My first blog

Hey! First off, the story of the title. Some of you might get it, some of you won't. I used to live in India, and my parents were heavily involved with working with the poor and people infected with HIV/AIDS and such, hence the "Potter vs. India" and there's been a 9 year gap from that until now, hence the "round II."

Anyway, I've almost been here for two weeks now, and it's intense. There are three of us on the team. Me, Laurie, and Tom. I'm the youngest, which is a weird change, but it's not bad. Laurie's about 3 months older than me, and Tom is 4 years older. Me and Tom got here at 4 in the morning on tuesday the 6th of October. We went straight to the YWCA to sleep for a night (and half a day) and then we met Laurie at the airport and all went to the YMCA. Then came orientation. Orientation consisted of 3 days packed full of sessions on the poor, teaching english, youth, sports, church, and culture. I learnt so much. To end the orientation they sent us out on an 'Amazing Race' type adventure where we were given exactly the right amount of money for certain tasks that involves us going all over Chennai (the city where we're working). That was crazy in itself. But (being the really awesome people we are) we managed to complete all the tasks still having money left over at the end. We travelled in four auto rickshaws and one bus. The bus was crazy. I ended up jumping on while it was moving and almost left Tom and Laurie at the bus stop. My life flashed before my eyes (all 18 years). For all those who know what a Mumbai train is like, the bus was like the road equivalent to that.... to a degree. For those of you don't know what the Mumbai trains are like, google it or something. You'll love it.

We moved to the flat on the Friday of that week. It's where we're going to stay until march 15th, the day we leave. The flat's perfect for us. If it was in England and America it would probably sell for like 175 pounds (about $100) a month. But over here it looks like a mansion compared to some of the living arrangements that people less than a stone throw away from us have. We have a lady who comes and cooks lunch and dinner for us every weekday, and that's such a blessing. Her name's Shanti, and seems really cool. We only met her once because we're out working all the times when she comes in, but apparently she's really "good at english, and quite shy but likes a good chat," according to a member of the previous team that came down during the summer.

Over the weekend we found a restaurant called Sparky's. Founded by a really cool Californian named Tom when he moved here 15 years ago, it's the perfect place to go if we're overwhelmed or anything. The most expensive thing on the menu is probably about a couple of pounds (3ish dollars), and it's worth about 3 times that much. We'll probably end up going there every weekend.

This past week has been insane. We were offered marijuana and hasheesh by a rickshaw driver, we fit 6 people in a rickshaw, attempted 4 adults on a motorbike, and almost being blown apart by firecrackers. The first half of the weekend we were in the office by 9am and finally home by about 8pm. We started holding after-school programmes for the kids in a community near us, and also for pre-school kids around Chennai. The kids are insane. They love to scream. By 'they' i mean the boys. The girls so far have been superbly well-behaved. For the second half of the week we started waking up at 5 30am to go to football (soccer) practice, and still ended at about 8pm. We had breaks in the middle for lunch and stuff but by thursday we were knackered. But (before my parents start freaking out about me being over-worked) we did manage to re-work the schedule so that it seems so much more workable.