The British have stuck up a flag in my country and decided to call it their own!!

Yes, that's right, I'm being held captive by Brits who hang me up by my toenails and force me to spin gold into hay.  Or wait - maybe it's the other way around.... maybe THAT'S why they keep telling me that my work is "mingin'" and making me do it over... Yes, right now they've let me out on a leash for an hour so I can communicate with the outside world. How kind of them.

Ok, so seriously - two weeks ago Monday the Institute was invaded by a pair of boys, one from Essex, the other a Liverpuddlian.  On Wednesday last a girl named Yolanda appeared (who I believe is in conspiracy with them - she's living in our room and probably spying on us).  Immediately upon her arrival she and the boys stopped speaking in normal English and went into "Super British mode" where Elisa and I had our heads on upside down for trying to decipher what they were saying.  

Luckily, we were able to elude them for a few days when we took a trip to Pune. (In case you're wondering where the other 3 Brits are, Jimmy was already there - as I stated in an earlier note he's from Northern Ireland - and while we were gone his sister and brother-in-law arrived for a visit, so when we got back there were six)  We left the day after Yolanda's arrival on the Indore-Pune sleeper bus. Pretty SWEET!  Sleeper buses have seats much like that on the Greyhound buses at home, except they're arranged into alcoves - 4 seaters on one side of the bus, two seaters on the other.  At night the seat-backs can be lowered to form a bed, and 2 passengers go up to the top bunk (or 1 if you're in the 2 seater, but we were not).  The bed that this forms is really rather comfortable, except that it had a built in lump for the "pillow" which was too high (for my tastes) to sleep on your back, and too low to sleep on your side.  So that was unfortunate.  For a while though we were worried that we weren't going to get to lie down at all because there were a girl and guy sitting across from us, and the guy went up but the girl didn't.  We were both pretty tired and ready to sleep and we kept shifting about and making "uncomfortable noises" hoping she'd catch our drift, but didn't want to say anything in case she was just uncomfortable sleeping next to him even though it looked like they knew each other.  Luckily though she went up after the bus stopped for a break around 10pm.  So we got a decent sleep after all.  I think the nicest thing about bus travel in India is that they don't have highways in the sense that we have them in the States, so you're driving through the countryside almost the whole way, plus you get great views because the buses aren't airconditioned so you can open the windows wide.  It was really very beautiful, especially with things getting greener now since the rains have come.

In Pune we stayed with a Baha'i family (whose relatives we know in Indore) and they were absolutely wonderful!  They had two young daughters - Eden who's 8 and Karen who's 4, and they both spoke very good english and were really cute.  Here's a taste of the Indian life for you - Elisa was asking Karen what animals she likes, and she wouldn't admit to liking any - when Elisa said, would you pet a dog? Karen replied with a laugh and a roll of the eyes  (as though certainly we MUST be kidding) "NO one pets dogs!!!"  You see, here, dogs are all strays and quite often rabid and unfortunately suffer much abuse from the general population - I suppose you could say they're almost the Indian equivalent of a raccoon or other pesky animal that gets into things and in the way. 

Pune itself is a nice city - cleaner and older than Indore, so the buildings were mostly that older Indian style which I really like.  We didn't do much there - Friday afternoon we walked around the neighborhood where we were staying and did some shopping, and Saturday was spent at a meeting that we had to attend in place of Janak for the National Open School - though not after an hour long rickshaw ride because we got lost!! Oh well. It was a nice break from Indore. 

As for this week, it has pretty much passed quick and uneventful, with plenty of Britishness involved.... And now I must be off! Goodnight!
  Much love,
          ME

Busy busy bumblebee

Ok, ok, so I didn't send an update last week..... i'm sorry sorry how can you ever forgive me?!!
koi bat nahi! (aka "whatever" in hindi) I've been VERY BUSY. Last week we went on a little trip to Jabhua, which is a village about 4 hours from Indore. In Jabhua there is a school run by a german organization which has been in the process of installing a solar kitchen over the past several months. For those of you who don't know, we use solar cookers most of the time at the institute (though not so much with the monsoons here - lack of sun is a problem). At any rate, Jimmy has been very involved in the field of solar cookers and is starting to manufacture them himself now. So he has been helping this project in Jabhua the whole time, and now a week ago the inauguration was scheduled. So we went to Jabhua to help set up for the inauguration and run it and what not. Now in India, things tend to happen rather slowly..... in other words, when we arrived in Jabhua just over 24 hours before the inauguration was scheduled, we discovered that as yet the building consisted of brick walls partially covered in cement with no floor or ceiling! So we had a lot of work cut out for us.... First we had to attach the clockwork to each of the 5 solar dishes (so that they rotate along with the sun) and then clean things up and what not. There was one point where Elisa and I had to move a lot of dirt or "maity" in Hindi. In India such things as shovels, wheelbarrows etc don't really exist except for a few people who have access to the west (aka our institute). So instead we did it the Indian way - pulling dirt into a large dish and carrying it on our head! it was fun, except the ring kep falling off my head before I could get the dish up, and my scalp got a little sunburnt so it started to hurt a bit. At any rate, lets just say we only got three hours of sleep that night but the inauguration went quite well.
This past week has been full of visitors. First one of the germans came (the germans were volunteers in Jabhua who had basically been in charge of the solar project). On Wednesday a whole group of British Student Action India volunteers came to see the institute - it was a little disorienting being around so many white people speaking fluent english! Elisa and I were joking about how we should tell them to get out of our country.... those brits think they can just stick up a flag anywhere and rule us! Well we'll show them!! Actually, they were all quite nice and two guys from their group are going to be working with Jimmy starting tomorrow, so it will be nice to have other english speaking people our age around. Plus there's a new volunteer coming from England on Friday!
Well I'd better be going. I have to warn you though that i won't be writing for another two weeks - Next weekend we're going to Pune for a meeting and touring around and stuff. Unfortunately I've heard that it's not the most exciting city. whatever.
Oh, and I would like to point out to you all that you can leave commentson my site! At the end of each message there's a thing that says the number of comments posted, and if you click that you should be able to write stuff.
Much love,
Me