Weekly update number one

The first rain of Monsoon season arrived this afternoon. Didn’t realize how much I missed rain and the cold until the moment that it started. First it was just a few drops then it got heavier and heavier until it was a proper storm with thunder and lightning and wind and proper rain. Eszter, Katey and I all went out and danced in the rain, that is how excited we were. All thought that maybe the rain was a myth told to get us foreigners through each week.

Before the rain this week has been hot but good. I have been kept busy learning the ropes for the up coming events that are being run in Sangam. There are four of us Programme Volunteers, Manisha (Canada), Zainab (England), Gwen (Malaysia) and me. We are currently staying in a dorm room because our rooms are being painted. In a week we will be moving to our rooms, which are two per room so we have to decide who’s gonna share with whom. That is also one reason we are in the dorm, to give us time to get to know each other a bit. We are all getting along well, which is a good sign as we are going to be working together a lot in the coming months.

Yesterday we had our solo challenge around Pune, which was fun. No where near as scary as I expected it to be. We each were given a pack and in it was some money for the rickshaws (three wheeled taxi bike things. Very fun to ride in and hard to get to go where you want sometimes) and entry fees for places. There were also four envelops and in each was a question sheet we had to answer for that stop, the destination for the next stop and a cheat card for that stop (these were incase we couldn’t find anyone who could read English as they had the place we were looking for in Marathi.

My first stop was a temple. Lord Shiva’s temple although that is not the real name. The proper name is some huge long thing that I cannot pronounce let alone spell, it does begin with O though if that helps J Found some nice people who could answer my questions for me, some who answered in Marathi, even though I couldn’t understand I did notice that they were very happy that they were able to help me, so I smiled and thanked them. They did try after all.

My second stop was a copper workshop. This was the only time I needed to use my cheat card as no-one seemed to know what the English translation was, but instead of just saying so they would point me in a direction so I was walking round in circles for ages. When I used the cheat card this did not help all that much as still got pointed in a vague direction but at least all pointed the same vague way. Eventually found a sop keeper that knew where the place was. Once there I found a very nice guy who could read English to answer my questions. He had tidy handwriting to.

The third stop was the Osho International Meditation Centre. Very quiet and serene. And bizarre, having a big flash place just for meditating. It was in the rich part of Pune which was a interesting sight, especially as we live next to a slum here at Sangam. In the slum next to us there are 10,000 people, and the slum is the same size as Sangam (around 7 acres). Hard to comprehend, even though I have seen it.

Fourth stop was the Empress Gardens, there was no task at this stop as it was our picnic lunch stop. There the rest of the staff came and joined us.

Katey (Ireland) is the Assistant Programme Manager, and Eszter (Hungary) is the Programme Manager, these are the two that we will be working with the most. Eventually you may get to hear about the rest of the staff here. Sara (Wales) is also here but only for another week as she is just here to train us (she is a volunteer from the winter season last year).

We have a very nice swimming pool here, and I have already been for many swims. Yes I am finally using my togs. There are lights in it so we are able to swim after dark which is very good as it tends to be too sunny during the day and after tea we are very full. All of you who said that I would lose weight living in India have obviously never stayed at Sangam. The food is so good that it is hard to stop eating. I am already putting weight on and some of the tight fitting clothing that I brought is no longer comfy to wear at all.

It has been discovered that we do not speak ‘english’ in NZ. It turns out that we speak some other language all together. The amount of words that the other people here do not know is amazing, as is the amount that make them laugh. Top of the list at the moment would be jandels, togs and mufti. Also my supposed accent is apparently rather funny. they seem to not realize that it is them with the accent not me J