Down South

I have been here in Kerala - South of India for two weeks now and my experiences have been totally different to those of the North. I am staying in a village on the outskirts of Trivandrum (capital) , and appear to be the only tourist in this village - which has allowed me to almost completely submerge myself into the Indian life. The food down south is much more bland which seems to agree with my stomach - so I have only been eating Indian food - with Masal Dosa being my favourite dishes. Now being in India and trying to live like the Indians, I retired my cutlery in the North, and have only been using my right hand (as left is for cleaning - I won't go into it) which took some getting used to but now I feel I can do it as good as any other Indian.

With regards to transport - the roads out here are questionable, and I have taken advantage of every transportation Kerala has to offer, venturing on the back of motorbikes a couple of times - little worrying especially without a helmet. Now let me talk about the main reason I am here - to teach in a school. The building and grounds of the school are very different to back home- it is like stepping back 100 years in time. The children are amazing and overly excited with everything I teach them - and last night after over a week of learning it - my class (Standard 5) performed on their annual day - LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN (thought it was appropriate). Last night,I also had to make a speach in their language which was extremely difficult as there are so many different sounds to the words - I am sure I made a few mistakes here and there.

A few observations I have made whilst being down here are, firstly people never drink directly from the bottle or cup but alway keeps it at least an inch from their mouth, that there are set questions everyone asks me (mother's name, father's name, brothers or sisters? and what's your father, mother and brothers' job). Finally, being on my own, many Indian people approach me, wanting to talk to me - asking above questions etc - and most of them are adamant on giving me their phone number and for me to call them - so I have been collecting piles of paper with phone numbers - even someone from Congress wanted me to call them - well thats life down here!