A last Hurrah

2hr and 15min... that is the time untill i leave Palampur and the Bindraban camp which has has been my semi spectacular home for the last 4 weeks! I must say that i do have some mixed feelings about leaving. First of all it is gonna be nice to move on towards Agra and Jaipur and then the warm beaches of southern thailand, and secondly i soon get to see my parents and hopefully get a bag of swedish candy along with a warm 20th birthday! However, it is sad in the way that it has been so much fun up here with the other volunteers and doing everything that we have done with the kids and experienced everything we have experienced, i mean it has been a while since i laughed so hard i couldnt breath and got horrible stomach aches(rest assure it was due to laughing and not the food)! It will be a sad thing leaving in that sense that i have cherished everything that has happened in the last few weeks... i might also add that its a bit depressing also due to the fact that im going back to Delhi, which i must say has some work to do in order to charm me. Because right now i must say it isnt exactly my favourite town with the heavy crowd and chaos along with the dense pollution in the air giving you horrid headaches!
So how in this waking of my last hurrah do i finish this off... I just say the adventure isnt over yet!
All the best to all of you!
P.S will probably not have the same consistency of blogging this coming week with all the traveling and being without constant access to the internet! But do not worry, you will hear from me again ; )!

Some Pictures from Trekking

All taken by Annie and borrowed by me from her facebook

My 500 or so pictures taken so far will have to wait. : (

Party hardy

Today we had our final fiesta with the orphans and i must say... those cookies we bought only survived 2 minutes in the open before the kids stormed them like pigeons storming droped food! Quite remarkable actually as they do get their fair share of rice everday, though rice has never really been the thing to satisfy a stormy appetite. It was fun and i had a lot of good laughs and it is definetly gonna be weird now to try and start the whole touristy routine again as i had just gotten used to spending my mornings and afternoons at school/ orphanage and the rest of my time here at Bindraban camp or in the little mountain town of Palampur. Luckily however i still have my morning session tomorow at school as we say goodbye to those kids, which have finally adapted and stated to become good students and now we're leaving... but rest assure, they will not forget us nor we them as we have bought enough candy to make sure we go out with a bang. and also so that they understand that we wont be coming back...something im afraid they wouldnt have understood without some sort of grand jesture!
Now though i have much that i would love to show you in the form of pictures, which i now can because annie uploaded hers on facebook... im afraid you'll have to wait till tommorow as i can barely keep my eyes open writing this cause im so tired and cause she hasnt finished uploading yet! So till then!
Cheers

The ends always come at some point

After a month up here working as a volunteer in Palampur, the end has finally come! Tommorrow will be our last day at the orphanage and our second to last day at the school. Therefore we have organized a small fiesta for the orphanage kids by buying a lot of candies and cookies as well as decided to bring ipod with speakers for a grand goodbye so that they really understand that we will not be back on monday : (! Loren and i have also decided to buy our kids at the school some sweets for our last day on friday as we say goodbye to them too.
Along with saying goodbye to all the kids, the other volunteers will also be leaving like airplanes at an airport, as we say goodbye to Pauline from Holland, who leaves tomorrow because her flight is early sunday and cant risk missing it by leaving with us on saturday night. So with all of these goodbyes coming one after another you can really sense now that this will all come to a fast and bittersweet end, something which is sad but necessary as we all have new places and new adventures to meet ahead! I am however in spite of this closing end very greatful for everything i have done up here and everything i have experienced and all i can do now is look forward to what lies ahead, which i am certain of will not be the least disappointing!
Stay rockin'

the closing of a chapter only brings the beginning of a new

It is now only 4 days left till i along with every other volunteer here at our camp will leave and head back to delhi for the continuing of another adventure or a simple one way ticket home and the daily life of our native country. For me this all opens the book for a new adventure as i along with mikaela and emma will head for Agra and the Taj Mahal and then Jaipur and its famous markets along with elephant rides up amber fort, something i am really excited about!
Though this is a closing end to my experience up here in palampur and Himachal Pradesh, it would not surprise me if i came back here in the future as this would certainly be a place i would love to show others! But untill that day comes, i am going to enjoy these last days the most that i can as our time to say goodbye to the kids at school and the orphanage is only coming closer and closer!
Keep on rockin'

