I see a mansard roof through the trees

(A snowy Holland on my flight out)

3 things I've done since last week:

1. I have been reunited with my luggage. After a week of phoning BA, the Triveni office (Triveni is the umbrella term for CAS and Community Interactions here) sorted out the delivery of it. I was whisked off into a jeep and driven down the hill to the bus station in Paud, where an Indian guy (who was in no apparent way associated with BA) came around the corner lugging my bag wrapped in two layers of plastic. Euphoric about the arrival of my luggage, I set about unpacking immediatly, and it became apparent that my cupboard was too small. A long clean-up and reorganisation on Saturday later, and I had managed to fit everything in. Since then, I have been enjoying using my very own cooking implements (utilised for a girlie dinner that very night) and not having to deal with BA customer services anymore (I lost my luggage twice in a row now).

2. I saw a Kathakali performance on Thursday. This traditional dance involves several Indian men, who make their faces up in incredible colours (all made with natural dyes) to resemble masks. They also pull themselves into massive, brightly-coloured, almost Victorian (but livelier) costumes, and proceed to 'dance' using hand and leg actions (all of which symbolise something).

(a short break and some attempted mosquito murder later)

The performance the group did for us on campus was an altered version of Julius Caesar. Initially it was interesting to watch them communicate/dance in their absurd, expressive costumes (they even dye their eye whites red for performances) and to listen to the odd, tribal-esque music (which was live and had haunting, chanting vocals), but after two hours (it ended up lasting three) I felt I had seen enough. I think if I had understood the symbolisms each movement conveyed, it may have been more fascinating, but a two hour watch just about filled my culture quota for that day.

3. Rosie's Adventurous Life Change: One of my second years (Year 13s) decided to live on the edge/go on adventures more frequently. Having volunteered to participate, a whole bunch of us instigated a bonfire in one of the wadas on Friday night, complete with literal stokbrood (bread dough on a stick that one bakes on the fire) and live guitar music. Our most recent 'adventure' was a picnic on Sunday, which consisted of three of us + a quiche (I finally made one here!) + salad and parathas (Indian savoury pancakes) + grapes + sunshine + ants. Lovely.

ps. Having forgotten to upload a stack of pictures from my camera until now (going as far back as November), I'll be posting them up intermittedly with anecdotes on the context of them. Some of them are pretty cultural, so keep checking :)

with lips and teeth to ask how my day went, boots and fists to pound on the pavement

(bikes, our garden, the first day back)

Having spent a lovely 21 days in the land of bikes, snow and familiar faces (although, strictly speaking, I spent 10 of these 21 days in a country of baguettes, snow and family faces), I am now back and in the process of re-tanning over here in India.

After a disastrous journey due to ‘severe weather conditions’ (according to BA’s phone line, which also told me ‘we are experiencing a large mass of phone calls from angry luggage-less customers much like yourself, therefore we shall keep you on hold for another half an hour’ or something to that effect) Lenn and I arrived at MUWCI a lay-over in London and a day richer. Upon arrival, everyone was throwing themselves at one another, excitedly gabbling on about how much fun they had parting/shopping/eating/travelling/sleeping. It was really nice to see them all again, although admittedly the prospect of the drab rooms (although mine is cheered up with sky blue paint and pretty pictures) and hard beds slightly dampened the spirit.

School started on Monday, and it was business as usual. Sure, people looked refreshed, neater and more awake after their haircuts, shopping sprees and sleep, but by about Wednesday it was all same old, same old. Having spent the last term getting to know everyone and everything, I feel (at least up to now) to be slightly more in control of things (sleep/school/timewise). It is a shame that my luggage (not the metaphorical, but the actual physical sort) had a longer delay in London than I, but rumour has it that it will be arriving today, which would be brilliant.

For the rest, I’m still alive, still enjoying the sun (although I’m worried about the prospects of the temperatures hitting the forties and fifties), marvelling at the monkeys (there was one by the cafeteria today) and attempting to teach children from the neighbouring villages about concave and convex mirrors.

x

Got no reason for coming to me and the rain running down.

(Burning Man community, Nevada, which looks amazing.)

Happy new year.
Only a couple more days before I'm off again back to India now.
I've been back (and notably blog-silent, even for my doings) for around three weeks now, one of which I spent in a little house in the snowy countryside of France.
Everyone at ISH has been back since Tuesday, and it was very (very very very) nice to see them all again (:
For the rest, I've been enjoying the cold, meat (sad but true. Indians don't really do meat), space and familiarity of it all. The trip over was a bit of a culmination of disasters (sickness, missing papers, cancelled flights, lost luggage) for the original Dutch/Norwegian crowd who flew back together, but it was all sorted and hopefully this Friday's flight will be easier.
It is going to be strange returning to the tiny insular community that is MUWCI, and it probably won't be simple. Then again, it will be nice to see everyone over at that end of the world too, and I'll be back by the summer (:

x

Hoe huppelt zijn paardje het dek op en neer

by Laura Callaghan, seems to capture what I've been up to (minus the bear, plus some mosquitoes)

Nog maar negen daagjes!
Het wordt steeds vreemder om hier te zijn, omdat ik in minder dan twee weken thuis zal zijn.
Hier wordt het nu superdruk, met veel toetsen/assignments/dinners/festivities, dus hopelijk zullen jullie mijn lack of emails begrijpen. Aan het begin werd mij verteld dat MUWCI uit drie 's'en bestond ; slapen, studeren en socialisen. Daarvan lukt het nooit om meer dan twee te doen, waardoor de meesten met een ernstig slaapgebrek rondlopen (je herkent het aan de kleine, rode oogjes, grumpy expression, slumped shoulders en rommelige kleding).

