Saturday 16 April 2011

Day 4: I face-off with a monkey


Hey there Readers,
Today was especially exhausting because we were awoken at 5:30 in the morning to exercise in the park with the orphans that live nearby. Let me tell you that waking up that early was not a fun experience and although I agreed to get up early I assumed that meant at least after six. So I woke up and spent the next twenty or so minutes in a stupor, as it happens when you wake up that early, and by the time I got downstairs I was more or less conscious of my surroundings. We went to the park and I ran a lap with the guys and we all played some more games to wake us all up. Thankfully Bethany and the Family were also with us so I actually managed to get some energy. Our little group walked over to the orphanage and Ryan helped the little boys shower and the rest of us helped them get dressed into their school uniforms. They also had this bottle full of this coconut smelling oil which they put in their hair, so I decided to follow suit. I don’t know exactly what this accomplished but my hair came out of the ordeal slightly shinier, which I thought was a nice touch. After wolfing down a breakfast, Ryan, Mom and I took a rickshaw to Prakash Deep, the street school where I learned martial arts. When we arrived Sabita split us up into two groups that were a little unreasonable, as you will see in a moment. Ryan and I were put together to teach a class where the teacher was not present. This class consisted of five students, two boys and three girls of about 12 years old. They had textbooks that we taught from and an organized curriculum that we could follow and teach from for the five or six hours we were there. Now this is where I really respect my Mom because compared to our class, we had paradise. Sabita put Mom with 27 extremely energetic little kids and her only help was the young teacher of the class and my backpack full of candy. So she spent hours thinking of games she could play, teaching them English words and phrases, counting, colors, showing them different dances, doing all of my drama exercises, and pretty much anything else that popped up in her mind, which was pretty impressive. Meanwhile we were on the other side of the schoolyard where Ryan and I were reading stories and going through their books. I decided to make a little puzzle/challenge for them so I made some word scrambles, fill in the blanks, just some activities that I thought of which they enjoyed. After some reading with questions afterwards we had a 45-minute lunch break where I played basketball and soccer with some of my friends from the self-defense class yesterday. Eventually we decided to have a dance off between some of the other kids and me. It was really awesome and they showed me some moves involving a handstand (something I’ve never been able to do) and I showed them my break dancing. During lunch, I would like to point out, something awesome happened. The school is on a fairly large yard of packed dirt with mats on it so at some point some monkeys emerged from some of the trees nearby and started towards the food that was on one of the mats. In past experiences I’ve never had any trouble with the little guys but the second one of the guys saw them, about 15 boys my age instantly reacted. They started shouting and saying the word monkey (in Hindi of course) and picking up things to throw at them, one kid even picked up a plastic chair, it was so intense. Apparently monkeys are crazy evil here, as I was to find out eventually. So once lunch was finished our class, including some of my friends, sat down in a circle and we decided to do the telephone game, which I thought would be fun with the whole language barrier and accents. We played for a bit and at 1pm school ended and we waited for our rickshaw. Once everyone had gone, the monkeys returned. By the way, normally monkeys are cute animals but these look scary, ugly and ferocious. My mom wanted to take a picture of one so I took a few steps towards it but one step too far it turned towards me and bared its sharp teeth. I stayed away from that point onwards. Bandhu pulled up on the curb and we were provided with another problem. There was literally a monkey in every direction so we debated how we were going to get over the fence and to the car without getting attacked. In the end we backtracked a bit and climbed the fence. When we got home exhaustion took over and we all took a nap. We had decided to go to this market in Delhi later that evening so I woke up once again and got ready to go. We were going to a nicer market called Delhi Haat. The car ride was rather long but otherwise uneventful so the Family, my mom and I got out and went shopping in this market place. It was very nice and clean and in the end the girls got some new shoes and bangles. Mom looked around and got something too, but in the end we were all hungry and we had heard that there was a Pizza Hut in the area so we began a new search. We returned to our driver and spoke to him about finding one, his English was limited and we were not sure he understood us but he started driving so we couldn’t do anything else but just hope that at the end we would arrive at one. He took us to a place with a McDonald’s and a Subway which we were happy about. In India the only meat that is ever eaten by the locals is chicken, so instead of hamburgers and Big Mac’s you have the McChicken burger which consists of a bun, lettuce, mayo, and a piece of breaded chicken between. It was all right, not the same as a cheeseburger, but my hunger was still not satiated, so we now went to Subway. The same applied for Subway in that there was nothing but chicken, turkey, and something called chicken ham. It looked kind of like bologna and tasted like it too. To be honest it just wasn’t the same as the one I get in the UK. It was one of the most difficult journeys home. It was dark, there was a constant blaring of obnoxious horns, but it was the smell that was the worse. The garbage, the pollution and the exhaust came together to produce a pretty nasty stench that we had to endure for most of the ride. At some point I gave out candy that I had in my bag for us to smell. Some people found the temptation of eating it too powerful (myself concluded) and eventually gave in. We arrived home safely and headed for bed ready to visit the Taj Mahal the next day.

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