Sports day

Today was a National Holiday in India and therefore there was no school in the morning! This is why Emma and Mikaela organized a sports day in which we, the volunteers, along with the IDEX staff would face off in a three way sports competition involving Football, Volleyball, and Cricket against the older kids at the orphanage!
The day got off to a good start as we won the football match against the orphans and therefore going 1-0 up in the overall competition! Our celebration would however end up being very short as we got our asses handed to us in both volleyball and cricket, the two most popular sports in India! So after a very intense but relaxingly fun day we suffered defeat with the score finally settling down at 2-1 to the orphans in all competitions; and in the spirit of fun competition they ended up coming back with us to the camp for some chai before heading back to the orphanage!Though the day was about having fun and just enjoying the moment, it also had me pondering away on other things, such as the fact that these kids, that have lost their whole families can still have their feet on the ground and look so stable and carefree! I mean most of the kids have been abandoned by there parents before they could remember and others had been left by their parents because they couldnt affored to keep them, while others lost their parants through fatal accidents or other events! One of them lost both his parents in a car accident when he was only in first grade! And it just makes you really happy to see how they have been able to find a new home within this orphanage and at the same time created their own family of sisters and brothers that are in the same situation! It is incouraging to see that people that have lost almost everything after having had barely anything have found life within this place and have still been able to keep their goals of getting an education and making something out of themselves! I guess what they say must be true, "what doesnt kill you only makes you stronger"!

Blog-off

Sleepless night in the mountains

As you all very well know, i left on friday for a weekends treking in the himalayan mountains and to say the least, it has been one hell of an experience for better or for worse!
It all started on friday when we headed for McLeod(dalai lama town), where we stayed the night after a seriously good dinner at the old favourite Carpe Diem restaurant. After dinner we headed for bed as we had an early start to the trek at 8.00 o' clock. In the morning though we were still feeling the strains from a week of work, we started to head up towards the mountain trek path which started on the other side of town. After about 2 hours uphill walk we stoped for breakfast and a chance to rest, where we noticed that a dog had been on our tail and was now following us on our trek(something we would all regrett it did!
After a continuous 5 hour walk with steep inclines and breathtaking edges we finally arrived at the place right beneath the snow line of the mountain where we would eat lunch, dinner and spend the night before our 'sunrise break walk to the snowline itself'... now though the place where we would spend the night lay high above the valley with an amazing view, i was really looking forward to our final walk up to the snowline the next morning... something i was sadly not granted in the end as the conditions where to hazardous for us to make the last 4 kilometer marsh! So after that let down and the confirmation that we would head straight down to McLeod in the morning i thought to myself what else was gonna go wrong?
Well i'd be damned if i didnt tell you... the whole NIGHT went wrong as i was both challanged with the mission of staying warm with 6 layers of clothes on my upper body and 3 on my lower plus two pairs of socks, along with trying to fall asleep under constant howling and scratching on the door by the three were irritating dogs which all ended up staying up on the mountain in the hopes that they would get food as well as shelter from us... something we couldnt really provide with barely enough space for ourselves and the fear of getting biten in the night as they looked very hungry! So with no sleep and constant hysteria of dangerous dogs and other animals residing in the mountaneous environment such as bears, snow tigers among others. we were in for a long night! We couldnt even go to the bathroom as there was none in the hut and we were all to scared to go out in the dark... and i gotta tell you, after 3 cups of chai and all the water everyone drank, we all needed to go to the bathroom!
Now i know this sounds like a helish weekend for most, in the end i must say i really appreciated it though i am completely dead physically right now. I mean i climbed and treked in the himalayas and saw both the sunset as well as the sunrise with the most amazing landscape stretching right in front of my eyes from high above! and i sleped in a hut ; )!
So for all of you out there, you can always find something good in a situation that seems to be as bad as it can possibly be!
cheerio and hope your weekend was amazing and hopefully a bit warmer

Another weekend another adventure!

