sons of the soil, sons of the sea

Well the match of the aussie rules season was played just recently. No, not today at the MCG but last Sunday at Elsternwick Park. The result:
That's right: congrats to the mighty bloods. I'll have to be quick with this post as my other love, football (yeah soccer for the aussie rules fans), is about to start and it's the first live game I will have watched in months. Reds vs Bolton.

Ok, so some stuff that Jane may have some input into also. We are in Mumbai at the moment after finishing up our work at PB a few days ago. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone but at the same time nice to move to the next chapter in our journey, our final chapter before home. We have been taking it relatively easy just doing some shopping, seeing another Oasis project, visiting the house where Gandhi stayed in Bombay and seeing some of the touristy stuff. While at Gandhi's house we were interviewed for Indian television for a docco on Gandhi's life. We've also been asked on a number of occasions to be extras in Bollywood flick. In India, always expect the unexpected.

The weather here is a bit mingin/festy/sweaty. It's only 30 degrees but 90+% humidity so not that pleasant. We take refuge in our a/c room every few hours to take a break. Tomorrow (1 Oct) we're flying to Delhi for a few days. We will do a day trip to Agra to see the Taj and Agra Fort, as well as an overnighter in Jaipur. Then on the 6th Oct we fly down to Bangalore for a few days to see some projects and check out Mysore market on Dave and Carly's recommendation.

Today marks just 2 weeks to go til we get home for the first time in 20 months. We are quite excited but also looking forward to the next two weeks. One thing you learn quickly in India is that you can't look more than a day ahead at anytime. In fact, you're best off not looking more than a metre ahead most of the time lest you step on a goat, chicken, rat, person or a by-product of one of the aforementioned...

Hope all is well back home. We'll hopefully squeeze in one more blog before we get home. Feel free to email as we're back in relative civilisation.

getting some quality R&R

Hi all. Well as I mentioned we are getting some quality R&R at the project we are working on. Actually, most of the R&R relates to the food which many of you have asked about. R&R of course stands for rats and roaches which we have been seeing plenty of in the vicinity of the kitchen which is below our room and which is where all the meals are prepared. But surprisingly we've not really been sick yet which is great as most of our days start at 5.30am and finish around 9.30pm when we get back to our room.

We are having a great time. Jane is teaching a couple of kids who can't go to school because of HIV related problems and I am helping look after the kids and also building some spreadsheets to help the filing at the project.

We unfortunately can only check our emails once a week when we make a 1.5 hour taxi trip to Nasik which is where we are just now. This is our one day off a week with the other days being quite crazy. Of the 45 kids and 10 women, about half the kids are HIV positive and almost all the women. The kids are great though given they all have come from rough backgrounds (many abused and in many cases watched the parents die from the disease they have), some obviously have some behavioural issues. All in all given their backgrounds, they're great kids.

We have spent quite a bit of time with another girl, Bethany, who is from Boston and is here for 3 years. She's only 6 months in and has done so much work already. One thing she struggles with that we've also found tough is the language thing. Most of the kids speak at least a little English but they only listen when they're told off in Hindi or Marati (tribal language). This obviously has its challenges when you're trying to discipline kids.

I think the toughest thing we're finding is being disconnected from the world (we get it now Dave and Carly!). We have no access to internet and find out world news (i.e. bombs near here, deaths of brocky and steve irwin) from friends via text message. So please do give us a call or shoot us a message anytime. It doesn't cost much for us to message and we love to hear from the outside world.

The project is in a smallish town about 2.5 hours by train from Mumbai. We are in the middle of rice paddies and as one nice staff member told me the other day, it used to be a snake breeding ground. He then told us hyenas, leopards, scorpions and crabs (yes crabs) also live in the area. Good to know...

All up we're having a great time. Sorry if we're not emailing much but we promise when we get home we'll catch up with you all. Hope all is well in the alternate universes of Aus and UK (and France Pete). Hope to hear from you soon.

....but before I go: GO YOU MIGHTY MELBOURNE DEMONS AND BLOODS!!!! It's a grand old flag indeed...