Tea Time

Libby came round today and my inner granny had a field day!

I began the day making scones using the scone mix she gave me for my birthday (http://www.wessexmill.co.uk/), its a cheat's way to make scones and it was amazing, literally all I did was add water & a few sultanas and they pretty much made themselves. We then went to the charity shop for a lovely browse, and came home for a catch up and these delicious treats - what more could you want from a day?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :) Look at the concentration needed to apply the jam perfectly. Our country has the best traditional foods, hands down.

I'm also looking forward to the prospect of a picnic next week which will hopefully involve many of the same things, but hopefully my wicker picnic basket too. Can't wait until we're old enough for this behaviour not only to be considered acceptable, but expected of us!

Amy x

No place like home

Its been a while hasn't it? The dongle situation was unfortunate in our last week which made blogging a challenge, and I've been making the most of enjoying the Motherland this past week which is my excuse for the lack of India closure!

The last week was lovely, on Wednesday we took the children for a picnic in the park which was one of the best days of the trip. They absolutely loved it, some like Nitesh in the picture below hadn't been to a park before & didn't know what to make of it at first. In fact the first time we put Nitesh down the slide he cried his eyes out & put out his arms and legs to slow him down so he looked like a starfish haha, but after that he loved it & he'd wave at me with a massive grin on his face as he whizzed down it.

We also made them all biscuits again for pudding, I got my long awaited henna done, then while we waited for half to be dropped to their homes, I played what became the hottest game of It that I have or will ever play.

Then we traveled to Belgaum on Thursday to visit the tailoring centre for the temple prostitutes and to run a children's programme, and while we were there we both bought a couple of saris so the tailoring ladies measured us up, stitched our blouses for us & showed us how to get into them.

On Sunday we decided to try out our saris for church, so our land lady turned up in the morning to get us into them, and everyone was so happy to see us wearing them.

Monday afternoon we had to catch the plane to Bombay, so we went to the day care centre in the morning to say our goodbyes & give them presents, it was very emotional & Lyds and I both ended up bawling our eyes out & unable to speak! They helped us get into our saris too, which we wore on the planes & arrived in England wearing (although mine had to be redone by a cleaning lady in Mumbai!). They went down a treat - we got out of paying for 10 extra kilos of luggage because the lady said we looked pretty in our saris, we barely got checked through security because they were just chatting to us, and the flight attendant wanted to take us home with him - if you're planning on any sort of mischief on the planes, I'd recommend wearing a sari, they'll never say a bad thing about you!

We arrived at Gatwick at 6:30am after 3 exhausting plane journeys & were greeted by Mum, Dad and Josh which was lovely, and came straight home to cook a full English breakfast :)

So far I'm still loving being back in England, plus I can't think of a better time to come back weather/season-wise, its gorgeous! There's lots of wedding planning to be done now (notice the jam jars below which Mum is helping me sort for the reception), and our mortgage was accepted today so its all systems go on the house front too.

Its going to be such an exciting year. So exciting that I felt compelled to take an arty picture of myself looking happy.

Anyway that's all for now. For my avid fans, don't worry this is not the end (although Laura & Lib I expect you to start your own blog now)

Amy x

This time next week

Bonus points for finding us in that picture.

We’ve had dongle issues again so we’re back in the cyber cafe. Have had a busy few days so I’ll give you a quick update, we went up to North Goa for some sightseeing on Saturday, visited two amazing churches and a museum, then a famous lighthouse which is apparently used in lots of Indian films. We also got to go to KFC which was deluxe.

Then in the evening we were invited to Reika’s house for dinner with the other teachers Renuka & Sarouj, their families and the OM sisters. It was a lovely evening and really nice to be able to meet up with everyone outside of the day care centre & meet their families, plus eat some amazing food – Reika is the cook at the day care centre & makes some of the best food in India. We ended the evening eating fresh fruit ice cream in the street at 11pm after Renuka & her husband decided to treat us all on the way back to our houses J Below is Sarouj (left) with Reika and her family.

Then on Sunday we went back to the English speaking church & led the Sunday school, did the lost sheep again as our resources are diminishing & it’s so hard to get hold of any crafty stuff out here at all. After that we had an afternoon off so we made the most of it on the beach, not that I have any sort of tan to show for it.

Yesterday we went to the day care centre in Birla for the 3^rd time, and taught them Daniel & the lions, then went to Renuka’s for dinner where she made us a ROAST DINNER! Francis’ wife Alison is from England so she taught Renuka how to make a roast, and it was soooo good. They make it slightly differently out here but she had nailed the potatoes, and it was so nice to eat something other than rice for one evening! I’ve written her up a cake recipe so I’m hoping to make one with her before we leave so she knows what she’s doing, she says she can never get them right haha. The picture below is us with Sarouj, Renuka, Reika & their children.

