversation, even though she speaks hardly any English.

Mayapuri slum has been...shocking, to say the least (pictures to come in future posts). I was told that Mayapuri was one of the poorest slums, but I was not even remotely prepared for what I was about to see. One afternoon, the little girls asked me to come to their homes to call them to class. So I went with Vidya, for the first time, past the Asha center and further into the slum. Little children covered in dirt came outside and squatted in the narrow path between the shacks, fascinated by the sight of a strange new person. It was very easy to find all of the girls because, although most of them lived in separate homes, everything was so tightly packed together to the point where moving around was pretty challenging, especially for someone as tall as I am. And when I say home, I mean home in the loosest sense because I don't think one can even call the small, one-room shacks that housed small and large families alike homes. I didn't even go very deep into the slum, but from what I did see, I knew that Mayapuri was a place where Asha's help was desperately needed.

In these first few days, my teaching has been very experimental, because that is really the only word that can describe what I do. With the help of the Asha curriculum, I am beginning to gauge the students' English-speaking abilities, so I think classes will probably get a bit more structured. In the mornings, I teach a class of boys who are between 10 and 19 years old, and in the afternoon, I teach the girls, who are 5 to 12 years old. Working with these age ranges has been very interesting and a bit challenging, but the older kids help out the younger ones, which is really helpful for me. Having my laptop has also been helpful because they love American music and love to ask me to dance...every day (video!). And I do of course. I honestly just can't say no to their cute little faces. And the Asha staff here at Mayapuri is wonderful. We have such great times on my break in between classes, and even though they don't speak much English, they have really made me feel welcomed here.

...Wow that was long! Shorter from now on, promise.

Some of the boys :)