This morning I went to a kresh, which is an Indian daycare center. I was a bit nervous, they only had one motorcycle so Soibhan and I had to be driven spatially and I was dropped off first. The man just showed me in then left me there with 12 children and a teacher who didn’t speak a word of English. I had no idea what to do. A few of the children were shy but most of them crowded around me asking me questions and telling me stories in Tamil, excited by my presence. Not knowing what else to do I gave the all high fives which was a huge success, so much so that my hand was quite painful by the time Siobhan got there. We sat with them for a while playing games and singing the ABCs, really just entertained by each others company.
In the afternoon we went to ‘Gulbu Market’ the main market in Pondi. It was quite a trip. So many people packed into small areas selling everything. Fruits and vegetables were laid out on mats beneath a patchwork ceiling of blue tarps and old coffee bags, the sari shops were raised a foot or two from the ground to keep the dirt out. Many of the Indian women wear chains of white and orange flowers in their hair, and at the market you can watch the men and women making them, braiding the small flower stems between longer pieces of string.
We had a really lovely evening with some of the other interns. We have two girls staying with us for the week from Holland. They are teaching at a school in a rural part of India and all they had eaten for two months was rice, so we went out for pizza. After dinner we went to a little open-air bar called La Spase which seems to be the spot to hang out in the evenings, quite a funky atmosphere and good service and alcohol, a rarity for India. One of the nice things about Pondicherry is that everyone goes home by 10pm so when we left the restaurant the streets were dead. There were seven of us getting home so we took two rickshaws, and cheered them on as they race each other through the deserted streets back to the house, where we had a little late night tea party on the roof.