Today we did our last teaching session with the Margao day care children because tomorrow we’re decorating biscuits with them & having a picnic J We did the parable of the precious pearl and made treasure boxes, and also took some big bags & had a sack race which was highly amusing – we took a video but its takes too long to upload so I’ll do it once we’re home. Needless to say the bags were bigger than some of the children so they were slightly dubious to begin with as to what we were going to do with them; one particularly small boy actually cried when we put him in it!

Sarouj is amazing at henna so she’s going to do it for both of us, she started with Lydia’s today & she’s doing mine tomorrow, it looks amazing I can’t wait. Hopefully it will stay on for long enough so we can show people when we get back to England, although that might mean we don’t wash our hands for a few days haha.

Think that’s all the major things to catch you up on, other than that a week today we’ll be home – it’s gone so quickly! We’ll be sad to leave; we’ve met some wonderful people & done so many amazing things but we miss everyone at home, the food, even the rain so we’re looking forward to it at the same time.

Bye for now,

Amy x

The little thingz

Had another lovely morning at the Margao day care centre teaching the story of Noah, definitely contemplating stealing a few of the children & bringing them back with me, particularly the two boys below, Zaid and Jay. They’re always being told off but they’re so cheeky you can’t help but find them ridiculously endearing! Me & Jay have got each other’s backs.

We made mosaic rainbows with them today & they looked so good! The parents have told us that the children have been going home and talking non stop about school, and saying they wished they could stay all day J

And then to top off our day, Francis lent us his toasted sandwich maker so we decided to make some baked bean toasties, expecting to only be able to find the weird Indian beans. But we only went & found these didn’t we!?!

The king of all beans! We nearly wet ourselves with excitement. So we’re off to cook ourselves the most English tea we’ve had so far J

Happy Friday,

Amy x

Bugs Life

First of all these are our friends John and Mandy, who we were so blessed to have met. They are two of the loveliest, most generous people and we learned so much from them in the short time we spent with them. They are now back in Mumbai, but we will hopefully see them again soon – maybe even in England :)

Tuesday we taught the children the story of Daniel & the lions den, which resulted in some of the sweetest lions ever, although some of them did ask what flower they were supposed to be!

We also played Twister with them, we took 4 mats over so the children could all play, it was mayhem and we nearly wet ourselves as we watched the teachers picking the children up like starfish and placing their limbs onto the right colours – couldn’t help but be reminded of the part in Bambi where Thumper has to prop him up! And also couldn’t resist the temptation to make up a few as well to cause extra tangling :)

Yesterday we were lucky enough to join a literacy class held in one of the slums, five women attend & they are the mothers of some of the children in the day care centre. It took place in one of the women’s house, which was one tiny room smaller than Lydia's bedroom, in which she lives with her husband and three children. They cannot read or write, or speak any English, so the OM sisters are teaching them to write in Hindi at the moment, but me & Lyds taught them some of the body parts and colours in English, can’t help but think they might be calling their mouth a ‘mouse’ for a while haha. After that we shared our testimonies with them and heard how they had become Christians, and got to pray for them as well. We spent some time chatting with them afterwards too which was lovely, Lydia came over all emotional and ended up crying! The OM girls are leaving on Sunday but we enjoyed ourselves so much we’ve asked if we can go back next week and see the class again, hopefully will get some pictures then too, don’t have any at the moment. We went for a leaving biryani for the OM girls in the evening, from the left we have Veena, Thanshim and Bhagya.

This morning we were back at the Margao day care centre again, teaching them the creation story. Started off the morning with a casual masala and coriander porridge (as you do), then made some pretty butterflies with paints & crayons to brighten up the classroom. The children loved it & the crafts all turned out really well, they can all say butterfly now as well :) They’d never seen pipe cleaners before either so they thought they were amazing, we played some games with those too afterwards.

Forgot to say, we had our second major bug invasion on Tuesday evening. The first was the ant infestation which occurred last week & thankfully has not reoccurred, but just as we were starting to feel safe again (and domesticated as well because Francis had lent us his toaster), we walked into our room to see a pair of massive antennae poking out of the toaster. Belonging to the biggest cockroach ever. If the wire hadn’t been so short we were planning on plugging it in and cooking the stupid bug, but this was not possible, so we resorted to knocking on Maria’s (the guest house owner) door & asking her to get it out haha. She was shaking it for a loooong time before it finally popped out, but me & Lyds didn’t look at it until she’d squashed it & assured us it wouldn’t be chilling in our kitchen appliances any more.

Think that’s all for now, bye!

Amy x