Monday 18 July 2011

The start of the Goodbyes and piss taking shops

Well, this Friday we said goodbye to our friends Mary and Sarah.  Mary had been there for about 10 months, so naturally it was an emotional fairwell for her.  It's was nice though, because you could see just how much of a positive impact she had on the entire school, staff and children alike.

Sarah was a great laugh too, you know you've clicked with someone when you can quite happily take the mickey out of them and you both laugh it off! haha Although sad to see her go, she'll be in Belfast in September for a few vodkas so we knew we would see her again :) 

The 2 of them were fantastic in helping Rachel and I settle in, and made the whole experience a lot less frightening than it initially seemed.  I guess now they are gone we'll just have to do the same for the newbies!

Well, as you may have read, we were meant to be on a houseboat this weekend.  As it turns out it was double booked so we had the weekend free.  On the Saturday we travelled to Ernakulum which is the city not far from here.  I've had better days.  The heavens had opened, it was pissing down and the city was crowded, noisy, dirty and put everyone in a bad mood.  

We went into one of the better known shops to get Rachel a Sairi  (?).  It was huge, 4 floors of colourful female clothing, silks, cottons; bright colours everywhere!!  Despite being in India, the novelty soon wore off, and it just became another girly shopping trip, bore.  Everywhere we went we had a male member of staff following us to help our every need, who was in turn followed by 4 female staff.  It was annoying though as at one point they had Rachel up on a cat walk like thing with at least 12 staff pulling and tugging at her trying on different silks costing more than $100.  I could see she was beginning to panic,  It was like being in a zoo!! They were taking the piss to be frank, and I ended up having to take the male member off staff aside and (in a pissed off Northern Irish way) told him we did not want to see one more member of staff for the rest of our visit or else.. etc etc etc 

It worked! :)  They ended up giving us a few extra souvenirs, nice bags and free cups of tea.  We had  gotten Rachel a nice Indian dress, shawl and trouser combo thing which actually looks very good; and soon after headed home. 

On Sunday we got a gooooooood long lie in which was much needed.  There is a new girl staying with us now for a month, who also happens to be in Raksha, Laura.  We gave her a brief tour yesterday of Fort Kochin and unsurprisingly got caught in a monsoon.  Joy.  We spent the remainder of the night relaxing.  It was counteracted by our  6:30 am start, ouch, to do some traditional India Yoga.  I must say, I never though yoga was much of a workout, in fact I didn't even think it required much work at all. Wow, I couldn't be more wrong.  It was bloody tough!  The teacher, Joseph, is probably made of plasticine, he can bend in ways which we probably aren't even meant to!! 


Everything at the school is going well.  Jessie, one of the tailoring teachers, is making great progress on the bedsheet shes making for us.  It is bright and colourful and all things Indian.  The autistic kids that I'm taking for excersise are also progressing, although there is one particular one who is really testing my patience.  Needless to say, I will take this challenge and by the time I leave he will finally be co operating; hopefully.   I must be doing something right though, I've gotten 2 more kids with Down's for some excersise - I must be the biggest hypocrite at the minute.  lol 

The ones in carpentry are doing really well, and the older ones are still working away at the chair for the kids with CP, it's coming on well.  

Well, I shall love you and leave you, time is running up,

Warren and Rachel

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