It is friday afternoon and 1 hour and 20 minutes till we head for McLeod and the trek up the mountain! I am a bit sceptical of this journey as i have a cold and went to the doctor today to get medicines... I have however decided to go on the trek anyway as i feel that if you are in the himalayas you should do some form of trek up a mountain! cause how many people can say that they have done that? I also did bring a lot of clothing and thermal stuff to keep me warm! So no one has to worry... and as my indian number works again, ill let you know if you do!
It is at this point that i must leave you to get the last minute stuff ready and still have some time to relax before the drive to Mcleod!
All the best till i write to you again!

Wild an crazy vampire kids

Todays schooling was one of the more out of hand and place kind of lessons as our kidz were anything but responsive to our teaching! At this paste i do feel my hopes of getting them to read the clock properly dimm out by the minute, as Vijay(the wonderkid) is the only one that seems to be getting anything. Now im not saying that they arent learning anything as they still do progress in math(the only thing in which one does not have to speak, in order for them to understand) , but with telling the time and different essential everyday words they do still have problems. And today it was nearly impossible as the kidz had gotten plastic vampire teeth from someone and were to busy playing with them to even consider listening to anything we said. The teeth also had the affect of making them brave enough to go against anything we told them to do as they simply said NO to everything! Boy did we dig deep trying to be reasonable and stay calm. We did still however realize that we had one option and that was telling them that if the didnt do as we say we would tell the principle... and boy did that make them quiet!
If you didnt know it already, it is heavily known that in some places they do still hit the kids if they are disobedient and im afraid this is one of those places so barely a word came out of them after we said that... something which was nice at the time but deeply disturbing in the larger sense as i am no supporter of hiting another person wether it be a kid or someone my age, i always stand by the fact that it is wrong and that there are better ways to deal with problems as simple as a matter of discipline, after all they are only kids!

All the best

Weekends decision

It has now been decided that i will spend this weekend going back to McLeod on friday and then spend saturday and sunday hiking up one of the himalayan mountains, all the way to its snowline where i will sleep the night with all of the other volunteers for an early morning watching the sunrise and then hiking down the mountain on sunday! I must admitt i am really excited besides the fact that i have heard that it is shit cold during the night and that some of the previous volunteers wore as many as 5-7 layerd of clothes to stay warm during the night... what a legendary adventure ; )!
On the more sad note, i stayed at the camp today during the morning when the others went to teach at the school because ive got a serious case of cold and an itchy throat! I did however feel a bit better in the afternoon so i did participate in the cooking class where we made a coconut dessert which was really nice and then i also joined the others to go to the orphanage where i did my best to play with the kids even though i had a soaring headache! now the dinner bell has rung and it is time to eat!
Hope your enjoying my blog so far and thanks for all the comments! nice to know people are reading!

History in the making

Today on the 20th of january, 2009, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, something i think is AWESOME; But must admitt to as being a bit comical as it means that when i look back at this historic day, i will always think of how i was watching it not from the USA or from Sweden, but from India and up in the Himalayas out of all places!
I must also say that it is always quite interesting to take a look at ones present from a distance... I mean who would have actually thought that i would be in the Himalayas doing volunteer work 3 or 6 or 10 years ago! I mean i would have never thought so and yet here i sit watching the Inauguration of Barack Obama on BBC in a volunteer camp up in the mountains! It is amazing when you think of it, how thinks work out and how for some reason it might not have felt right before but for some reason it now feels like anything different would not have been wrong. What is to be known however is the question of wether it is something that will be regretted or appreciatied at a later stage in ones own history... as will be seen with this presidency which has so much potential for good, as my experience traveling the world!

