Volunteering

This is a post about me this time, sans pictures. I just found out yesterday that I will be volunteering at Canadian International School three days a week. I'm quite excited! I'm helping out in a math classroom (or as they say it here "maths classroom"). I'm helping a teacher who instructs five levels of math she and is desperately in need of assistance. Yesterday she told me that she was beginning to wonder if she would be able to get all the work she had to do done. She sent me home with three classes of quizzes, which took about five hours to mark - in part because I told her that I did not need the answer key and thus needed to answer all the questions myself first. But I thoroughly enjoyed myself while I was correcting them.

I was thinking, on the way home from helping out today, how much I enjoy math and there are those that really don't get it. It's like a language, but it's a universal language. Though what we call them may be different, the numbers and the symbols say the same thing all around the world. It's pretty amazing. I enjoy helping people learn and understand. Understanding is a beautiful thing. I am definitely looking forward to helping out this year. In fact, I think the next nine months are going to be pretty fabulous. I get to tutor an amazing young woman who is "doing better than they expected" as of her progress report yesterday(!!!). I get to help students who are having a hard time understanding math and correct their papers. And I get to be in India. Really, what could be better?

Random Photos

This is one of the many buildings being constructed around Bangalore. I should have taken a picture of the workers. If you look closely you can see them in front of the building. They aren't wearing protective gear.


Here is the local tire repair shop... I would trust them with all my flat repairs ;) Although, I did get to thinking about where one might go if they needed work done on the car, and I believe that ponderance was answered in my last post: Tyre Empire. The one in Whitefield looked quite nice when I drove by yesterday. It was very clean and the employees were all in uniform.


Here is where the less fortunate (monetarily) reside. Yes, those are tarps. And the room underneath is very small. I don't really want to think about where they cook or relieve themselves.. I think it would be easier for me to work with their children than to go visit in their homes.


This is a camel! Due to my lack of research before coming here I didn't realize that camels existed in India. For some reason I thought they were only in the Middle East and at the zoo. But, there were four walking down the street accompanied by people the other day. Just one more thing to add to the congestion... It was quite the sight :)

Billboards

I heard someone say recently that it is impossibly to get anywhere in the states without coming across enough advertising to be visually overwhelmed, even if you are consciously aware of it. I laughed a bit when I heard that because in India, at least in Bangalore, I could see more advertising in one day than I see in the US in about a month. I have added some pictures as an example. Again, they are mostly taken from the car as that is how I get anywhere, so they aren't the most fantastic pictures you can see.

-This is MG Road.. one of the busiest commercial streets in Bangalore.

-I don't know what Thandu is either.. but if it's edible I'll try it at some point since the sign tells me coke is good with it.

-This is another shot of MG road. All levels of the buildings have shops in them. I guess that would make it a bit like a mall, but it doesn't have a North American Mall feel.

-If you look closely at the blue sign, I'm not sure if you can see it because the pictures are small, it read "What's narrower than Shirpa's waistline? MG Road post Metro construction." It's an advertisement for www.bangaloremirror.com. I haven't been to the site, but it's where people from Bangalore can post their opinions about what's going on in the city. I find their signs rather humorous now that I've been here long enough to understand what they are getting at.

-Kingfisher. The richest man in India.. I think. He has his own airline that now flies international. Apparently he's the King of Good Times. He owns half of Richmond (an area of the city) and is currently having a very large mall constructed on some of his property in another area of town. It's amazing how much money the alcohol industry can create for one man!
-This is one of about five Economist advertisements I've seen. I got a couple other boards in with that one too.

-This is one of the building fronts along Old Airport Road. I go past here almost every day to get into the city or to Bonasvati where I help out at the orphanage.

-Another common billboard in the city. There are several varieties of this one. I have yet to understand what they are for or what they are trying to say with them.

-Embarrassingly enough, I needed this one explained to me. Apparently the man's head and the tires had something in common. They are both bald! And tires is spelled t-y-r-e-s in England, thus Bangalore needs to spell it that way.

Lalbagh

Yesterday I went to Lalbagh. Our driver took me over there and I hopped out of the car and went to see the grounds of the lovely botanical garden. Honestly, I wasn't all that impressed with the flowers. I was expecting a beautiful rose garden, because I had heard there was one, as well as other flowers and plants. I guess I haven't spent enough time out in the city to actually understand that everything is dusty. The plants that were, I'm sure, a vibrant green were dulled by the dust that had coated them. They were still pretty. The flowers, I think, were at their peak about a month ago. I did not feel as though any pictures I took could have made them look better than they were. I did see some that were nice and almost took a picture, but then I became distracted by the huge dragonflies and the blue bees. At least, I think they were bees. As soon as I raised my camera to take a picture of them a few birds flew close to the flowers which caused all the insects to scatter. Ah well. Perhaps I will see them again.


I walked through an area that had at its entrance two tall wire giraffes. Along the drive were other animals: a heron, a cow, a pig, etc. I walked through this area that appeared to have shaped trees and other bushes and after I had seen almost all of the creations, I realized that the wire animals at the entrance were one day going to be bush animals, once the trees or plants had fully grown. I thought that was pretty neat.



