No rest for the weary

So I'm back home and busy as ever. I got in, had one day to sleep, and then went straight to work. I'm working at the Girl Scout headquarters as an assistant to the registrar and the product sales director. It is pretty much what I did when I worked there before but on a much bigger scale. It has been keeping me busy especially since we just finished up nut sales. So since I'm finally back I thought that I would post more pictures to share my time in India with you all.


road trip to panchgani!!!

me and julie hanging out in panchgani.

the sangam team.

after rock climbing!

darshana helping me with my harness.

me walking across the rope bridge (it's a long ways up from the ground!)

me and padma at her house during ganapati, a 10 day hindu celebration.

the new buddha outside sangam's front door.

me at fatepur sikri during my trip to delhi and agra.

every sangam volunteer gets to put her handprints on the wall and these are mine!

me outside sangam with the plaque.

me at chaturshringi temple.

me and julie in our work saris after a welcome ceremony.

julie and me at the emu farm during our trip to the agri-village (which was really lame!)

me and one of the girls at mobile creche, one of sangam's community partners.

me and greg, the head of the maintanence team, during raksha bandha or brother/sister day.

proof that i lived upstairs with bats. this one is hanging out on the curtain that hangs up in the hallway.

Coming to an End

So my time here in India is coming to an end. I have to start packing up my things and head back to South Dakota. Things have been busy. I'm helping with the training of the new programme assistants and we have been a little short staffed since CL went to London for training and the new PAs can't really help with programmes yet, but I've been having fun and hanging out in the pool a lot lately since I won't be able to do that in October in South Dakota. So the internet at the Centre isn't working so when I get back to the States (aka "the land of working internet") I will be posting lots more pictures of my adventure here.

christa

Animals...of the dead variety.

If you have been a regular reader of my blog, you will know that I've had some very interesting encounters with animals. Well lately I've been having some crazy encounters with some dead ones.

The first...
Me, Anna, and Julie had a lot of time off before this event and so no one was in our programme room for a few days. The day we all got back, something was a little off but we just assumed that it was all the paint and turpentine that we hadn't put away from our last event. So we cleaned up and thought that the smell would go away. The next day the smell was still there and was getting a little worse but I was the only one working in the programme room and I thought that Bunty was outside and continued with my work since the smell wasn't unbearable. (Sidenote on why I thought Bunty was the cause of the problem. About a month ago Bunty was hit by a rickshaw or car (we aren't sure exactly what) and hurt his leg really badly. He is on the mend but his wound is open so the boys have to put this nasty smelling spray stuff on it a lot to keep it clean and to keep Bunty from licking it all the time. The spray makes Bunty smell really bad and Bunty likes to sit outside our programme room underneath the window and you can smell him when he is there.) So the next morning we all walked in and the smell was horrendous and since Bunty wasn't outside our programme room we immediately knew that we had a dead something on our hands. So we started looking around and in everything and figured that it was coming from somewhere around my desk. After a little more looking we found a dead and decaying gecko caught between the wall and the filing cabinet next to my desk. And this is how gross it was. I took one look and couldn't even look at it again. (And you know me, I'll look at anything gross and gooey. I couldn't even take a picture of it, it was that gross.) So lesson learned, dead geckos are the smelliest thing I have ever smelled in my entire life.

The second...
Again if you are a regular reader of my blog, you will know that we live upstairs with some batty friends. They like to sleep on the curtain that we have hanging in our hallway during the day and come out to fly around and eat mosquitoes at night. Well Anna woke up in her room the other day and noticed what she thought was a leaf on the top of her cabinet. (I'm not sure why on earth she thought a leaf could have gotten up there but that is what she thought it was and she didn't think anything of it.) We had a busy day that day and so after we got finished with work and headed back upstairs she went to get rid of it. Climbed up on her chair to take it down and discovered that it was a dead bat. I have a picture that I will post tomorrow of the dead bat, that does kinda look like a leaf, on the top of her cabinet. I have to give it to the bat, he died in a pretty good spot. He had a nice view of Anna's entire room. Anna was a little creeped out at the fact that the bat had obviously been flying around her room while she was asleep, which I guess is kinda creepy.

