Day 35 (26th Oct)

Another lovely hot shower and we watched the rest of 'Rang De Basanti' whilst having a scrummy breakfast of guava jam on toast, papaya and pomegranate! O h and red banana!
We had a bit of a chat with Victoria about what we're doing with Celine at the moment and about teaching ideas.
We took an auto back to Karuna Niwas via forum, one of the shopping centres in Bangalore. There we had an Indian style 'snacky' (I was stuffed at the end of it!) lunch which was quite spicy but nice, and I got to try lots of different Indian dishes, as shown below!



Once back we (Me, Maddy, Celine and Victoria) had a chat about what Celine's doing at the moment and where we could go between now and when I go.
We're actually going to kerala tomorrow! YAY! Only staying there for one night but still we're going!!!!! Also Celine says we can have my penultimate week here off to go travelling to Hampi and OOti or wherever. Going to have to knuckle down for the remainder of this week and my final week to sooth my conscious! She's spoilt us so much!
After seeing Victoria off and putting some washing on we had the fireworks... Well lets just say it was educational! Within the space of about 1 minute we'd seen just about every rule in the book (and some more!) broken! Sparklers were flying everywhere and fireworks going off randomly! We relaxed a little after a while though! Perhaps too soon though as I managed to get a hole burned in my trousers by one of Asha Mariya's sparklers!
Had a really nice dinner, apparently it's one of the rare occasions that Celine cooks for everyone.

Day 34 (25th October)

Had leisurely breakfast at about 10am, first hot shower and fast internet connection for 5 weeks and are feeling rather spoilt!
We had a quick look on MG road and got some vegetables for tonights dinner before going to get a much craved after bacon butty at Koshy's! Unfortunately they were out of bread so we had bacon and eggs instead! mm!
Whilst Maddy had her hair cut at Victorias hairdressers (Apparently the most expensive place in town at 10 pounds a cut!) I 'helped' (hmmm!) Vitoria prepare some veg for dinner. I skinned and chopped some rather vicious looking vegetables called bitter gourd (I think that's what it's called!)!
Once Maddy was back we went back to MG road for some shopping.
After we started to watch our first Hindi film of the holiday 'Rang De Basanti.' Didn't manage to finish it but what we did see of it was really good, even with all the subtitles!
After a lovely tea (which we expertly ate with our fingers!) we went out to a party in a hotel, wearing borrowed tops as apparently it was a Bollywood themed night and Victoria had a feeling (which turned out to be corect!) we might want to be a bit more dressy!
Had a really good night trying out our new found Bollywood dance moves (thanks to Ashwell!) and all Victoria and Sudhir's friends were really lovely. Had a fab time dancing away despite the sign by the entrance reading 'Please refrain from dancing!'
Victoria told us earlier that apparently it is illegal for dancing, alcohol and women to be in the same place!! However we were told that this ban is lifted after 10.30 pm!
Had our first taste of Indian firework displays as well! Driving out of Victoria's appartment we saw they were lighting fireworks all along the drive! Thankfully none of them went off underneath us as we drove over them!

Day 33 (24th Oct)

We were working on the pronunciation of 'th' in Alphonz's lesson, they were even worse than you George! We had 'ch's, 't's and 'd's but very few 'th's! No one seemed to want to stick their tongue out!
On the way back from seeing if cyber zone was up and running again yet I popped in to get my eyebrows done and Maddy and I ended up getting full leg waxes! Was hilarious! Maddy kept on squirming away from Anitha and Sushanth's mum! They must think that all English girls are manbeasts now!
We got picked up by Victoria and her boyfriend Sudhir later that evening and she took us to her appartment which was rather snazzy! We're rather excited about the prospect of sleeping in a bed with no mosquito net and having a hot shower in the morning! We met their friend Ashwell and went out for a steak! Yum!

Day 32 (23rd October)

W went over the tongue twisters 'peter Piper' and 'Red lorry, yellow lorry' in Alphonz's and also as quite a lot of there English is actually 'American' we tried to teach them the proper versions! Like 'mum' instead of 'mom' and 'zebra' rather than 'zeeeeeeebra'!

Had run out of our phonics colouring sheets in daycare as Celine hasn't been into town recently. So had to improvise! Mads had the inspired idea of drawing round hands and feet which they enjoyed! I also drew a marvelously accurate aeroplane, rocket and moon(with the help of Maddy!)! Lkshmi helped us in trying to get Jewel and Pranaii to repeat them. We also attempted to teach them the song with actions to 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes.' but didn't get too far! Think the combination of actions , tune, rhythm and words was too much! Pranaii did later try doing just the actions though which made us feel a little less like tools!

