Well. November has
been quite eventful...starting with Diwali on the 3rd. It was one of the most terrifying
nights of my entire life. In the UK you can’t buy Christmas crackers if you’re
under a certain age. In this crazy country I now call home, there were
literally toddlers lighting explosives in the middle of the street. I’m not a
big fan of fireworks in the UK, so you can only imagine how scared I was here.
It was a great evening though. My constant flinching at every boom and bang
slowly died down as the evening progressed. However, Chendu (this 10 year old monkey
boy with obvious ADHD) didn’t help at all. Especially when he would go about
setting off obviously illegal explosives off metres away from the 3 girls in
highly flammable 9 metre polyester sarees. Whoever gave that boy fireworks wasn’t
thinking straight. Too many times Jo, Emily or I nearly combusted. By the end
of the night, my ear drums were burst. My vision blurred. My hands trembling.
My heart pounding. And I felt simultaneously sick and hungry. IT WAS AWESOME :D
A few days after Diwali, a group of blind singers came to
our school and performed many Telugu hits. The entire school was crammed into
the main campus. Hundreds of children sitting cross-legged on the stone slabs.
I was put in one of the tiny 1st class rooms with very cute small
children and 2 other teachers. One of the teachers told me to sit down on one
of the tiny benches. When the ‘concert’ started I started drumming on the desk
in time with the music. The children began to copy me. A few songs in, the same
teacher told me to dance. So I stood up and that’s exactly what I did. I danced
with a classroom full of 5 year olds, while almost the entire school watched in
and smiled. I was dancing Bollywood style and there was some Bhangra in there
too. Now, you have to remember this ‘classroom’ was about 3m by 3m big and
there were benches and desks filling up the whole room. There was about 20 kids
dancing on the desks, all copying me and throwing confetti that they made out
of, what looked like, their school work. I have never had so much fun! I danced
with those kids for well over an hour and by the end I was as red as a tomato.
People became concerned for my health, asking me, “Ma’am, Fever?”. I would reply,
“Yes. Dance fever.” People laughed.
In other news, I got my nose re-pierced. What you do is, you
go to this old lady’s house, give her a thorn from an actual bush/tree, then
she will stab that thorn through your nose like there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile,
all the children of the village sit and watch. These kids love to watch
piercings being done. Some bring snacks to eat while ‘the show’ goes on. After
your nose has been impaled by a thorn, the nice old lady (with bad eye sight)
gets out the biggest pair of scissors you have ever seen in your life. She will
then proceed to try and cut down the thorn a bit while it’s still painfully
just been forced through your nostril. These scissors looked like they could
behead me they were so big. Anyway, after at least 4 different people tried to
cut the thorn down, it was done. I now have a pierced nose. The first time I
got it done was early October, the same time as Emily and Jo, but I accidently
took the thorn out too early and couldn’t get it back in. I had to wait for it
to heal until I could get it re-pierced. It’s pierced on the right hand side
(my right), like everyone else in this region of India. Jo and Emily have it on
the left. I still have the thorn in now and it’s a bit swollen and bloody so if
anyone wants their nose pierced don’t do it with a thorn. :) 
