This week we had a very nice refreshing start! We have been looking forward to the moment that we could finally swim in this heat and Sunday it finally came true. We got invited by family of our host family who lived in a community complex which had a swimming pool. By being there we experienced an even more wealthy and luxurious lifestyle of India. We got to walk over clean streets without any holes in the road (we start to appreciate the smallest things here) where people were cycling and where the houses even had gardens. These are things which are normal back home but definitely not here. The family showed their hospitality by stuffing us full with food, it was so much that you could eat a couple of days from it, but for us it was just one afternoon.

This topic "food" became an issue on Wednesday morning ... it was 7 am and as we were brushing our teeth we heard a chicken clucking very loudly and as we looked around the corner of our door we saw how they had a chicken in a bag in the living room ... after seeing a lot of chickens in cages alongside the road with their fellow chickens hanging upside down next to them we could think of only one thing "That will be our dinner tonight". As we walked down the street to school we could still hear the chicken and I can tell it was an awful noise. Since we have a vegan among us this led up to discussions within our group. Especially when we had chicken for lunch at school... We were a bit terrified of what to expect when we got back home. I already pictured a chopped up chicken in the kitchen. So it was a big surprise when we got back and we still heard the chicken and this time it was walking in the living room with a rope on its leg. It turned out that from now on they have a chicken in house for its eggs. So we were quite relieved and it turns out that India still did not stop surprising me.

This surprising effect was the case today as well! As I entered the classroom the children ran up to me with big smiles on their faces saying "Happy Holi Miss!". This is a big thing here in India and the school celebrated Holi as well with an assembly in which we saw a play about what Holi means. Then afterwards a drummer came up the stage and when he started drumming the "colourful chaos" started. Children were running everywhere, grabbing powder and putting it on each other. Powder could be found everywhere and it was a lot of fun! It turned out that the already colourful India can be even more colourful!

After the celebration we went out for lunch to a restaurant called BBQ nation with all the elementary teachers. This was also a whole experience. First of all because we were all together with at least 20 women and 1 guy (which was Bernand). And such big group of mostly females together turns into a chaos quite quickly: everybody talking all at once and taking pictures all together. This resulted into confused waiters but as always here in India they stayed polite and soon the food started to be served. The place where we were was like an all you can eat restaurant but “slightly” different because the waiters serve the food. They kept serving us grilled chicken, fish and all kinds of other stuff (even grilled watermelon). Richelle, Anine, Bernand and me we just kept eating till we felt “full” and so we stopped. Then one of the teachers came to us and she said “So are you ready for the main course?” We all looked at her with wide-open eyes, feeling overfull and we asked in disbelief “was this not the main course?” So then it turned out that there was a buffet full of Indian Curry, Dal, Noodles, etc. which was the main course. But I think our stomach might have grown within the past few weeks because we even found some space left for the dessert.