all the best regards

Back In Business

Being back in palampur and being monday can nowadays only mean one thing... back to work! Seeing as we've been chilling and enjoying the weekend we thought we'd get straight to business and therefore started off todays class with an english test on the 5 words we practised all of last week; namely skirt, t-shirt, trousers, tie, and socks... Now this might seem very easy for most but id imagine it pretty hard for an indian third grader and so it was, as only vijay was the one to get all right! after him most still got at least two to three right, so it wasnt a horrible outcome even though we had hoped for a better one as we had gotten candy for anyone who got all right! Though the result meant that we got a lot of candy ourself, the sheer disappointment of so few getting all right weighed heavier on my councienss than the candy i would later get the chance to enjoy. Being that, we have now decided for a retest on wensday in order to give everyone a second chance at a price : )!
Being monday also meant another thing, we start a new workshop. Last week we speant an hour everyday learning Hindi, this week we spend an hour in the morning doing freakin' yoga and and hour in the afternoon learning how to cook various Indian dishes... Something i really enjoy as the Indian food we get here is amazing and now i get to lern from our cook that makes the amazing food; )!
The afternoon at the orphanage was very chilled and i ended up playing football with the kids most of the time, not exactly helping improve my health as a have gotten a bad cold and an itchy throat!
For the last segment of this piece of writting i must ask you for help. For my last weekend up here before i go back to delhi and then on for some travelling to agra and jaipur, i must really take the chance to do something and i have three options. I can go with luke, hanna, and Pauline and hang out in Mcleod again, i can pay 3000 rupees and go with the other realgap volunteers for a treck up to the snow pass with a night to spend in Mcleod and one up on the mountain, or i can go whitewater rafting with Emma and Mikaela(self-planned trip!)... so my question to you, what do i do?

All the best, Jonathan

A weekend excurision to Dharamsalla and Mcleod Ganj

Just a couple of hours ago i put my foot back on the ground in Palampur after a 1 and a half hour bus ride from Dharamsalla. I have just spent my weekend in Mcleod Ganj, a little hillside town which lays just between the snowy mountain tops and the valley town of Dharamsalla. Now you may not have heard of the town itself but there is little doubt that you have heard of his holliness the 14th Dalai Lama which lives there in exile with his government after having had to flee his own country of Tibet when China invaded it in 1951... if im not mistaken.
Now though i did not get to chance to see the Dalai Lama himself i did get to see a really amazing town with an incredible view of the mountain and the valley that spread out beneath it. I also had the most thrilling experience in a car as we took a taxi up and down the mountain on the very small roads with very steep cliffs just off the edge of the road! Most importantly however i got a closer experience to the Buddhist religion which is practised by the monks that live up there! It was also quite amazing to see those red robes that they wear in person ; )! Since im already on the note of how amazing this little town is i must also say that i had the best chicken Tika Masala ever at this restaurant called Carpe Diem, where i as well as everyone else i was with had the chance to meet the british gov. volunteers that are also living in Palampur and that we have heard so much about but actually never met! Quite the Roudy group i must say!
While i was up there i also bought my first souveneir, which ended up being Buddhist prayer beads. I also bought a little something for my sister as well as for my mom(b-day present ; )!)... Dont worry dad ive got you covered!
The only thing which could have been better was the weather... i mean it was ok on saturaday but since early this morning its been just pouring down by the loads. Not making Sundays any better in my book, seeing as they always in some way seem quite dull... nut maybe thats just because monday is the following day ; )!

Now i hope that your weekend has been good and interesting and that hopefully something exciting happened as it did in mine!

All the best from a continuing adventure!

All in all a goodie of a day

we have now reached the second friday of my stay at camp bindraban just outside the little himachal town known as palampur where i am currently staying with the other volunteers... and so far, so good! I really felt at ease as i walked around on the crowded little market streets of palampur and it felt really nice not having to have your guard up all the time! I as well Loren were also happily surprised as we walked into JOYS (the only thing similar to a cafe) and found out that they served french fries, something which was really nice to have as we have only had rice for our food so far. Therefore to no ones surprise we ordered in a whole plate of french fries... which only ended up lasting for about 3 minutes before we had eaten everything, making even our waiter and everyone around us wonder if we had eaten anything at all in the last week!
School on the other hand was really hard today as none of the kids listen, especially Umesh, the most annoying little kid ever! Now this dull view on our time at the school was probably affected by the fact that there was pooring rain and shit cold. Luckily the other Indian teachers had this little fire going, so we moved there during the part of the day when we would usually play with the kids to get some warmth!
After school and lunch, alpna and manu (the prodram executive directors) took us for a visit to the tea factory where they make tea which was really nice to see as kangra valley is world renowned for their tea and i even ended up buying some green tea which i'll offload on my mom and dad as i meet them in thailand in 3 weeks! ; )
Now as sad as it is im going for a trip to mcleod where the dalai lama is over the weekend so you will not hear from me until sunday or maybe even monday, but im sure you have other things to do than read this blogg ; ) just thought id give you a heads up so that you dont think ive stoped writing! Now i have to go and join the others, and then pack my backpack for the weekend and get a quick shower tonight in order to avoid the line in the morning and the sometimes unfortunate luck of not getting any hot water as everyone else already used it all!

