Back in europe

Culturally Belgium could not bemore of a contrast to India, arriving in Brussels I was instantly greeted by misty cold weather, people without a proper knowledge English and clean calm streets. No beggars!
My Dutch and French seems to be completely different totheirs, at least the Dutch accent was unbearable - I got around with French. After quite some hassle I found Thomas and after a short visit of the city we went to Ghent. This turned out to be like lueneburg just a different epoch. Young people, awesome restaurants and a decent cuteness. But a beauty coupled with everyday life. Brugge however turned put to be to cute to bear without lol. My god this city consists of chocolate, belgian "spitze", jewellery and souvenir stores as well as cute houses and fat americans eating ice cream. After 2 days this city was annoying with its cuteness and we decided to spend the rest of the time drinking sangria and watching fat Americans in the paardentram. But all in all it was a wonderful time. And not too fast, I am still struggling with the acclimatization, unfriendly people and the damn speed and lack of tolerance. People here need to sit and stare, take some time to understand and reconsider. Maybe discuss the small irrelevant things to understand the big relevant issues in life.
I learnt to enjoy busrides and their trancelike 6-10h of thinking with the wind blowing through my hair. I never had so much time for myself and my thoughts. I will miss life in India.

India as a single woman

This is an entry for every woman, thinking of travelling to South India herself. First of all, if you are not strong and self-conscious, don't do it, unless you have friends. You will, this is for certain, have situations where you will need all the strength you have. There are different degrees of harassment that might occur, the simple and merely annoying one, is the teasing of boys. Indian boys consider teasing girls as a sport. If a boy/man on the street greets you or tries to talk to you, give him the most arrogant smile you can imagine and look away. Don't tell them your name, this is none of their business. That's what Indian girls do as well. Don't go out for drinks with a man, unless you know his intentions and agree with them. Going out for drinks might implicate that you are open for more.

Second degree harassment is the touching in crowds, busses queues. If something like that happens, turn around slap him, best case with your left slipper, in the face. Make it a social matter, Tamil people like other people's affairs and they will all, all start yelling at that guy.

Third degree harassment is guys trying to enforce their sexual dreams. Don't go out on your own when its dark, after 7 pm. Don't trust anyone, an Indian man once said that it is safe to assume that every Indian man either wants sex or money.

Now, with bad internet connections my tips/tricks list got deleted. Whatever, I will do it later.

Bangalore

What a city. Whatever I have seen in India, this is the best city ever. Here are the reasons why:

1. The climate is moderate and doesn't change much during the year. Now in monsoon season it rains, sure, but not as much.
2. One can buy alcohol
3. they have bars, european style, where I, as a woman, can enter on my own
4. people hold hands in public
5. there are at least 2 huge parks in the middle of the, admittedly congested, city. The air is therefore a lot better
6. Shopping is a dream, especially with the Euro/Rupie conversion rates
7. its still Indian, with meals places, street vendors, vegetarian places etc.
8. everyone speaks English. It is a multi"state"/national city, people prefer to communicate in Hindi
9. they have a huge IT sector ;) which is highly respected (because they earn insane amounts of money). people understand me when I talk about what I do!
10. Girls wear western clothes and smoke publicly. I was only being teased one night, but I waited for a friend in a spot where you shouldn't be.
11. Its still India, with all its chaos, bargaining and flexibility.

Honestly, this city tempts. Maybe in a couple of years...

Last days at SUEB

Even though its my last day in general, I would like to keep you up to date with what happened after Kodaikanal. The hiking trip down to the valley was crazy by the way, especially because I entered the town and directly took the overnight bus back to Chennai.