This weekend was MUWCIfest, as well as Christmas Cookie baking, Sinterklaas and the continuous Secret Santa thing we've got going on campus. As one of only four active Dutch members of the community, it meant that we had quite a few poems to write and traditions to explain. It worked out quite well, with the National Committee sending us massive sacks of pepernoten, taai taai, schuimpjes, banketstaven and chocolade letters (amazing. really.) which just about fed the 200+ community, of which most left out their shoes on Sunday night (Sinterklaas shifted his celebration to Sunday here, due to MUWCIfest and the fact that he had a nine hour flight from Holland to India to get).
We also got the Caf(eteria) to cook a 'Dutch' dinner, which was interesting, considering that India doesn't really have much in the way of bacon, or meat at all really. They made mashed potato and carrot with pork sauce (the Indian variation on hutspot) as well as pancakes with watery applemousse and chocolate sauce, pasta (we couldn't think of much Dutch food they'd be able to make), brown bread and veg biriyani (not quite so Dutch but alright). Everyone seemed to like it, though, which is good (:
With a small group of people we also did surprises, which actually worked out quite well. That afternoon, I'd also taught a couple of people how to make speculaas, so although there was no:
snow
cold
very few Dutch
real Pieten
etc
there was some sense of Sinterklaas.
Acting as Pieten, we ran around very early on Monday morning, filling shoes (or not, in the case of one greedy house that had left all their shoes out with a rather rude note informing us to 'FILL EM UP') and picking up nice notes to Sinterklaas (or Sinta Claus, or Sintaklast).
Anyhows, I've got another lesson to go to, so hopefully I'll get round to more updates about Exeat and campus soon!
x

little darling, it feels like years since it's been here

Found this somewhere, thought it was rather nice (:

For the past week, I've been sleeping/eating/reading/working/socialising.
It's stopped raining now, and the pool is looking rather yellow, and in just about a month I'll be back in still raining but rather pool-less (at least, free pool atop a mountain style) Holland (:

I was thinking I should perhaps run a couple of bits on general stuff like the food, weather, people and any other things that are now part of my routine but may seem novel to anyone outside of MUWCI/India.
Any suggestions?

Today was a fairly run-of-the-mill day, with school (which starts at 07:30), football (in which we ran up and down Internet Hill and through the Biodiversity Reserve, I felt a bit like I was in the jungle, which was fun) and college meeting (in which we all sit around and discuss important issues every week).

For the rest, I'm hoping it will dry but not warm up pretty soon, and that mosquitoes will become extinct before I return here in the spring. I should get some sleep.
Night!

worried about our little world falling apart

Vandaag heb ik besloten om alles even anders te doen.

Ik zit hier in mijn kamer gember koekjes te eten en naar het geluid van de (of is het nou het?) regen te luisteren.

Naast me zit m'n kamergenootje, die uit Kerala in India komt. Ze zit te studeren.
Voor de verandering is ons kamer niet met schreeuwerige koreans gevuld, die meestal de linkerhoek in beslag nemen. Het is nu even lekker rustig.

I've been back from Project Week since Monday evening.
Thus I've unpacked, done my laundry, rebonded and caught up with everyone here and started school again today.

It is most likely a nice idea to describe Project Week and what I got up to, so here goes:

Project Week started last Friday, when most of the groups left campus to catch trains and buses to get to all sorts of places. Our group only left on Saturday morning, giving us a little time to worry about an empty campus (it was rather lonely) and pack our stuff.

The train took twenty-one hours to get to Bangalore, which is in the south, in the state of Karnataka. As they speak mainly Karnada there, I wasn't going to get much chance to practice my Hindi, but I took along my Dutch-Hindi book, just in case.
We travelled in Second Class, which means something else in India than in Europe, but I'm not quite sure what. We were in the non-AC section, which was not as bad as one might imagine. There were two square windows for every group of six bunks, with glass sheets and metal bars to pull down if you wanted to. Across the narrow aisle were two more bunks, and every couple of minutes some man with a very nasal voice would come down this aisle, shouting out the name of whtever he was selling (biscuits/chrisps/dinner/chai/scarves) in an irksome singson-ey tone.

