What can I say about Kolkata besides the fact that I love this city! Its called "the city of joy" and made famous by people like Patrick Swayze and Mother Teresa (R.I.P to them both) but I have found it really pleasant overall! The weather is very hot and humid, but you get used to it after a while! One neat thing is that I drink about 1 to 2 litres of water a day, and don't have to run to the bathroom every 5 minutes!!! Its because you sweat it out!!! I also notice that people really like to spit out of car and bus windows here, so I have to be careful everytime I stand next to a bus or open car window!!! I came here for the main purpose of visiting Mother Theresa's missionaries of Charity and to volunteer amongst them...I wake up at 5 am, when it is just starting to get bright and make my way down to the Main house. Its been kind of scary because there really aren't too many people up at that hour, except for street sweepers and men who are sleeping on the sidewalk...but Calcutta is safe, or just used to the foreign volunteers that come out...I've even dared to take Delhi trams and autoricks alone, which is a first for me, considering my Hindi is very basic....The work is hard and so are the conditions but also very rewarding...I have been placed in a classroom of toddlers, where I'm teaching them songs with actions and also just playing with them and feeding them...Its neat, because they are just starting to learn English and know alot of the English songs I used to sing growing up that are pretty particular to India, so I can sing some of them...I'm trying to remember the songs I learnt as a preschooler, but I'm kind of running out of ideas for action songs, so if you can think of any, please send me any suggestions!!!
The kids are really cute, but also very naughty! They bite, but they also love very much too! They call me Aunty, and are really innocent and thirsting for interaction and attention...they are part of an orphanage and have a chance to be adopted...I am living and learning and I'm sure that God much to teach me from this experience....Most of my trip, I've seen so much poverty that I found myself becoming numb to it after awhile...walking by a beggar or street urchin and not even feeling any effect, or ignoring someone asking for change, not to be mean, but because I've just become immune to the poverty....Working with the missionaries forces me to come face to face with poverty and destitute people, I can't step over them, or fail to notice them as walk I amongst them...
I've realized that my experiences in India have been largely coloured by whether or not I actually know someone in each of the cities I've visited. In Mumbai, Mangalore, Delhi, and Calcutta, we've had friends and family to take us around, and that has definitely influenced the quality of our stay in each of those places. We didn't have to stress about figuring out the city or the culture or have any confusion about anything there...
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