Anyway, my last days at SUEB were wonderful. I realised how much they learnt, how they started to communicate with me and I didn't need a Tamil translator in the class at all. If there was a problematic word, we just looked it up or somehow described it. And my self-defense class was great as well, I couldn't teach much (well, I don't really have the qualification to really teach a lot), but they learnt basic things, be it just to show self-confidence and how to deal with a man that harasses them. Oh, and the boss of this SUEB branch gra, he made me (and other people) so angry by saying that the Tamil culture of respecting a woman makes sure that there are no rape cases, especially not within the families. That just doesn't exist. Also, its girls own fault if something happens, they just shouldn't be in dangerous situations. Nice, hu? In Bangalore, I met another woman, the wife of an uncle of a friend, she did the first study (1994) on rape and molestation in India and she has other numbers than 0%, basically the same we have in Europe, I would say. I will therefore make sure he has this study. As soon as I have it I will certainly link it.

The goodbye was hard. I made very dear friends among my collegues. One of them said, "I will remember you because you talked to everyone and had lunch with the stuff and not with [the boss]." Well, would you say no if your collegues would stuff you with homemade Indian vegetarian food? And one of my students, so cute, ran after me and pressed her earrings in my hand, she wanted me to have something to remember her.

Friday I left for Bangalore!

Kodaikanal and back

2.5 days of Kodaikanal. It is just a wonderful place, but of course a total tourist rip off place --- but here it is mainly Indian tourists that pay insane amounts of money. Normaly, one easily finds a place for 300-400 rupies, decent, clean but not necessarily western toilets. In Kodaikanal, the cheapest was 500, a dark humid dirty room. Everything else was above 700. Even dinner, you easily pay more than 100 rupies. Well, once in a while this is affordable ;).

Saturday we, Bec, Delia and me, had a girls day. In the cool and fresh air of 2000m I could finally consume 3 meals a day and even finish them. And.... Kodaikanal is famous for chocolate and Tibetian food. So our day consisted of walking, eating, chocolate and eating. At night we wanted to find a bar, but there was no suitable bar for girls. So, we had rum and raisin chocolate, watching a thunderstorm in the valley. The night in the dorm was terrible with 5 boys tripping on the other thing Kodai is famous for: mushrooms. They were constantly yelling: "My momomomo-moments." Momo is a delicious Tibetian dish, at least they had a nice trip ;).

Anyway, the lack of sleep really made us vulnerable to what happened the next day: we hiked down from 2000m to 400m in the valley, with a group of Bangalore guys and a guide. It is Tuesday now and I can still not really walk stairs. In the middle of our walk we had an insane rain and only the left-over organized German in me had a waterproof backpack --- everything outside was soaked! The hike started to be really difficult, with the stones and so on being really wet. Sometimes I thought that it was quite dangerous as well but I didn't want to

say anything, it was enough that I had an internal panic and I didn't want Bec to panic as well. The boys, being cricket players, did a good job helping us from time to time over really slippery stones.

Anyway, we arrived in the valley at around 5-5:30pm. Totally exhausted, even the boys. I shared my leftover momos and everyone else just had cookies, so I was sooooooooo hungry. But except for a peanut store, there was nothing. We ended up in the district city, our guide promised to organize our busses, mine back to Chennai and Bec to Tiruvenelli. He didn't really, but he helped organizing one -- which entailed something I am NOT proud of. I bribed this damn bus driver to let me in his bus. He promised a special seat: the only one that didn't move back, close to the Bollywood blasting TV and the half deaf conductor yelling to the bus driver. Sleep was impossible. I arrived in Chennai at 5:45, went to Nita and didn't wake her up (thank god her watchman knows me) and then fell unconscious on her couch. The rest of the day I was in some kind of trance, teaching very unprepared but still enjoying it, having a great time with my collegues...