After a venture out to Total we went back to the daycare centre and had a play with Jess, Jewel, Ashish.k and Amu. Lakshmi brought us out some monkey nut type things to eat and right on queue some monkeys appeared on the corrogated plastic roof! Mads rushed to get her camera but by the time she got back Ashish.k had scared them off by lobbing rocks at them!

Day 31 (22nd October)

Finished reading 'The Time and Space of Uncle Albert' today, one of the books Miss Walley has kindly lent me! Was awesome! Loving relativity! Tried to share the joy of physics with Maddy but think I'm fighting a losing battle!

Prenaii (the little shy boy in the daycare) was being rather enthusiastic about colouring today and quite happily chuntering away to me in kanada (One of the many Indian dialects spoken her! I think that's how you spell it!)! Jewel being his usual mischeivous self!

Maddy picked up the photos of our class from yesterday so they should be somewhere on her blog ( madelainescragg.blogspot.com ).

This evening we were once again inundated with huge flying insects! We think they're getting in through a hole in the mosquito net window. Celine says they come out in floods allong with the rain but are harmless ... we still decided to go on a mission to check the mosquito net! Being tallest it was me who had to hoik myself up to check in the face of attack from yet more and plug the hole with a paper towel! We can still hear them thudding into the net everynow and then but they're not getting through now!

At dinner we had a chat with Celine about the Spoken English/Computer Centre, advertising, teaching etc. Also talked about going to see Victoria, Arabella's friend on Friday. Celine says she's also planning on taking us to kerala next week (third time lucky!) by car, and seemed a lot happier about it after we persuaded her that we don't usually travel as badly as our trip to Mysore where Maddy was sick, aand told her about our 36 hour journey to Prague!

Day 30 (21st October)

My biceps are now practically bulging now from all this gym working out we've been doing in the morning!

In Alphonz's lesson we took photos of the class as apparently some of them will be leaving soon. Will be quite sad to see them go as have gotten to know them quite well! But it's good to see that they are going on to using their new found English in a new (hopefully better) job.
I also did a marvelous job of sewing up the white trousers this morning so they no longer trail in the mud!

Had been 'talking' to Arabella via email about how we feel a little 'closeted' and she was negotiating our freedom with Celine so we can go further afield unchaperoned, whilst we played with Amu, Jewel and Jess in the daycare centre. What a gem! I just hope Celine doesn't think we're unhappy and 'going behind her nack' or whatever. She seemed to be happy enough at dinner though and just told us that she'd had a call from Arabella and that if we wanted to go and explore more on our own she'd like us to get out parent's persmission as she'd had emails from both our mums before we came out asking her to look after us and she felt responsible for us! It's very touching she's taking so much care of us but a little restricting!

Oh and in Alphonz's lesson, on discovering she'd forgotten to put a memory card in her camera, Maddy exclaimed 'Oh B#**#@!s!.' Not sure whether everyone or anyone knew what she meant but there was a certain amount of laughter anyway, though whether that was just due to my reaction or not I don't know!

Day 29 (20th October)

Said good bye to Raquell who's going back to Mumbai today. Otherwise a pretty much 'normal' day. Did some more work on pronunciation with Alphoz's class and did the phoneem 'P' in the daycare.

After lunch we went on a quest to find toilet roll! The stuff that we usually get happened to be the most awkward, out of reach one! The guy ended up knocking down half the shelf to get it for us! Or should I say me as Maddy had retreated to the far corner of the supermarket in an attempt to distance herself from this troublesome English girl and her poncy toilet roll!

We helped Ashish.k with some of his homework and did some handwriting with Asha.

Got a call from my mummy!

Day 28 (19th October)

Into second half of my time here!
Had rather a lot of confusion over what was happening with the computers and the electrician! Raquell had told us that the electrician should be coming at 10am to the computer centre so could we be there then (or I think that's what she aid as I was in a half conscious state still at 7am!). But when we spoke to Jiny later (I've been spelling her name wrong!) she said the electricians arrived yesterday!
Anyway we ended up going to Total with Merin and Anitha and had having a pizza corner again! Was lovely and wet there and back!
We went to get Maddy's eyebrows threaded (see charming photo attatched!) and picked up the photos we were getting 'developed' at the photoshop. Both Celine and juny were dead chuffed with their huge photo of everyone in the tree on our picnic the other week!

Had another really scrummy take away this evening with the hand bread and barbied chicken! mmmmmm!