Hope your all rockin and living it up!
all the best from high above in the mountains of India

Masala Chai and I

Masala chai must be one of the greatest hot forms of liquids known to mankind!
I was not supposed to write about it today, but as it happens we just got served our evening cup of masala chai and i decided to pay some tribute to it! Now moving on to the real business, for those who dont know my Indian phone number has for some reason been cancelled and doesnt work and therefore i have made it my mission for tommorrow to give the sim-card sellers a piece of my mind or get my money back... either way, hell will freeze over!
Now on the path of todays topics and event i must admitt that it has been a really good day! Teaching at the school was great as we werent jumped on by the kids during playtime and everyone was really co-operative during the math/ english lesson... they even wanted to do more math than Loren and i had planned to do with them!
Then later at the orphanage I just ended up playing some football with the kids and teaching them how to juggle, making my job very easy! So in retrospekt, i must say i have really enjoyed myself today and i feel a lot better with the whole situation up here in te mountains as i start to get a daily routine going!
Though i enjoy telling you about all of those savy stories of today, i have a more important thing to say! Im going to Mcleod this weekend! and for those who have not heard about this place, it is the place where the dalai lama is currently living with his tibetan exile government! So ill get to see some awesome Buddhist temples and see some of the joys of the tibetan culture while still being in India, and who knows, maybe ill get to see his holiness the Dalai Lama himself even though he's probably busy with some religious ceremonies or other things! So as one would imagine im kind of stoked about his little weekend excursion! And i promise i will put up pictures of this place along with all the other places ive seen so far as soon as i get access to a computer with internet and without viruses which can ruin my memory card!

All the best of regards

Exotic pizza goes wrong

The most fun thing that must have happened today must have been our joyous dinner which consisted of some form of quiche, an exotic attempt to a pizza that would enlighten our western senses, and garlic bread! Now however much they tried, in the end the result was not what i would generally refer to as a pizza, though whatever it was it was good!
The general ingredience was of course the very thick bread botton followed by spicy ketchup and a bunch of vegetables and melted cheese... and though it was no pizza to the normal standard, it was enough to send everyone grabbing for more and more as it came in! In the end we even had to tell our cook to stop sending it in and save it for tommorrow as everyone was getting fairly stuffed, something most doubted he would do as he barely understands a word one says!
I must also say that it was quite nice even though i had higher expectations of the pizza, to get a break from rice and something with it that almost always involved curry! So as you might think it has been quite a good day considering the meal. And as i now sit here with a coke and chips/ crisps in my hand to finish off the day with some more western products, all the hard work and energy consuming time at both school as well as the orphanage doesnt matter! All i can do now is just enjoy the moment and deal with tommorrows hassels as they come along during the day!

So till tommorrow, goodnight and i wish you all the best!

P.S wish me all the luck you can because these kids have as much energy as any kid could ever possess, something one both loves and at times could do without ; )!

The 9 o'clockers

It is tuesday and its 22.08 and everyone is lying down infront of the Tv watching tonights 9 o'clocker which ended up being pulp fiction on the star movies channel rather than laura croft 'tomb raider' on HBO! It has come to be a small tradition to watch a 9 o'clock movie every day on either star movies or HBO, something which is very relaxing as todays Volleyball playing at the orphanage drained most of my energy!
Though the orphanage was pretty exhausting, today in general has been pretty chill as there was no school in the morning leaving us with only two activities which were hindi class and the orphanage. The food today was also really good but i am looking forward to tommorrows dish of pizza and apple pay... boy ive missed western food after having had only Indian food for the last week and a half! Tommorrow there will also be a full day with school and orphanage so im gonna go and hit the old plywood bed and get some shut-eye before tommorrows extravaganza!
Till then cheerio

p.s what are you doing? (write in commentary) ; )

