No "I" in "Team" or "Mahambaram"

Hey all!

So it has been forever since my last blog post. I apologize! Our schedules have been jam packed with teachings among other things, I've barely had time to write.

To give you an update: I'm still teaching everyday. My team, team mahmbaram (mango), has really hit our stride. Now that we've taught together for a few weeks, we know exactly what to say and when to say it, how to help each other out, when we can go into detail and other little things like that. We work together really well and have bonded immensely!

Team Mahambaram in Ooty, our short mountainside weekend vacation. 

The first college teaching! 

Team Mahambaram....in saris...including Israel!

Teachings!

I love that I am here in India, not as a tourist, but as a volunteer. Rather than randomly exploring tourist sites, we are actually interacting with the community! 

The organization I am with, the International Alliance for the Prevention of AIDS (IAPA), was featured this week in an Indian newspaper. The article explains a bit more what we do here. 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/US-students-go-to-city-schools-with-HIV-awareness-message/articleshow/14145528.cms?intenttarget=no

Basically, we are here teaching high school students about HIV and AIDS. There are over 33.3 million people in the world currently living with HIV and 2.4 million of them are in India. India has the third largest HIV positive population behind South Africa and Nigeria! It is a very serious topic and is often considered taboo to talk about here. 

In all our teachings we cover what fluids and doors into the body can transmit HIV, the three different ways of transmission (sexually, blood to blood, and mother to child) how HIV effects the cells and the immune system, the progression of the disease, and how to live a positive life by remaining healthy and getting tested. There are so many misconceptions about HIV and it is our goal to reduce stigma and to educate these students in how to prevent HIV transmission because HIV is 100% preventable! Even in America, discussing safe sex and terms like 'semen' or 'vaginal fluid' can be uncomfortable, but we trie to make it as interesting as possible for the students and incorporate many different activities and games to encourage participation.

Here are pictures with some of the classes we have taught so far!

Home Sweet Home

Hey everyone! It has been another busy busy week of teachings. Today, we had a double teaching...we taught once in the morning, had a quick lunch, and taught again in the afternoon! I absolutely love teachings especially when the students get really into participating...but the exhaustion is catching up to me.

I'm living in India. LIVING here! Now that I have been here for almost a month, I feel that I am actually integrated into the culture. If it weren't for my pale ghostliness, I could almost pass as Indian...almost. Despite its peculiarities (whole post coming soon), I am falling in love with this country. We have about an hour and a half commute on busses everyday to teachings, and it is my favorite time of day. I'm able to gaze upon so many people (really, lots and lots of people!) going about their day to day living in India. It is insane how different our lives are and yet how similar at the same time.

 It is also crazy how India has maintained its own unique culture. I came to India expecting much of it to be westernized, because most developing countries are constantly moving towards a western ideal. But India is so uniquely Indian! A few younger women may wear jeans at the mall or at a club, but every other woman I see still wears a sari, everyday. India has its own unique take on marriage, dating, and movies, among other things. This is all part of the reason why I love it so much. Despite being an up and coming nation, India's culture has survived and thrived!

I began writing this post as a lead in to describing my hostel, thus the title "home sweet home" but I guess all of India is becoming my home...at least for these two and a half months!

So, the hostel! We are staying at a hostel associated with the Church of Southern India. Though IAPA is not a Christian organization, this hostel gives us a good rate and provides both breakfast and dinner!

View from the outside

The rooms are nice. Some people have complained about bugs, and the decomposing states of the bathrooms...but this is INDIA...these are, easily, very nice rooms. I only have one roommate, Molly. Some rooms have three which becomes a bit more crowded. The best thing about our rooms... .they have air conditioning!!!!!!!

My bed is the one closest to the window. And, yes, that is our laundry line; we hand wash all our clothes.

The bathroom...really its not as bad as it looks. One weird thing about India: all the hostels I have stayed at have had the shower next to the toilet. There is never a shower curtain or type of stall separating it. It's fine, it works, but still kinda weird.

Before we all arrived at the hostel, our lovely coordinators made coloring pages for each door showing who was in each room! The writing underneath is the Tamil version of our names!

I'm getting much more accustomed to Indian food now. I don't know if I would every really choose to eat Indian food over other types of food, but its starting to grow on me. Basically, a meal is composed of rice, a type of bread (like chapati, dosa, or roti), and a type of sauce (sambar, chutney, or curry). Not being a huge fan of spicy foods, I have been avoiding the super spicy sauces!

The average breakfast spread: rice, peppers, two types of sauce, and dosa.

I really enjoy breakfast at the hostel! Only about 5 of us actually wake up to eat breakfast, everyone else chooses to sleep in. We call ourselves the "breakfast club." I know...so clever...but breakfast is really good. This is coconut chutney, rice, dosa, and coffee.

First Teaching!

Sorry for the lack of updates...I'm much busier now that we've started teaching, plus the only wifi is in the lobby where there is no air conditioning. BUT I will try to continue updating this blog at least once a week!

So we did start actually teaching last week! Yay!!!

