16th December

Sorry for the late post, but here we go :)

Hello all, Tuesday this week was our last day at the Hotel Surya in Varanassi, meaning we had to leave the pool and room service behind. We then took part in the amazing race Indian style where the two person teams all took a rickshaw 8 km back to the Ganges river for another look as the weather was much clearer than the previous day. It was good to be able to see the river rather than just 5 metres around us like the previous visit. Here we experienced a few things like a body being cremated. There were a large number of cows down by the river. From there we rickshawed back to the hotel to collect our gear and mission to the train station in peak hour traffic. Big thanks to the hotel manager who got out and guided the bus through a busy intersection otherwise we would have been stuck for hours. Finally arriving at the train station we had a bit of a wait on our hands which was partially filled by playing cricket with a few of the people and a bit of street dancing. The 11 or so hour train ride was reasonably eventful free and we arrived in Calcutta safe and sound. We took taxis to our new home of two weeks, the Emirates hotel. It was good to get there and unpack. At the hotel we came across a group of Auckland boys who were doing the same trip except in a different order, it was good to have some communication with kids our age who could speak english. We exchanged tips and other bits and pieces we had all found out and learnt a few handy tricks. After this we walked down and registered for our charatible work and went for a visit to the mother house. The following day was a bit of a chill and rest day, we ended up down at the local park where some of us participated in sports with the locals. The kiwi football team came out on top with a 2 - 1 win over some local boys as did the kiwi cricket team winning there match. Jermaine was lucky enough to go behind the counter at the local Mc Donalds to inspect how clean and sanitary it was, turns out far better than our ones at home! Some people went to check out the markets around the corner. Coming to today we were all up nice and early to get ready for our first mass and day of work, we were at the mother house by quarter to 6 followed by our breakfast of 2 pieces of bread, a banana and some chai tea. Today was an interesting experience going to our allocated homes and helping out all the patients. It showed to us all really just how lucky we are to be healthy and able to live in a clean and healthy environment with loving families around us. I'm sure we are all looking forward to the up coming days of being able to go back to our centres and do our bit in helping out.

Cheers for your time:) blog from Millie and Tom.