More of India

We are still in India!!!

All is going well here. We have eaten lots of really nice food and played some VERY competitive Uno. We have also done some actual work. On Friday we started out by visiting some of the YMCA community centres in Egmore, Tondiarapet and Sathamangar. Sathamangar is really tiny but the most used and loved of the three, we crowded in and immediately people flocked around peering in at the windows and standing in the courtyard. Three men in their late sixties and seventies were very excited to tell us that they had been involved at the centre since they were seven years old. We attracted an even bigger crowd when James and Emily took on the local champions at carom. Needless to say they didn’t do all that well despite the pros setting up shots for them, all good fun though.

After all that we went to the boys’ town for the first time (Kottivakkum). It was a bit of a trek in mad traffic but worth it to see all of the 150 boys lined up in height order according top which cottage they are in, all dressed smartly in their t-shirts bought by Chennai Challenge last year. We leapt straight into the fun with a bit of improve as we had only been given 12 chairs for 13 of us, much silliness. Then we had fun trying to count how many of us we were. It showed we worked really well as a team that we all knew instinctively what to do. We snag a few silly songs, call and response are funniest as the boys don’t speak English so ‘Oh Princess Pat’ turns into ‘ohinnessat’. We tried sleeping lions which turned into bundling the better players and then descended into general thumb war and patty cake madness. I think we’re going to get quite skilled at having two thumb wars at the same time with our hands crossed!

Ah no, running out of time! Ok so Sat we went back to the boys and had a tour of the sight after losing twice (at least) our body weight in sweat playing stuck in the mud, volleyball and the hokey kokey (brilliant, 150 small boys charging full speed into and on top of Emily and Isaac leading in the middle, much laughter when the crowd cleared and there was Emily lying on top of one of them!)

Yesterday was more restful, we did a lot of planning for the trip to Yellegri and then visited the government museum, very big and lots of very dead things in jars! Today however Rob, Isaac, James, Amy, Emily and I got up at the ridiculous time of five o’clock to go to a sports training programme run by Oasis (yay). Imagine me getting up in the early hours of the morning (half eleven last night for the UK) to go play football! I think I may be ill! But it was good fun, we all joined in for the exhausting workout, again much sweat lost, and the Rob and James played a match with them , unfortunately I couldn’t as James had borrowed my trainers , shame.

And now we are doing yet more planning and preparation as we need to get it all done by Saturday when we go to Bangalore for a mini break!

Much love
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