I also saw a monkey! I was walking along the path by the water and was passing under trees that had unusual looking pods (another picture down below) hanging from them and enjoying corn on the cob ahead of me was a cute little monkey! I got out my camera to take a picture of him on the fence and he jumped up into the tree. He finally rested in a branch out of the way of the people around to enjoy his corn in peace. He may have stolen it from the vendor down the path who was roasting corn for the locals. I've only seen monkeys at the zoo so I thought it was really cool. I asked the driver about it on the way back and he said there are a lot of monkeys there... I'm glad I was able to see one.


The path by the water was my favorite part about the park. There were palm trees and bamboo shoots and so many others kind of trees I had never seen before.

With Pictures!

I am still fascinated as ever by the traffic. It is so fun to look outside the window when we're driving around and see all the beautiful colors and the people and the busyness yet slower pace of life. That contradiction seems weird to me, but that's how it appears to me. There are so many people on every street. Because there are very few traffic signals, they wait for the right opportunity to walk across the street. Now, in the US, that walk would be rather quick, but here, it takes forever. There are times when there are people crossing the street in front of us and I wonder if they will make it to the other side before the cars go crashing into them. I'm so surprised I have not seen anyone get hurt yet. I am also very thankful for that.

One thing that really made me laugh when we were driving yesterday was the gas truck. The back of it displayed the "petroleum" warning but also made mention that it is "highly inflammable". Unless my definition is wrong, the petroleum here in India will not catch fire! I asked Cindy about that and she said that "inflammable" here means the same as "flammable". I still thought it was really funny. I took a picture. It was from inside the car, so there is a bit of a glare.. and the windows are tinted so that makes everything seem a bit more hazy.

Saturday we went into the city. That was exciting. Actually, I've been in the city quite a bit. We have to go through there, or around there, to get to the orphanages. Everything seems like a city. But, I'm used to that so it's not a huge shock. The downtown area reminded me a lot of Vancouver, BC in look, the not so nice parts, except that it is more dense and perhaps a bit more run down. Cindy and I were walking down on of the main commercial roads and there were, of course, stray dogs wandering around - though I've noticed that they usually lie around until they think someone will give them something. Well, one of them when we passed it got up and started following us. We walked a bit quicker to try to lose it, but it went right past Cindy and tried to get my attention. Apparently it thought that I had food I wanted to give it. If I had food scraps, I probably would have obliged. But I had nothing on me that even resembled food. Maybe I shouldn't look at them as I pass by anymore. But they are so cute and ignored that I just want to say hi. Oh well.

Today I am going to see Lakshmi again. We will have our first official tutoring session. She has had a couple of tests since I last saw her, so I don't know if she'll have much homework, so I'm going to bring wiht me the best 3/4 math book that I've ever seen in my life, and a couple of short novels and we'll see what she wants to work on. I'm looking forward to that part of my day.

Here are a few extra pictures for you to enjoy.

A lot of the buses, vans and tractors are painted amazing colors and designs.

Look closely at the woman in the background.. see the bundle of sticks?

And... this is a billboard for the construction company doing a lot of the work around the city.

My first day

I have arrived! I came in on time yesterday morning, just before 4am. My intention was to stay up for the flight to London and sleep the whole way to Bangalore, but that did not work out as well as I had hoped. I slept for about three hours total for both flights. There was a bit of a mixup at the airport because the internet was providing people with misinformation about my flight which resulted in my ride not showing up until an hour after I landed. But, it was fine, because she arrived. I knew she would. I have learned though, that the worst question for me to be asked when I am overwhelmed is "How are you?". I break down in tears. That was interesting. I plan on getting more sleep from now on.
There are so many people on the roads. On the way back from the airport there were mostly truckes on the main roads, but when we went to the orphanage in the afternoon there were so many people - LOTS of people - walking along the roads, going in and out of shops, crossing the road... there were cyclists, scooters, motorcycles, buses, trucks, cars, vans, all trying to fit five lanes of traffic into the three marked lanes. I am amazed at how well the drivers know the size of their vehicles. I was thinking that if people back home knew that, or had the confidence of Indian drivers, I-5 traffic problems may soon be solved.. of course, there is still the whole police and rules thing.. I don't know if there are many rules here. Everyone drives on the left side of the road. That was quite the experience. I mean, the whole driving in traffic was an experience. There wasn't anything familiar about it.
I saw a waterbuffalo meandering on the side of the road yesteday while we were driving. That may have been the most shocking thing I saw because it was so unexpected. There were a lot of stray dogs on almost every road. Cindy said that they expect either to be beaten or ignored and that made me very sad. If I wanted to make friends with any of them I probably could, but they are diseased and I shouldn't want to touch them.
We went the the orphanage yesterday where Lakshmi lives. I will be tutoring her this year in English and Math so it was nice to meet her the day that I arrived. She is very sweet. All of the kids at the orphanage are sweet. I tried to help her with her math. She's learning long division. I learned that I'm terrible at explaining things especially when I think there is a language barrier. I need to refrain from thinking that she does not speak the same language as me. She knows English fairly well and I shouldn't think that she can't understand what I'm saying. After she finished her homework she read me a story in Kanata. She translated it for me, but I felt like I was missing something. I knew what was happening, but I didn't know why things were happening in the story. But the language was beautiful.