The third...
Ok, the third isn't about any dead animals but it does involve tiny little biting ants. Today I took a group of participants to Mobile Creche, which is a Sangam Community Partner. Mobile Creche sets up creches (like a daycare) at construction sites so the children of the construction workers can go to school and not be left alone on the oftentimes dangerous construction sites. So the mobile creche is set up in what will one day be someone's very nice apartment. So right now it is unfinished but the construction company supplies running water and electricity and the kids and teachers do a very good job at decorating with all sorts of bright and colorful teaching aides. So while we were there hanging out and playing with the kids I noticed a tiny littel ant on my foot but it didn't hurt so I just brushed it off of me and went on with things. Well that little ant must have had some friends because after a while my legs started to itch, I looked down and they were covered in ant bites that were quickly swelling up. Leave it to me to get a severe allergic reaction to tiny ant bites. So we left Mobile Creche while I was desperately trying not to scratch the hell out of my legs. By the time we got back to Sangam (Mobile Creche is only a 5 minutes walk away) my bites were still getting worse. I had to take a double dose of my allergy medicine, sudafed, and my asthma medicine and took a shower to wash it all off. Then I practically took a bath in my anti-itch creme to make the itching stop. (I knew there was a reason that I brought 2 tubes with me!) After 45 minutes or so, my medincine kicked in and I started to feel better. So I walked around the rest of the day carrying my ant-itch creme and inhaler with me. I don't have a picture of my bites because they itched so badly when I got back to Sangam I immediately got in the shower and wasn't thinking about having proof for my blog. (yes, they were THAT itchy!) They are still a little red but not as impressive as they were. No one else in my group got any bites. (Or if they did, they didn't have a severe allergic reaction!)

So other than all the dead animals and allergic reactions, my last event here at Sangam is going really well. I can't believe that in less than a month I will be back in South Dakota. It seems like I just got here. Hope everyone is having a good back-to-school season!
christa

Delhi and Agra...in Pictures.

So Anna and I took a few days off of work and went to Delhi and Agra to see the sights. It was a great 4 days and we saw a lot of stuff, including the Taj Mahal! It was amazing.

Delhi

Me the night before our sightseeing in the hotel in Delhi, reading up on the sights I wanted to see!

Me at Jama Masjid, one of the larger mosques in Delhi.

The Jama Masjid Mosque.

Me and Anna at the mosque.

Me and Anna at the Delhi Fort. You can only go inside a small portion of it because the troops still use it has a Fort.

The Raj Ghat, the place where Ghandi was cremated.

Me, India Gate, and a John Deere Rickshaw. (OK, so it isn't a real John Deere rickshaw. The reason they are green and yellow is because Delhi is becoming a "Green" city and are starting to use clean fuel in all city transportation. But still it looks like a John Deere rickshaw to me.) And kudos to Anna for getting the perfect picture!

Me at Qutb Minar, the first Mosque in India.

Me and Anna at Qutb Minar. It was built out of old parts of Hindu temples that were destroyed.

Me and Anna with the minaret in the background. It is the tallest minaret in the world standing at 237.8 feet high.

Me and the minaret.

So after our morning tour of Delhi, we drove (in our ac car!) to Agra. It is 200 km which works out to be about 125 miles. It took us about 5 hours to get there (this is India!) And when we got to Agra we were greeted by the monsoon. We had to go under a downed tree...

And went through flooded streets! (You can kinda tell in this photo that the water in front of the car is in fact the street and we are driving through water that is about knee high!) But we got to our home stay and had a lovely meal before going to bed early because we had to wake up early so we could go and see the Taj Mahal the next day!


Agra

Me at 6.30 in the morning! (This was even after 2 cups of coffee!) I'm hoping at this point that this Taj Mahal thing is really worth it!

And it is! This is where I was standing when I saw the entire Taj Mahal, in person!

And this was my first glipse of the Taj Mahal! So beautiful and sunny!

