Greetings friends, family, and whomever else that is reading this blog!
This afternoon the Shiva group has arrived to Udaipur and was promptly treated to a filling and delicious Thali plate lunch by the wonderful Rishi Ji (I may or may not have fallen into a food coma while creating this post). We just completed our village home stays and teaching English to and all girls’ school. I would say that both went pretty smoothly. Teaching English was fun even though some of us hit rough patches with grabbing the students’ attention. Otherwise it was all good! After an hour of class we all joined together outside to play shuttle cock, Frisbee, and listen to James and Mike serenade us with their various musical instruments. Blanca and Travon were definitely the stars of the show. Blanca had the first grade girls eating out of the palm of her hand and I could hear squeals of delight coming from the classroom that Travon was teaching in. All in all the entire group was loved not only by the students but also the staff. To cap off the three days of English classes there was an epic dance party last night. Everyone was dancing, sweating, and having a blast even though the room was practically a sauna (I just want to put it out there that Preston and Haley M. had some killer dance moves).
The village home stays were very interesting. I will say that it was challenging to communicate with our families seeing as they spoke no English and we speak very little Hindi. Lana had a hard time trying to explaining her fire dancing staff to our host family, and I have to say that it was pretty funny. It was really awesome to get a perspective on the living situations of families in India in a village compared to the hustle and bustle of our city home stays in Jaipur. We slept under the stars and rose early to help our families with their daily chores before going to teach later in the morning.
This morning Sam, Preston, and I joined Avy, James, and Mike to awake early to scale the neighboring mountain. It was very steep but ultimately rewarding with the beautiful view from the top. It was just a little taste of our soon-approaching Himalayan trek. Tomorrow we are headed to Mcleod Ganj for our last home stays with Tibetan families!
I now am off to join the group for a night of presentations, life stories, and Indian food babies!
Peace out girl scouts-
Haley (dubs) Weinstein
