Teaching Rears its Ugly Head.

Welcome loyal followers and apologies all round. I promised that this would come a lot sooner and events are moving along much faster than I can get them on here. This is due to my laziness, patchy (at best) Internet access and the fact that I would undoubtedly lose readers if my blog entries were longer than the train ride I had to endure in order to get here. And it really was one long train ride as it totalled 17 hours. Unfortunately I must also profess that the length of the journey was not the only problem that was encountered. Some careless fool had crushed my already injured toe before departure and it was bleeding profusely, also my designated bed was occupied by a sleeping Indian family for the entirity of the journey and it took a fair amount of time before I was able to find an available one. The upside of all of this was that I witnessed the sun rising over the desert in the early hours and it was spectacular. Trains in India are not at all like they are depicted by The Darjeeling Limited, which is a crying shame. They are, for one, almost entirely blue inside and out, as well as being cramped and smelly. The less said about the toilets, the better.

We arrive in Jaisalmer to find no fanfare and celebrations, rather a large number of soldiers whose sole purpose seemed only to be to provide an instant reminder that we are situated perilously close to the Pakistan border. It is clear on arrival at the camp that the sheer amount of bland or spicy curries will get to everyone by the end of the trip and the cold, tasteless example we were presented with does little to inspire confidence in the resident cook.
Jaisalmer was explored the following day and one of the oddest things about India is fully exposed, the cows. They are absolutely everywhere and treated with more respect than most people. It is quite a shock to watch five or six cows being herded out of what appears to be one of the bigger restaurants in town. One more animal experienced that day was my first and currently only scorpion that was quickly dispatched with the base of a mug. On a slightly animal related note, I have been able to reel off both the purple wombat (twice) and the newly acquired onion story, to mixed reviews.
I have been placed in a school with a delightful bunch of fellow volunteers where we are expected to teach English and Maths (and, as it turns out, anything else thatt we deem appropriate) to 7-8 year olds in the morning and I.T. to teenagers in the afternoons. So far, I am unsure whether we have actually taught anything to anyone as the language barrier and lack of a translator or real teacher 90% of the time has made it difficult to gauge how much the kids are taking in in the morning and we have been unable to use the computers as power has been as inconsistent as my blog entries might suggest. Also, we have only had one full week of teaching as 'extreme' cold weather prevented children attending one day (I, on the other hand, ended up horribly sunburnt on that day) and public holidays which seem to be rather arbitrary have prevented us from working. All in all, teaching is hard, especially with one chubby bastard in the class whose one aim seems to be to sabotage my lessons at any cost. However, I am sure once it all settles down it will be easier and I will hopefully start to see progress being made.

Thats all from me for now, I hope that it has been satisfactory. Next time, look forward to a camel safari and my immodium overdose.

Valediction.