Me and Anna at the Taj Mahal!

Me at the President's Bench. (It is the bench where all the important politicians always get their pictures taken when they visit. This also marks the spot up to where Bollywood films can shoot their movies. They can't actually dance around the real Taj Mahal like they do in many films. (Those are the kind of questions that I was asking our tour guide. I'm pretty sure he thought I was crazy!))

These are the stupid foot covers that they make you wear when you are actually in the Taj Mahal.

The beautiful Taj Mahal! But I do have to say that as impressive as the Taj Mahal is outside, it isn't that great inside. It's kinda like the Disney World Castle. It is so wonderful, amazing, and spectacular on the outside and then you get inside and it isn't that great and there isn't anything to really see and it kinda smells like pee. But besides all of that, it was am amazing feeling to finally be there and see it in person since I've wanted to see it ever since I can remember.

The Taj Mahal isn't all there is to see in Agra. We then went to Fatehpur Sikri, which used to be the captial of the Moghul empire. This is me and Anna in front of the central pillar of Diwan-i-Khas. Basically, the king at the time was very fond of all religions. He had a Muslim wife, a Christian wife, and a Hindu wife (the Hindu wife was his favorite, not because she was Hindu but because she gave him a son.). He liked to have debates with men of religion from all faiths. He used to sit on top of this pillar and have discussions with them. He also started his own religion that combined all of his favorite aspects of most major religions. The religion didn't live on because when the King died, his son didn't agree with his father's religion, thus it died.

Even though the king was religious, this didn't seem to stop him from having his fun. He used to play hide and seek with his slave girls in this building. This is me playing hide and seek!

Also in Agra, we went to see the Agra Fort. This fort was way more impressive to me than Delhi's Red Fort. This fort had a moat where they used to keep crocodiles and had a drawbridge that could only be opened by elephants and even had 4 HUGE gates and walls you had to go through before reaching a long walk way where they used to throw hot oil and tar on you if you (the enemy) even got that far. But even with all of that (and a very impressive view of the Taj Mahal!) I was most impressed with the bath tub. That is right, this is me with a Moghul bath tub! And it is portable! So anytime the king wanted to go anywhere, an entire team of slaves, along with an elephant, where put in charge of bringing the bath tub. It's way better than the kitchen sink!

You may be thinking to yourself (Julie), "Why are you taking a picture of 2 men sitting on the roadside Christa? That isn't that cool." This is not a picture of 2 men sitting on the road. It is a picture of one man (on the left) and his pet monkey (on the right)! Right before this picture was taken, the monkey had jumped up onto the car and scared me half to death. We were stopped at the border so our driver could pay the taxes and this is what we saw!

The Al's Oasis of India! So we stopped at this place, which is located exactly half way between Agra and Delhi to use the bathroom and take a break. I went inside and it is totally like Al's in Chamberlain! You can buy a whole bunch of overpriced crap that you think you need but don't really!!!! (Case in point: I paid 60 rupees for a Twix bar.)

I saw this music store and liked their decoration! (Don't get any ideas Mom!!!)

And of course, a picture of Dwight. This time with the air conditioning in our room. I turned on the ac full blast and dug out the blanket they gave us and got to snuggle up under my blanket. It was a great 2 nights!!!! (PS: you may be wondering "Christa, why didn't you get a picture of Dwight with the Taj Mahal? I thought that was why you brought him along?" Well I have a funny story about that. I took Dwight all the way to Delhi and Agra with me. (He has been everywhere in India that I have!) But the Taj Mahal has this crazy rule that you can't take anything in with you. No iPods, cell phones, cigarettes, candy, gum, water, toys, nothing! Basically just a camera. And Dwight counted as a toy. I was crushed. So while I enjoyed the beautiful Taj Mahal, Dwight stayed in the stinky locker room where I had to pay 10 rupees to get him back. Oh well. I'll be back, with Dwight, as soon as the Indian Government lifts the 'no toy policy.' Mark my words!)