Heated mondays and work

It is currently monday and the clock has just struck 22.26 and i am really exhausted after my first day with a full routin... a routin i will follow for the next three weeks! I woke up and was fairly nervous before my debut as an english and maths teacher for the third grade class at Ram Chawk School (Ram Chawk=gods crossing), but as i finally got to the school after having dropped off the other volunteers at their respektiv schools, that feeling passed and i started off the whole shabang with the hello song and then had the kids make nametags to get things going. At the same time Mikaela and Emma did the same thing with their second grade class only to follow that up with the alphabet while i did some maths (add. sub. and multi.)! then the new volunteers that had just arrived dropped bye to see what things were like only to live as soon as they had gotten there! After math i checked to see how far they could count/ write in numbers and saw that most knew all the way up to 50, making it my mission to teach them 50-100. After this we did some english words and then had them colour in their namesigns just in time for lunch! We played some games afterwards and then left inorder to make it back in time for our own little fiesta with yummy Indian food!
In the afternoon i found out that loren (UK dude) would help me with my class making me feel a little bit safer as i had some help! Around four o'clock everyone decided to come with to the orphanage to play with the kids for 2 hours, something we will do everyday as our afternoon activity... Quite fun actually, beats teaching ; )!
In the evening we had dinner around 7, followed by a power outage. So some of us decided to go to the "chocolate shop" as we call it to get some sweets and soda and the watch a movie, which ended up being jaws III when the power came back on! Now it is time to sleep and have a chance to sleep in as the schools are out tommorrow as people celebrate the coming of spring by flying kites and doing other things!

Cheerio and goodnight

The End of the weekEND!

I sit here at the end of the weekend and the clock has just struck 7.40 pm and i have just finished my first full week in India and Asia! It has been a tumultuous week in my life as there have been a lot of ups and downs in both the surrounding and in myself with a constant relapse of homesickness lurking behind the corners at the start of this trip. I must however say that the feeling of homeickness have been coming less and less as i have become more and more settled into the surrounding that i have put myself in, something which makes me feel more stable!
So so far i must say that i have been through a lot and that means that i must be doing something which also means that im experiencing something! Therefore i must conclude that i have gotten off to a good but rocky start on this legendary adventure which will carry me around the planet we call earth ; )!

Now for those that are wondering what i have done during the weekend, here is a list:
Saturday:
Woke up and ate breakfast
watched some TV, read digital fortress
Walked into Palampur and got an indian Sim card and ate at Joys(the only semi similar thing to a cafe)
Walked back, sat in the sun and read then had dinner and watched seabiscuit!
Sunday:
Woke up later and had breakfast
Read then showered
Greeted the 6 new volunteers that came(4 UK girls and 1 German, 1 UK boy)
Went into town and strolled around for Moms birthday present
Called and greeted mom on her 51st birthday! LOVE YOU MOM ; )
came back and chilled, played some cards
Had dinner and am now typing this as i wait to watch the Man U vs. Chelsea game... Never miss a game ; )

So There you have it fellow readers that have stuck with me this far! Its been exciting but there is more to come so stay tuned!
All the best

A picture in words

As i spoke to my mom today on the phone after having gotten an Indian sim-card due to the high rate of calling from my Swedish one, I was given an idea! She told me that due to the fact that i cannot show you what this place looks like since i cannot upload my pictures on these computers due to the risk of getting a virus on the memory card, she suggested that i should describe it in words instead! Therefore i have taken it upon myself to describe this place as best i can!
Think of yourself going uphill on a fairly beaten asfalt road, and as you get to the point where the road evens out, you have this white clay wall to your left with a black gate that opens up to a driveway that runs about 20m. As you walk down this driveway you have a rectangular field of grass running to your left with the wall on one side and a porch on the other side where there are three doors, the closest leading into the boys room the middle to the common room where there are two computers, boardgames, a tv, and a bunch of matresess spread out across the floor to lie upon. The last remaining door leads to the girls room. The bedrooms consist of two bunk beds in each with wardrobes and a doors leading into a bathroom(a girls on their side and a boys on the boys side of the common room, which separates the bedrooms). Walking through the middle door from the porch and going straight through past the matresess and the computers you get to the dinning table which is outside of the house on the other side. It is on this side where you have a panorama view of the mountains in the morning, a view which is incredible in all different ways and can cannot be satisfied with words!
Now, though this is only a faint description of what is the place that we live in and all its characteristics and personality, it shall truly be realized as soon as i find a way to show you via pictures! till then i hope this is satisfying enough! think of it as an encore and now your waiting for the maincourse!
Cheerio for now and till next time, stay safe!
p.s #= +9857314771

