Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Today we left our hotel in Mumbai. We took a boat and traveled to the coastal port of Ali bag. We gave people on the boat temporary tattoos and made new friends. We then took a public bus that was very crowded. The roads were crowded too and the bus wove in between cars and motorcycles. We moved on from the bus to a rickshaw (a three wheeled automobile). The rickshaw took us to the village Chinchoti where we are staying for the next three days. The rickshaw dropped us off in front of a school; all the children were friendly and happy to see us. We exchanged many "hellos" and "namaskars." The village held a ceremony for us and we walked through the village with music and drums. We came to a house where we had a leadership meeting and ate lunch. After lunch we dropped our bags off at our host family's house and met them. We all met up again and went to the work site where we helped build steps and a wall for the lake where they wash clothes. We were very tired and then came back to our host families and took our first bucket showers and drank some chai tea.  Now we are sitting on a porch mingling with children in the community.  It is challenging to communicate with them because they speak very little English. We are putting a lot of effort into using Marathi, the language of Chinchoti. We are heading in for dinner now and tomorrow we wake up very early to continue our work on the washing steps on the edge of the lake. 

Photo of students outside the school taken by Shay.

-Shay & Morgan


1 comments:

Jessica said...

Sounds amazing. It's freezing in London and I wish I was with you. Good luck with the language and the bricks!

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