Indian folkdancing

Right above my hostfamily's apartment, there lives a gujerati family. The daughter is called Karishma, and she is a dancer... Last monday she took me along, her dancetroop (indian folkdancers) had the grand rehearsal before the big show tuesday night. They were great! Everyone were so nice, and I ws invited to come and see the big show the next day.



I went along with Karishmas parents and watched the show... Once again it was great! at least the dancing part was (I must admit that a guy speaking for hours in Gujerathi-language, isn't exactly my cup of tea)

Yesterday I went to the YMCA boys home (for streetchildren) and vocational training center... Augustinho Fernandes, a rotarian from my club were so nice to show us the place. I had been talking about it with Janina and Trevor, two other inbounds, and they were interested and came along!



These children (all boys in the age of 4-18 yrs) were so excited, at the first place, a boy danced for us, and we got a big group photo with all 25 boys. In the vocational training center, which houses 65 boys, the smallest ones started putting oil in their hair and coming it to look nice for our photos...




It was really great seeing what work the YMCA does for these children, and I think that all three of us were really keen on coming back to do some voluntary work...

Inbound orientation

Soo... Just a short post ... I went to the inbound orientation last sunday, so great to meet everybody! got to use my french a bit :) and made some friends: a couple of us (Severin and Caspar from Germany and Janina from New HApshire, USA) met up yesterday and went for lunch!

Yesterday I changed hostfamily for 8-10 days, now I live with Arun, Jyoti and Prajwal Chaudhari :) and the day before yesterday we made Chicken Biryani, I think thats my favourite indian dish so far!!! Today I went with Jyoti (hostmom) to the medical center where she works as a dentist. A nurse called Nilima showed me around, and I took some photos.

Next sunday Im having a couple of inbounds over for lunch at my host fam's place...

In a couple of hours we'll be going to my hostdad's sisters place, because her son has his birthday... I gotta get ready!


-Maria

News

So a short update:
Yesterday I took the train to Bandra to meet up with some in-, out- and rebounds. It was really nice to finally meet someone besides Christian and Neha... We went walking on Carter road and shot a bunch of pics with the indian and the danish flag (I dont have them, but once theyre on facebook they will somehow find their way to the blog :)) Then we went to mcDonalds for lunch (just needed somethin non-veg and non-indian)...

Then when I got home I had to go to the rotary meeting. My 3rd host mom came and told me that she'll pick me up monday around noon, and then Ill live with them for 8-10 days because thay cannot host me at the end of the year. A rotarian came over and invited me to come and see the YMCA-boyshome and vocational training - So ill probably go there in the upcoming week, I think it will be really interesting to see the work that is done for the street children...

Today is the inbound orientation, it will be great to meet all the inbounds (all14) in Mumbai !

-Maria

one 10th of my stay is now completed!

Now Im back again, we passed the first month, my host sis (Janhavi) has left India and gone to Denmark and I have gotten through my one-month-crisis (although; to call is a crisis might be to overstate it just a tiny bit)... I knew when coming here, that there would be more rules than I was used to in Denmark. But when I was not allowed to travel alone for 7 stations by train to meet with some other inbounds, outbounds and rebounds. I felt as though I was being treated like a kid. Luckily we sorted things out. My host mom took me to the station during peak hours to show me what it could be like. Seeing that, I were able to see that there might be some sense to their restrictions, and we made a deal that I could go if it was out of peak hours.


2nd class in the Ladies compartment during peak hours (7pm)

And yesterday I actually went, by train, alone, all the way to churchgate (a one hour journey) and then to my college to pick up another sigature needed for the FRRO registration (have lost all respect for anything that has anything to do with the bureaucracy that going on there)... And I met up with Stuti, one of Janhavis friends from the college. We went for ice cream, and she followed me to the station where i took the train to Goregaon and a rickshaw home.

Im busy!

Hi everybody whos reading my blog... Its been a while since my last post, but im just going to make a quick update.
Wednesday i was at lunch with my third host family, the Chaudari family, and rushed home for my kathak-lesson (fell very big and clumpsy, and im afraid Ill hit the fan with my hands, if I stretch them over my head!)... Thursday was pretty nice, the sun was shining (!finally!) Janhavi and I went to see eclipse (I have senn it in DK, but she really wanted to go). In the evening we went to dinner at my second host family, the Inamdars. They have a huge apartment, pretty new building and very modern decorated. Really liked talking to their daughter and niece(but she's going back to US in a week).

Today we went to the southside pretty early, and started out by going to the college to get some more papars for the FRRO registration (bureaucrazy !) ... Then we went to grab some lunch at Subway with Stuti, Alisha and Charmi(some of Janhavi's college friends)... After that Thea, a rebound who had gone to France, picked us up, we went for a coffee, and talked for a while :) Thats to be done again!

All for now
Maria

Rotary family-meeting

Last night we went to me second rotary meeting. It was "friendshipday" (didn't know what that was until yesterday, and the indians claimed it was a european thing!). And family-night at rotary!

All the rotarians had brought their children. The ladies had a sari-draping before the meeting (a pro sari-lady came, and showed all the different regional ways to drape a sari), Amazing experience. And all of the women had an opinion about how many times you had to fold the end, or if it was 1 or 1,5 times that you had to take the sari around the waist in a southindian wedding draping... The room was buzzing and it only got better when the waiter brought a big plate of pakoras!

then the time for the actual meeting occurred, and Because of family-day, it was filled with Games and people were singing and dancing... Amazing! It sure was different from what I have seen at the meetings in my home club...



Picture from the sari-draping

<3 Maria