PuneXpat

Yesterday I visited Nimgaon Bhogi, as I do normally on a Wednesday, but on this occasion I was given the opportunity to meet some of the mothers of the girls I teach to find out more about their way of life. First, we got shown around their cooperative dairy (set up 7 years ago by Ashta No Kai, the NGO I am working with). The women are helped to buy cows with interest free loans. Any surplus milk they get they are able to bring to the dairy room attached to the women's centre. Samples are taken to assess the milk's quality and they are paid accordingly ... Apparently buffalo milk has the highest quality but lowest yield, whereas the white desi (local) cows have lower quality milk in greater quantity. Many of the cows they have are hybrids with European milk cows. The milk is collected by a large dairy who process, homogenize and pasteurize the milk for sale. The co-operative dairy has really supplemented their incomes. The other main source of income for the women is farming....

Today I visited the rural community I volunteer with through the small NGO, Ashta No Kai.  As I was planning this week's lesson I really tried to focus on what I could impart to the girls that would be of value and in keeping with the mission of the charity: empowering young women.  They attend "life skills" classes provided by Ashta No Kai, and have English lessons in school.  They are already far more proficient in English than I expect I will ever be in Hindi, so while it is useful for them to practice conversing with a native speaker, I feel that there is more I can offer.  My fellow volunteer, Laura, and I with the girls from Standard 9 class. Based on my observations from previous lessons, I thought they could do with a short lesson that revisited converting infinitive verbs to simple past tense.  I designed a lesson in which we could practice the rules governing regular verbs and try to memorize the irregular ones.  Not particularly electrif...

For me, the 12 days of Christmas began yesterday. Twelve days of counting down until I leave India. I literally can't wait and I am yearning for it with every fibre of my being. Now, my darling husband is going to be reading this and internally cringeing.  He will be feeling a crushing guilt and will be trying, right about now, to formulate a plan to 'fix' things.  That's him, and one of the many reasons I love him.  However, what he perhaps doesn't fully appreciate is that my current, somewhat negative, frame of mind is perfectly normal.  In fact, it is even documented and has a name. And I have been there before. I am undoubtedly experiencing true culture shock right now. Being a teacher, I love a good visual aid, so I put together my own version of what this is like in a graph. Stage 1 - Preparation Getting our visas, packing up our home, parties & celebrations, saying goodbyes... this phase was a rollercoaster of emotions.  For...

The ever present choking haze has locals wearing scarves across their faces while out and about. [Photo credit: Anna Quinlan] To put what I was talking about into context, here is some data from a few places for comparison (data from the World Air Quality Index www.aqicn.org). I picked places we have lived over the years so you can see what I mean and the snapshots were taken today. It's no wonder that Delhi has declared a health crisis this week... and this is lower than I have seen it in the last few days! Pune is not looking good today. We are in southwest Pune, in a district called Hadapsar - marginally better but still not great. The view from my kitchen in the morning... you can see the smoky haze above the slum as they burn fires to keep warm.  It is winter now in India, and overnight temperatures of 18'C (65'F) are considered very chilly to the locals. Houston may be a big city, but it's air quality is ...

Only a few days after Dad & Claire returned to England, our next round of visitors arrived... this time, Clem's mum, sister and nieces!  Unfortunately, they were only visiting for a week and came with a list as long as your arm of things they wanted to see and do whilst in India.  Surprisingly we managed to squeeze most of what they wanted to do into the week ... a busy but fun-filled adventure!  As you will see from some of the pictures, we visited some of the same places as we did with Dad & Claire (the Aga Khan Palace, Kasba Peth, Tambat Ali, and the Lohagad fort) but we also tried some new places as well, such as the Shivaji Market.  Brilliantly, they all came with me and volunteered with the girls in the village school that I have been teaching at ... a busy, but very worthwhile day. We also had a great time celebrating together... first of all Danie's birthday, but also Halloween with costumes and Trick or Treating! Aga Khan Palace Clem and hi...