Schooling or being Schooled

It has come to my attention after the first day of school that though i am supposed to teach them math and english it kind of became a learning session for me as they were teaching me the hindu names of different things, making the students become the teachers! I was however able to get some control back as we started to play memory and other different fun games that incorporated the use of pictures and the english words pertaining to each of those pictures! So after about an hour it felt as if i had gotten something done atleast! After this it was lunch for them as ours was an hour away back at the camp. As they finished eating we were given the chance of playing some games and some badmington with them before we left back to camp and i was under that time assured that they were going to teach me how to fly kites.... a notion that made my day!
Since then my day has been chilled out to the max as we had the whole afternoon off to relax and do things on our own, leaving me time to read Dan Browns digital forest that seriously has me hooked! in the afternoon hanna from sweden and luke from the UK, two other volunteers, showed up one day early after their excursion in the region adding the number of volunteers to five and finally making it Two DUDES as ive only been with the girls since i got here! Soon there will be dinner so cheerio and hope your living it up wherever you are!

P.S im a serious tea fan or tea freak as isak puts it and i have found my holy grail, MASALA CHAI

First day in a sequence of days to come

Warm or Cold, Warm or Cold... the weather and temperature in air as well as water has not been a consistent one since having arrived! when i woke up this morning after having slept in a freezing room under 2 huge blankets making me hotter than tabasco i decided that it might be time to take a nice shower! though as i gladly made my way towards the shower/ bathroom i find the warm and soothing feeling of a heated shower fade away as my fingers reach nothing but bitter coldness in the water that was gonna make my morning a little bit better. The house and outside temp. also showed me no sign of welcoming as the coldness of the night still lay heavily upon my surrounding.
So as i moved around to the sound of SWEDISH MUSIC coming from the speakers linked to emmas ipod my mood starts improve and ive soon forgotten about the cold morning and disappointing non-taken shower! soon after 8 the cook arrives and makes us tea and french toast for breakfast parallel to the rising sun striking the mountains around us making me quite speechless to the incredible scenary around us!
After breakfast we had a meeting with our volunteer project operators, who explained the sort of teaching we would do at the school everymorning along with giving us ideas of how to do it and material that might help us! and by now the temp. had risin to about 20 c from a -5 c during the night, so we decided to walk the 30 min walk into town and check the market along with the food store for some snacks but as always, it was proved to have been expired, something we have gotten used to see since arriving! But who cares when you have a cook that makes the best Indian food ever! In the afternoon we chilled until we had to leave for the orphanage where we have our afternoon duties to teach sports and play with the homeless children as well as the mentally challenged kids that have been taken into the camp. An orphanage where the kids go to school during the day after having woken up at 4.45 to work if old enough (all money made given to the orphanage) or clean and do laundry and then in the afternoon play! They are incredible kids and so is the man running it.
Now im gonna go watch some tv and tommorrow i will go to work for my first time at the school.

All my best regards to everyone

p.s i finally got to take my warm shower before dinner : )

Some pictures maybe

Here is a link to mikaela and emmas travel diary and some of the pictures they have uploaded on emmas comp.

http://www.resdagboken.se/Default.aspx?documentId=3&userId=236873&section=myimagegalleries&journeyId=320623

