Happy Onam!

Namaste!

Before I tell you a bit about my week, I must tell you the great news: The world became a better place on Friday, October 12th at 10:45 am. My niece and soon to be goddaughter, Paulina, has opened her eyes and met her beautiful family who has been anxiously awaiting her arrival for all of nine months. I cannot wait to meet her =). And I cannot wait to hug Mauricio, Veronica and Mauricio Andres congratulating them for their beautiful little present =).

On this side of the world, after my very exciting weekend in Northern India, I expected my week at Shanti-Bhavan to be less than amusing. I must say though the kids have enough energy and imagination to keep my mind completely occupied. This week, I taught some of the kids how play kickball, my personal favorite P.E. game. We learned about line graphs and bar graphs in math, we read and wrote tall tales, we dissected a hibiscus flower, and most importantly, in dance class :) we moved to some SALSA!

The school also celebrated the Onam festival, which is a very large and important harvest festival in the Indian state of Kerala. The most impressive part of the Onam celebration is the grand feast called Onasadya. It’s supposed to be a nine course meal served on banana leaves in which people sit on a mat laid on the floor to have the meal. Although we didn’t sit on the floor and we didn’t have the nine courses, we did eat many different concoctions typical of Kerala and specific to this festival. Some things included, papaya chutney with these crispy wheat-tortilla looking things; another plate was off course rice but this time with a yogurt, onion, and lime sauce that was excellent. At the morning assembly they explained that according to a popular legend, the festival is celebrated to welcome King Mahabali, whose spirit is said to visit Kerala at the time of Onam.

This weekend we volunteers decided to enjoy some civilization and came to Bangalore. I was blessed with good luck…instead of spending the money I don’t have in a budget hotel, I am staying with my new friend Suparna, at her aunt’s place. She is of Indian background and has relatives all over India =) I don’t know how these things happen to me, Karma? The lady we are staying with is really nice and she has two kids, a 10 year old and a 13 year old. Normally, I’d say: “Oh GREAT kids!” But lets just say that at this point, Saturday means, “Quick, get away from any human being under the age 20, QUICKLY!” I’m sure that’s just my tired-self talking. By Sunday night I’ll be excited to get back to Shanti-Bhavan, I miss those kids after a couple days of rest.

To get here we took the Balinganapalli bus to Hosur and then another bus to Bangalore. YAY, local buses! Again, a bumpy, yet spellbinding experience, and this time the only hazardous part was when we had to jump off the bus while it was still moving at about 20 km per hour, yeah… Although the schedule reads the bus comes at any time between 3:45 and 4:15, they at least TRY to keep on schedule by not slamming the breaks at the bus stop, haha.

In Bangalore, we hope to buy some necessities, eat some animals (that sounds pretty awful, but indeed true), and drink a nice cold beer, which I hope doesn’t knock me out considering that the last time I had a drop of alcohol was a month and a half ago.