Goodbye party, outing to a temple and pancakes for breakfast!

I thought I would write in English this time, hopefully it’s a little bit better than what my Norwegian is these days! Well we all decided on staying at the camp this weekend to say goodbye to the people who are leaving (they have now left though..). These are volunteers who were already here when my group arrived, but also almost everyone from my group as well are leaving, some are going home (only doing the 4 week program) or they are moving on to Goa. I’m very glad I’m staying 4 more weeks ‘cause I’m really starting to like it here, and I have so many fun things planned for the weekends! This coming weekend is a holiday, Diwali, so we have Friday off from teaching. Chris and Louise (from the ‘grown-ups” program), Jessica and me are leaving for Jaipur on Thursday afternoon, Friday there is supposed to be a lot of celebration and things going on all over Jaipur, fireworks, colorful lights, so we will get to see a real Diwali celebration. This time were staying at a better hotel, at least it has showers, and we can buy dinner and breakfast there, which is nice. Jessica and I will stay until Saturday morning, than we will meet with the others at the Jaipur office for transfer to Pushkar where the camel safari is. Then we sleep overnight in tents Saturday night, and Sunday we go sightseeing in Pushkar. It will be fun seeing Pushkar again for the camel fair in the end of November, then the place will be totally different I believe –packet with tourists, pilgrims and lots of camels, of course.

The weekend of the 12^th to the 14^th of November Jessica and I have booked train tickets for going to Jodhpur – the blue city. We actually leave already Thursday the 11^th from camp, arriving in Jodhpur late that evening. Then we’ll have three whole days, ‘cause we take a night train back late Sunday evening, arriving in Dausa (about an hour from camp) early Monday morning, so than we have to go to teach, we’ll probably be really tired, but it will be fine.

I have decided to stay at my morning school at least for this coming week, I’m starting to get to know the children, and that makes it a lot easier. However my afternoon school is closed all of next week, because of Diwali, so I will be going with Jess, Chris and Mathilda to Sundurpur school next week, new kids, new challenges!

On Friday we had a goodbye party for the people leaving, we all dressed up a little, some in saries, and all the girls put on make-up, so everyone looked really different, but it was nice looking a little “nice” for once. The cook had made fries as well for dinner, that was delicious! Then we all had some beers and sat outside talking, AND we had the Lalsot Awards 2010. Awards like “the happiest camper”, “the most sarcastic”, “the funniest camper” and so on. It didn’t get an award, but it was a lot of fun! This afternoon (Saturday) many of the people left, more are leaving tonight, and the last few tomorrow afternoon. It will be so empty and quiet here!

This afternoon (Saturday) we went to a temple, which is about 30-45 minutes walk from the camp. That was an interesting experience. We first walked for awhile just alongside the road. Then to get to the temple you have to walk past a lot of “houses”, like walking through a neighborhood (just that there is no such thing here, but I don’t know how to explain!), a lot of children started fallowing us, holding our hands and wanting their pictures taken. On the way back from the temple they were getting to be a little bit annoying, but I guess we looked very strange walking through there with our t-shirts on, cameras and white skin (though we all are getting a nice tan!). I will post some pictures where you all can see how many children were fallowing us, though the pictures don’t have sound and smell, it’s hard capturing moments in India in pictures! I must say though that the view from the temple was amazing (we had to walk up some steep steps to get to the temple), I will also post pictures of that. We could see all the small huts were families are leaving, and endless fields, it was beautiful!

Today we finally got pancakes for breakfast again! Tomorrow is washing day –clothes and bathroom, yippy!

I hope to post pictures tomorrow or Monday!