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

christa

A Blast from my Sangam Past

I was just going through all my previous blog posts and found the following blog entry that I wrote but apparently never posted. If I did post this, please ignore it, but I'm pretty sure that I never did. This is from my time at Sangam as a Programme Assistant in the summer of 2007. Enjoy!




So the other day I threw away a pair of my Old Navy flip flops (yes Mom, I threw them away all by myself!). I had stepped on something and it had taken a huge chuck of plastic off the side (but somehow I had managed to save my foot) and then I stepped on a rock and it got wedged in the plastic and I couldn't get it out. So I decided to throw them away considering I had gotten my $2.50 worth out of them. We have a lot of construction workers that are coming in and out of Sangam working on our new wall because of the road construction outside. 2 days later I had a day off and I was hanging out in my room. I was sitting in my chair looking out the window and noticed a construction worker wearing a pair of pink flip flops walk by. I didn't think anything of it at first. Then I realized that the guy was wearing the pink flip flops that I had thrown away just days before. Unfortunately I didn't realize it in time to get a picture of him wearing my old flip flops and I haven't seen him since then. It just goes to show that nothing goes to waste here, not even my old $2.50 flip flops!

I have also realized that I have been achieving a lot of my life goals in the last few months. It seems like the last few years all I have wanted to do is go into the Peace Corps, go to India, see the Taj Mahal, and see Wimbledon. I've achieved all 4 in the last few months. I've also realized how lucky I am to be achieving my goals so early in my life. This gives me the opportunity to make and achieve even more life goals. I couldn't have done it with everyone's help, my family and friends, and everyone who has encouraged me along the way. Thanks!!!!!!

I have a new career goal. I want to become a Bollywood dancer. I've been addicted to Bollywood movies since the first one that I saw. I've taken up Bollywood dance lessons and I'm getting pretty good (if I do say so myself!). So I think that after the Peace Corps, I'll move back to India to live in Mumbai to see if I can make it as a dancer. I think that it is a very attainable goal for me. (Do you think that there is anywhere in Sioux Falls to continue my Bollywood dance training? Here's hoping!)

I've become Canadian. Julie, who is another programme assistant, is from from Canada and because I hang out with her a lot, I've started to say eh. Yes that's right, eh. Hopefully I'll lose that habit very quickly after I get back.

And Lynn left a comment on my last entry and asked about who comes to Sangam for events. Events at Sangam are open to all Girl Scouts and Girl Guides around the world. You just have to be a member of your country's organization. Hope that answers your question Lynn, thanks for leaving the comment!

Feel free to leave comments and questions about anything! Hopefully I can answer!

christa

Odds and Ends, eh!?!?

This blog entry is going to be a little odd since I have been saving up several small but funny stories from my last few weeks here!

So the other day I threw away a pair of my Old Navy flip flops (yes Mom, I threw them away all by myself!). I had stepped on something and it had taken a huge chuck of plastic off the side (but somehow I had managed to save my foot) and then I stepped on a rock and it got wedged in the plastic and I couldn't get it out. So I decided to throw them away considering I had gotten my $2.50 worth out of them. We have a lot of construction workers that are coming in and out of Sangam working on our new wall because of the road construction outside. 2 days later I had a day off and I was hanging out in my room. I was sitting in my chair looking out the window and noticed a construction worker wearing a pair of pink flip flops walk by. I didn't think anything of it at first. Then I realized that the guy was wearing the pink flip flops that I had thrown away just days before. Unfortunately I didn't realize it in time to get a picture of him wearing my old flip flops and I haven't seen him since then. It just goes to show that nothing goes to waste here, not even my old $2.50 flip flops!

I have also realized that I have been achieving a lot of my life goals in the last few months. It seems like the last few years all I have wanted to do is go into the Peace Corps, go to India, see the Taj Mahal, and see Wimbledon. I've achieved all 4 in the last few months. I've also realized how lucky I am to be achieving my life long goals so early in my life. This gives me the opportunity to make and achieve even more life goals. I couldn't have done it with everyone's help, my family and friends, and everyone who has encouraged me along the way. Thanks!!!!!!