From Delhi to himachal and the himalayas

Yesterday we finally had our well awaited tour of Delhi and it really opened my eyes to this city of many dimensions. It has been ruled by many different cultures and therefore our tour started by the old temples made by the old islamic, Persian, and persian jewish rulers! the sights and monuments were extraordinary with details of history imprined on every stone! we also went to this park of monuments where diffrerent rulers had built their mark to show their precense and glory over their conquered land (The sites were magnificent and you will see them when i get a chance to upload the pictures, as the computers at our camps can infect our memory cards with viruses, making it hard to want to risk losing them in the process of uploading). Our next stop was also an inspirational one as we went to ghandis house where he spend the last years of his life before passing! After this we continued towards the presidential palace and government buildings along with the India gate, a place which showed a huge footprint of the British Empire who ruled india for over 200 yrs before its independence in 1947. After departuring from that, we moved on to a hindu temple where we had to wear these orange pieces of cloths on our heads along with going in barefood... it was amazing and incredibly beautiful inside and it really gave me a first hand impresion of the hindu culture, though it still has a lot more to offer! leaving the temple we headed for this place to drink hearbal tea and see how the indian carpet industry produced the highquality carpets that they do.... and let me tell you this it takes forever, a silk carpet can take up to 5 years to make, REDICULOUS! Now this was the last stop on our guided sightseeing of delhi and it shows you that even though there are milions of poor people in delhi, it is a city with its fair shares of secretes!
After Dinner we headed for the trainstation where we had to wait for an extra 2 and a half hours for a train... a time period which was really uncomfortable and unpleasant as beggars and Indian men gathered in a circle around us.... and they were just standing there brathing down our necks like nothing was wrong....where is the respect for privacy? eventually the train came and we ran on to it jumping into our sleeping beds! After an 8 hour train ride followed by a 4 hour drive through the mountains we arrived at our destination: Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, India! where we were showd our place of residence, the Idex youth volunteer campsite(there are 3 camp sites here). sadly we are currently alone as three other volunteers are on an excursion through the region for the week and arrive on saturday and the other 6 are on orientation in jaipur and agra doing some culture exploring before arriving on sunday! We were however shown what our job days would look like and the look like this:
-Breakfast and tea
-teaching at a school(6-8 yr olds)
-lunch
-then we go to an orphanage where we play and run activites before ending the day and going home for a session of yoga and free time

So now i am where i will be for the next 3 a weeks before going back to Delhi! And i will keep you updated as we have internet!

All the best from the boy with the himalayas... only outside the window!

Arrived and fairly settled

This is my first time writing to you from a continent and country far away from home and so far it hasnt been an easy road! The transition from a place thats so familiar and homelike to a culture and country far from anything ordinary to me has been hard. I am a person that have never been to or experienced a place that holds everything different from where i am from and you can imagine i was in for quite a shock! When going from the airport i was driven by this hotel worker whose name was popo and spoke no words of english and drove like a maniac in a country full of driving maniac, as our driver told us today when driving on the wrong side of the road with vehicles coming straight at us, "when driving in India, there are no rules, no problems". So you can definetly say it has been quite trip so far, with longing for something familiar!
Now 3 days into the trip i have been getting increasingly adapted to New Delhi's way of living and i must say i feel a lot better now that mikaela and emma, the two people im doing this India trip with have arrived... i have been longing for companionship!
The other new thing which have been hard to get a grasp of is seeing this huge ammount of poverty, something i have only had the chance to read about but never seen in person and it really is something that gets you thinking about how appreciative you are to your own standard of living, and i think it is that that really made me miss home the first dfay when i was alone here before mikaela and emma came. Today i had my fair share of beggars grabing a hold of me looking for something which i could not give without being stormed by people and that is hard as you feel for these people! now i have to stop typing as i have to be a bit social with emma and mikaela and emma, tommorrow is orientation and sightseeing of delhi with all the other volunteers and then we head with a night train to Paralumpur, himachal pradesh! so till next time give a thought to how good your life is and appreciate it or work hard to get to a point where you can!

Cheerio

foto-stop

In the last few days I have done most of the final preparations for the trip, such as:

Buy a compass incase i get lost
Packed my bag plus the extra one with summer clothes that mom will bring to thailand
fixed a first aid kit (moms work....really)
gotten increasingly nervous
broken my camera... BAD BAD and very BAD

and out of all these things i dont think it get much worse than having a broken camera A DAY before embarking on a trip of epic proportion. So to say the least i am in a bit of a bind! Now adding the increasing nervosity with the feeling of panic and all around well being due to last nights celebrations, i must say that i have had better days! So as one might think, i have some problem solving to do and not a lot of time to do it in!
Till next time, ciao