Teaching in India

As far as I remember, in Germany teachers are well paid, but not respected. In India, this is the other way round. Here, the teacher is the God and what (s)he says is being done. When I enter the class room, with a bright "Good afternoon, boys and girls", everyone jumps up and shouts either "Good evening Ma'am" or "Good evening, Miss". I tried to teach them that I am "Miss!" because I am unmarried, but they have a hard time accepting it. Whenever someone is being called, they jump up. With our new chairs this causes problems, they have a little table attached, so when they jump up, the whole chair joins this procedure and its hard to understand the answer in the general rattleing of the chair falling down (including pen and exercise book). So, I introduced the system of general respect without standing up. Every unasked chat is being punished by a "Frau Peetz" stare with my bright blue eyes. If this doesn't suffice, a HUSH works. My collegues even use their mobiles in class, sending mails, walking out for a call. But I have some dignity left. Ooooh and you would not believe how much I love teaching. The very first time in my life I have the feeling I am changing something, I am teaching those hungry little kids something. If it wouldn't be paid so badly, I would love to stay for a whole year teaching them until their exams. It is such a pleasure to see how they learn, how knowledge emerges and how they soak up information. The reward might not be immediate, but even after 2 weeks I can hear/see/feel that there is an improvement. One girls tries to speak like I do, and I can see her lips moving and repeating every word I say. One of the boys even started to show up regularly. Yesterday, one of the girls came: "Miss. Please, I want to learn English. Teach me more." So, I will offer an additional class in their lunchtime, whoever wants to come. One other girl said, "oooh you not here tomorrow [today], class will bore."
Next week I am going to teach self-defense. Girls and women only, my collegues are very eager to join. I will not be able to do much in an hour, but still I can teach them self-confidence and where the balls are ;). The boys will be taught by Livingston, how to be a good husband ;).

Kodaikanal

Hello my dear readers,
I have been kind of busy with teaching and life and reconsidering everything I do and where I stand. Somehow, this country with all its contrasts touches me, wakes me up from a long, long sleep. I will talk to all of you later, tell you about it.
Right now I am in Kodaikanal, for hiking and escaping the smog/dirt/pollution of Chennai. A wonderful calm place with many tourists. I immidiately found someone to cling to, as I said, I had bad experiences and travelling on my own all the time is something that scares me a little by now. Tomorrow Bec will come and we will talk about teaching :). Like my parents, meeting other teachers, talking about school...
The last days after work I was invited for dinner, as contrasting as it can be. One night by a collegue, a social worker. Living together with her husband and useless son in 2 rooms, no shower, handwashing outside. Food was delicious, though and I didn't get sick. They tried to make me find a job for their son in tourism, in a hotel in Germany. Trying to tell them that I don't have any connections and I don't know anyone there didn't work out ;). At the end I left, but not without their son trying to convince me to go to the movies with him. And we all know how this ends....

However, the next day, I went out with Kish. We had a wonderful evening in one of the fancier bars in Chennai. Drinking cocktails, wearing cloths that show shoulders, watching embracing Indians and drunken British old guys (they haunt me, they are everywhere). Yesterday I spent with Nitas grandma, cooking and then went shopping for make-up. Girls, tell me if you need something. The stuff here is HIGH quality and still very affordable. Also, contact lenses! Jessie, if you want me to get you a pack of your contact lenses, just write me a mail with the details.

Then I took the overnight train to Kodaikanal and here I am. Wonderful place.

Short update

Sorry, I couldn't write that much lately. I've been basically teaching last week, in Chennai, in a community college. Wonderful experience. At night, I met really cool people -- Nita is really taking care of me. Haha, I actually had a date with a movie star. Everyone knows him and his family, just I didn't. We were pretty funny, white girl being stared at and him :). Chennai isn't too bad, actually, you really have to find the nice places. Today, I went to Church. Yes, me. Wonderful experience -- it is a lot nicer over here than at home. And then we went shopping! I spent maybe 40 Euro for so many nice clothes.
Otherwise, I will blog about the school system as soon as possible!
Aaah, and for the interested people: check out Madras Contemporary Art. A mix of old, traditional South Indian Art and Modern Art. It is soooooooo beautiful. I was honestly thinking of buying the "Blind Poet and Butterfly" by C. Douglas.
Thats all for now -- I gotta sleep, have to teach tomorrow ;).