The Welcome Ceremony and MG Road

Hello all!

It's presently 7:40 in Pune, and relatively cool. actually, the perfect temperature for "mozzies" (a.k.a. Mosquitoes).

Today had been an interesting day! I have so many photos, i think I may add them as a slideshow rather than load them individually here.

But before I get to today, though, i have to go back to last night. It was amazing. we had our formal welcome ceremony to Sangam. It's a lovely ceremony where we light a lamp in friendship and go through the formal indian welcoming. First Aruna (the house manager... basically the mom-in-residence at Sangam) did the Aarti ceremony (a blessing for a good future) on the friendship lamp (which was donated to Sangam by the Sri Lankan guides when Sangam opened). She puts Turmeric powder and red kum kum powder the lamp, and sprinkles rice and flowers on it. She then circles the lamp with a Betal nut (clockwise and then counter clockwise) and the ghee lamp - this ensures life goes smoothly. Then a garland is placed around the top of the lamp. Then she does the same thing to a coconut that one of the male staff member cracks the coconut and leaves a piece and sugar at the base of the lamp. Then the same process is done to each of us (the powders as a bindi, rice on the forehead, circled with the lamp and the betel nut). Then a flower garland is placed around the neck and then Darshana welcomes us home. We are then each offered a piece of the coconut and some sugar to eat. We also get our Sangam pins (that you only get if you've stayed at Sangam). Then, in twos, we light wicks in the lamp and we all sing the world song. It was a great ceremony! Photos are coming soon, we couldn't take photos durin the ceremony, but there was a photographer taking them for us.

Anyways, back to today!

This morning I took my first rickshaw ride! with Lindsay and Aruna. We went to MG road (MG = Mahatma Gandhi) to go shopping and to check out the markets there. The food market (Shiuvaji Market) was built by the english a very long time ago so is made of these really old buildings. Afterwards, we parted ways from the group of women from the UK and went off with Jemma and Sarah to check out some of the rest of the shopping. I bought the material for 2 punjabi suits (haven't found the right sari material yet!) and we then brought the material we bought to the tailor's. Everything here is tailored. They measure EVERYTHING and you can choose exaclty how long you want the top, the sleeves, the pants, how low you want the front and the back to go. You can look through the books and choose from thousands of possibly necklines, and they'll add beading or strings or complimentary bits of fabric, all sorts of things!

We checked out some more of the area and I can't wait to get back to do some more shopping. Hopefully we'll get out there on Saturday.

After lunch, we went with Mina (and an independent guest - Roberta from the UK - because she was interested) to visit the sites we'll be working on! Mine is within walking distance, down Alandi road a bit. It's a small building on the construction site that the builder builds for the creche purposes while the other buildings are under construction. There's about 70 kids, in three different age groups - infants/small children, the 5-10-ish age and then the older group. Some of the older kids go to school, some don't if their parents don't want them to go, or if they aren't yet prepared enough to enter the mainstream education. Mobile creche gives them non-formal education, and they recently had one of their students go on to college for the first time! a great success!

My creche seems good, a small room with a little kitchen at the back. the teachers don't speak like, any english, but they're very nice. The kids showed us a dance they're practicing for the mobile creche camp that's coming up in a couple of weeks time (that we'll get to attend!)

I didn't take any pictures at the creche cause (a) the kids get REALLY excited and it's hard to stop and (b) it's too much of a disruption to the work they were doing before we arrived. but on't worry, I'm sure there will be many photos to come later on.

We also visited Muriels creche (where the kids taught us special handshakes and I played duck duck goose with them - i took a photo here, not of the creche, but of the recently built) and Lindsay's creche (where it was story time so we just observed).

It was definitely an experience to say the least. It's crazy to see the situations they're living in, but how happy they all are! And VERY well behaved, it was amazing!!

Well, it's getting late now (10:15 here) and I'm quite exhausted after all that shopping and going about so I'm going to head to bed! (for a "kip" = nap)

i'll see if I have the time to upload those photos before heading off to bed....