I have a new career goal. I want to become a Bollywood dancer. I've been addicted to Bollywood movies since the first one that I saw. I've taken up Bollywood dance lessons and I'm getting pretty good (if I do say so myself!). So I think that after the Peace Corps, I'll move back to India to live in Mumbai to see if I can make it as a dancer. I think that it is a very attainable goal for me. (Do you think that there is anywhere in Sioux Falls to continue my Bollywood dance training? Here's hoping!)

I've become Canadian. Julie, who is another programme assistant, is from Canada and because I hang out with her a lot, I've started to say eh. Yes that's right, eh. Hopefully I'll lose that habit very quickly after I get back.

And Lynn left a comment on my last entry and asked about who comes to Sangam for events. Events at Sangam are open to all Girl Scouts and Girl Guides around the world. You just have to be a member of your country's organization. Hope that answers your question Lynn, thanks for leaving the comment!

Feel free to leave comments and questions about anything! Hopefully I can answer!

christa

Life in Sangam

So I realized that I have been here at Sangam for 3 months and I haven't really talked about what I do and what happens during events. So since I only have 1 event left before I'm finished, I'll tell you all about it.

A few days before an event, we start to prepare. The one job that I have been doing every event is preparing the event books. This means that I'm best friends with the copy machine. I talk to her (the copy machine) and she works for me most of the time. Which is good considering that it is monsoon and the humidity is always high and the copier doesn't like sticky, wet paper. When people start arriving, which is usually 1 or 2 days before the event starts, we greet people. That means if they are arriving by the train station, bus station, or airport, we go and pick them up and take them back to Sangam by rickshaw. Other groups choose to fly into Mumbai and then hire a bus to drive them here, which makes my job a whole lot easier because I don't have to leave to greet them. When participants arrive, we show them around the Centre so they are immediately comfortable in their home away from home.

During the event we have basic sessions that we do no matter what the theme of the event. These include: Walk around the Neighborhood, Sangam Tour, Event Orientation, Coming Together (where the local staff comes and introduces themselves to the participants), Getting to Know You (icebreakers for participants), Welcome Ceremony, Laxmi Road or MG Road Tour (shopping!!!), International Evening, Yoga, Bollywood Dancing, a Bollywood Movie, Indian Afternoon, Maharastrian Dinner, and Closing Ceremony. Then there are more sessions that focus on the event theme. For example, the event that is going on right now is called "Action in the Community." It focuses on volunteering and working with different Community Partners. We have been going to 4 different Community Partners and doing everything from painting wall murals, to playing games, to making teaching aides. We are doing what they have requested that they would like done. It has been really fun but it has been really long and tiring. As a Programme Assistant, I help lead or assist with different sessions. Most of the sessions we all have to help with, especially if we have 50 participants, and others we do because they are our favorite things. I really like leading Bollywood dance and the Bollywood movie. When you are in charge of the Bollywood film, that means that you get to pick which film you want the group to see. It's pretty much the best job ever.

At the end of the event, we are in charge of seeing participants off. We take them to the train station, bus station, airport, or see them off by car. It is always a busy 7, 10, or 12 days but they are always fun and exciting.

To check out more information about the other staff here at Sangam or what a typical day is like here at Sangam, check out the links below.

http://www.sangamworldcentre.org/en/about/currentstaff

http://www.sangamworldcentre.org/en/programmes/typicalday

Hope that everyone is having a great start to the school year.
christa

ps: I'm going to see the Taj Mahal next week! I can't wait!

More Pictures!!!!

So the broadband is finally fixed!!!! (At least for now!) So I'll post some more pictures.

Julie, Mary T, and I went on a mini-vacation to Splendour Country, which is a resort that is about an hour from Sangam, just south of Pune.

The view from above the pool.

Me, Dwight, and Julie at the pool.

Phule Market, in Pune.

Me with some girls from Ishwari, a Community Partner of Sangam.

Me in my mosquito net. It is like camping in a tent every night!