I finally started recording thing in a diary (not sure how long that will last) so here are some extracts that sum up my week:

Saturday 31/10/09

Earlier today the scenery from the train was incredible. There were dry auburn hills and green fields, small clusters of earthern houses and a real sense of calmth. There is an elderly couple opposite usm who were initially sitting cross-legged and reading the newspaper. She was wearing a lilac sari, which looked stunning against the blue window frame and seat and the red metal bars on the window. Monday 02/11/09 Wij zaten op een soort dakterra met een uitzicht op een heleboel pastel-kleurige gebouwen. Het was niet te warm omdat we onder een sort pakoda zateb, met chai en koekjes. De man [die ons een presentatie over APSA aan het geven was] zag er een beetje Sesame-Straat-achtig uit, met een very-oversized pale lilac shirt die in zijn hoogopgetrokken-netjes-gestreken broek zat gepropt...Hij vertelde ons over APSA, en hoe ze eerst altijd de 'baseline' vinden (alle basisinformatie, zoals hoe ver de school is, hoe het sanitair is, of ze water hebben, hoe veel enz) waarna ze een 'actionplan' ontwikkelen samen met de community-in-question... [about the vocational training centre]

There was a printing area, with five Indian guys standing around the equipment. In the adjoining room, seperated only by a partial wall on the right, was six sewing machines. These were white, plastic, modern. To the left was a large grey table with beige cotton that three women were cutting into strips...Straight down the hall was a small classroom, with half of it consisting of desks and girls, the other half of old, foot-controlled sewing machines. They were 3 or 5 months into their year of training, and were already making simple children's frocks.

Up a flight of stairs around the outside of the building was the elctronics department, with cute handdrawn images of the tools and their names on the walls. A handful of boys were sitting in a row behind a transparent wall, fiddling with bits of hardware. Another flight up was the computer training section. 30 pupils sat in plastic chirs, copying the text about CDs from the powerpoint slide being beamed up.

Tuesday : Dream School teaching (APSA's school for the children they rescue from child labour and the like)

Wednesday : ChildLine, viewing presentations given on this to government schools (a children's help line APSA is associated with)
Also: meeting with a government official to talk/learn about the health care and education systems in Karnataka
And: staying over at APSA's Girls' Hostel, where girls from APSA can stay for a while until they find jobs and their feet in the world

Thursday : Constituency work (where we viewed a children's meeting in a migratory slum, about what they thought needed improvement)
And: Fabindia presentation (Fabindia is a chain of stores where 60% of the moeny goes to the artisan, thus allowing traditional methods of craft to be preserved. This wasn't really part of our Project Week)

Friday : Inchara (means birdsong, the art and culture side of APSA)
Monday 09/11/09 In ongeveer vier uur komen we in Pune aan. Ik ben net op de middelste bunkk wakker geworden met een gezwollen oog na rond twaalf uren slaap in Rosie's slaapzak (die ze per ongeluk heeft achtergelaten toen ze donderdag avond met andere tweedjaars verder reisde), met als kussen Lenn en Victor's tailored, expensive suits, omdat Lenn dacht dat er twee creepy guys zijn spullen wouden stelen. We hebben net egg biriyani [boiled eggs, curry sauce and rice with bits in] en lassi [sweet yoghurt drink] binnengewerkt als lunch, en zitting nu allemaal rustig te lezen. Gelukkig is het niet zo warm buiten.

So that was pretty much that. It was interesting to learn about how the NGO functioned, and to try out several of their projects.

Some cute, surprising things I'll leave you with:
I found a whole bunch of Suske en Wiske's in a small secondhand bookshop in Bangalore. It really made my day.
I found HEMA stuff in a basement shop in Pune.
I showered with only cold water and ate with my hands all week.
I got my package today!

x

one of these days

A little nostalgia trip (already): this picture is our first time in Pune, I believe.
From l-r, Mette, Sophie, Gesa (:

Now the swine flu panic has subsided a little, and I'm just about halfway through my first term.
Since Bombay, I've mainly stayed on campus and celebrated a lot of birthdays.

Just a brief, overdue summary of Bombay, it was insane to imagine that the city had more inhabitants, 28 million allegedly, than the whole of the lovely flat country I came from.
We went to see the Gateway of India, the Taj hotel, the shopping district and drove past the largest slum in India that weekend. It was definitely an experience.

Sometimes it hits me here that I'm at a UWC, in India, really. We get compulsory Global Affairs, where we discuss all sorts of issues, we have This is India sessions and we go down for overnights in the small villages. It is amazing.
This week was Environment Week, so there were a couple of activities running. The most pleasant was the lunch in the Butterfly Garden, by the Amphitheatre, today. The Garden is situated in the Biodiversity Reserve, that I plan on visiting much more often now that the rains have stopped. We all sat around on the soft but itchy green grassy slope, eating off plates made of leaves and listening to the choir and people playing plastic pipes and glass bottles.

This weekend I've got Film Studies, which is really interesting but means I'll be staying on campus most of this weekend. Next week is Project Week, so I'll be off to Bangalore to work with APSA, but first I'll need to learn jumpstyle, the waltz (I think...) and some Karnataka language.

For the time being, I have learnt some Hindi;
Namaste!
Ap kaise hai?
Me thik hu (:
(Hey, how are you? I'm good!)

and we're currently learning the script, which is rather hard as the alphabet consists of sounds like "t, tte, the, je, jhe, jher, cher, char" etc. Maybe I'll have grasped it by December!