Diwali/ Kollam

As they say in India, “Ai yo yo”... I have been meaning to update my blog for the past two weeks but every time I’m finally ready to sit down and write something, I remember that I have some laundry that needs to be done, or lesson planning to do, but mainly I just end up flexing in front of the mirror for hours on end... 

A few more random facts or things that I have noticed in the past couple weeks:

1. One of my students has 72 letters in his name. Fortunately, his nickname is "XL".

2. Everyone here is obsessed  with 6 packs and they think all white people have one. They asked me if I had one and I replied with "Nah, just one big pack", to which one of the students said, "Oh like my Dad, a family pack!". hahaha

3. We had a surprise birthday for Dani that was a lot of fun and ended with a cake fight.

4. Diwali, the "festival of lights", is insane. You essentially buy a new outfit, eat special sweets and blow up firecrackers ALL DAY. It felt like we were in a war zone, the crackers started going off at 5am and didn't end until about the same time the next day. We had an insane amount of firecrackers and there were some pretty huge ones, it was pretty scary lighting them because some of the "bombs" would blow up really quickly and you could literally feel the explosion even from 20 feet away. Later on at night we went and set off a bunch of huge ones from the top of the roof. (See video)

5. The kids here call me "NJV Boss".

6. I played a real cricket match with some older kids and had a blast. It's a pretty fun game and definitely more action packed that it appears. I still prefer most other games though.

7. Despite being here for a month now, I still cannot understand the Tamil accent. I'm also not picking up any words in Tamil :(

8. The caste system is prevalent in southern India and really comes up in day-to-day situations between Tamilians. It's really quite disgusting and sad.

9. The weather has cooled down significantly and generally hovers between 25-30 degrees now but we are getting significantly more rain.

10. The 10th and 12th graders here have statewide exams later on in the year. In order to prepare them for these exams, Nobel school's curriculum consists of an examination period of 50 days!!! It's pretty mind blowing to be honest.

I just returned from a weekend trip to Kollam,  a small town on the backwaters of Southern India. The trip was pretty short but extremely exhausting. Dani and I set out from Aruppukottai on Friday at 8am to meet up with the rest of the volunteers at the train station in Madurai. We ended up making really good time and there was a bit of a misunderstanding on our part and we were  there earlier than we should have been by an hour and a half or so. We reached Kollam after a few bus rides and a 3.5 hour train ride, for a total of 13.5 hours of travel time. We all ate at a pretty good restaurant and I finally got to have some real(ish) pizza for the first time in over a month! We arrived at the hotel at 10:30pm and after checking in, about 8 of us started passing the football around and it turned into an impromptu soccer match. Most of the volunteers are from Europe so it was a pretty intense but really fun game. It lasted so much longer than expected and we didn't finish until well past midnight. It was one of the highlights of the trip for sure.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then made our way to a house boat that we rented out for the day. We ended up cruising around the river for about 6 hours and it was an awesome way to get to know everyone, listen to some music and hang out while seeing a different side of India. We had some some surprisingly good food on board and a few guys went swimming. The water was pretty rancid so most of chose to just watch. We got back just as it started sprinkling and by the time we got into the hotel it was PISSING rain outside, so we got really lucky with our timing. We headed to a real mall later on but, unfortunately, almost all of the stores were closed because I guess they are still celebrating Diwali, even though it was Saturday and the holiday fell on a Wednesday... Oh well, that's India! We ended up having one of the most random nights back at the hotel that I really don't fully know how to describe. It was a pretty hilarious night but it ended with Yujiro (think that's his name), the happiest/liveliest person I've met to date, breaking his tooth while doing the worm. It was pretty surreal because he was incredibly nonchalant about it and just put it in his wallet and really didn't make a big deal out of it at all.

We had to get up really early the next day and after some trouble with our ride- the boat that was supposed to pick us up to bring us to the bus stop just decided not to pick us up- we made the long trek back.

I almost forgot, on our way to Kollam we were waiting for our bus for about an hour at the bus station in a pretty dingy town. A few of the guys were passing the football around and I was talking to Ian and Rose, two of the coordinators at Projects Abroad, and a few local women approached us with a tupperware container full of a green powder and a couple of stamps. She wanted to give me a temporary tattoo of some sort and I was kind of laughing while politely declining and then she just stamped my arm. It was pretty funny but then it started to sting like hell, in fact it hurt for the next 5-6 hours or so. I obviously forced to pay her but I received a nice big wet kiss on the hand so well worth it! I then told her I thought we could round her up some more business and within a few minutes we got all of the other guys tatt'ed up! Eventually a crowd of at least 60 people formed around us and began to photograph the foreigners getting tattoos. It was quite a hilarious experience.

That's it for now, I'll leave you with some pictures from the weekend.

Noah

One of the two boxes of firecrackers that our host family bought for Diwali.

Bruno getting a tatty.

One of our lovely tattoo artists!

Backwaters of Kollam.

Our Boat.

Lunch!

Jaya's uncle and I at his farm for Diwali.

Jaya's relatives at the farm.