Our first teaching was at a completely Tamil standard school (meaning translation was required for the whole teaching!). There was no air conditioning, and, at least in the room my group was teaching in, no fan either. By the time we were finished teaching we were drenched in sweat!

 But it was so much fun! I'm so excited that we get to do this over and over again! We taught a 9th standard class (basically kids between the ages of 12-14). To encourage active participation (especially when saying the taboo sexual terms) my team has strategized to make the whole teaching a competition between boys and girls. They get really into it! My favorite part of every teaching is when we have them scream the fluids (blood, semen, pre-ejaculate, and vaginal fluid) and doors (penis, anus, vagina, and open wounds) involved in the transmission of HIV at the top of their lungs. I mean, what other time in your life have you been able to shout the word "penis", in a school...so much fun! 

the first school we taught at

The contrast between schools is also really amazing. Later in the week we taught at a fancy private school where all the kids spoke fluent English and most of their parents were doctors, lawyers, or ambassadors. These students were super smart and actually already knew most of the information we were telling them. At the end of every teaching, if we have extra time, we always try to let them ask us questions about America and in return I ask them what we should see in Chennai. I love getting to know the students a bit more. We teach pretty casually and try to make the teaching as fun as possible, even though it is very serious information that we are teaching. It comes as a nice break for the students from their rather strict teachers.

One of our other teachings. This class only had one boy, so instead of doing "boys vs. girls" we had them choose team names.  One team was "chocolate bubblegum" the other team chose "YOLO" completely without our help.

Ponga (GO!)

It's already been 2 weeks that I've been in India! Its so crazy; time just seems to be flying by!

This week, I finally arrived in Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu in Southern India. This is where I will be living and teaching HIV/AIDS education for the next two months! Compared to Delhi and the other cities of northern India, Chennai seems a bit cleaner and more developed....it is also much larger and harder to navigate, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. 

This week was orientation week. We started off each day with a half hour of travel time walking and taking rickshaw/taxis in the awful humidity to get to our orientation classroom. I thought living in Arizona during the summer was bad...but Indian summers are just incredibly sweaty. Even if I am just standing in the shade, I drip sweat because of the insane humidity!

During orientation we learned a bit of Tamil each day, did team building activities, had Indian history and culture lessons, and, most importantly, practiced teaching with the small teams we will teach with for the rest of our time here. My group is composed of myself, one other girl from ASU, Britney, a boy from UofA, Israel, and our Indian counterpart/translator Vinoth. We were all a bit rusty during the practice teachings this week since we haven't really practiced since April, but we got lot of feedback from the Indian counterparts here and are excited to begin teaching in the classroom. Next Tuesday will be our first real teaching in an Indian school!

Introductions! This is Seema and Louis our Indian "mother" and "father" while in India. They are basically the heads of IAPA in India and help us with everything from flagging down rickshaws to sari shopping. I've even heard that if you get sick, Seema will rub coconut oil on your stomach and force you to eat soup. 

Tamil Lessons!

Playing Snake on our awesome old-fashioned Nokia cell phones! The two people on either side of me are my teaching group by the way. Also known as Group 5, Team Mahambram (Mango), or Israel, Laura, and Britney.

Our teaching group with our Indian counterpart Vinoth on a scavenger hunt. We came in dead last, finishing an hour after all the other teams.

After every practice teaching this week, we got feedback from all the coordinators on what we did well and what needed improvement.

Practicing teaching. This is the immunology section where we invite members from the audience to act out what each cell of the immune system does in the body. (Our team won first place in the poster contest for my poster there!)

The whole group at the beach in Chennai!

Indian Holiday

So my week of vacation in northern India is up L Today, Monday, we began the orientation for teaching. Last week was loads of fun and all that we’ve seen and done was incredible, but I’m excited to get settled into Chennai and start working!

Enjoy the highlights of last week in pictures!

Red Fort

Sunrise from the metro station

Ghandi'sMemorial

So story: The metro was really crowded and we all had to push our way onto it. The doors started to close on Hannah, so she backed up and got left at the train station as we drove away! This is once she got off her metro and was reunited again with us.

The beautiful Lodi Gardens!!!!

Lodi Gardens

Lodi Gardens

Crazy rickshaw rides!

stumbling upon a Hindi spiritual festival

Lodi Gardens

Lodi Gardens

Our whole pre travel group at Lodi Gardens!

Getting Henna...only 70 rupees...about $1.50!

The fan of death! We were afraid it would fall off and shred us in our sleep.

the Taj Mahal!

Metal detecters are everywhere in India! ...But people just crowd and push through them and even when they beep, no one is around to check anything...they virtually have no purpose.

Sleeper train!

We had to wear these funny booties in the Taj Mahal!

The unique style of sari worn in Sawai Modhopur.

Playing UNO in the train station with some street kids.

Our little beggar/follower boy

Indian Safari

We actually got to see a tiger! Apparently its really rare, they are only seen by about 30% of the safaris.

The decked out rickshaw of our hostel in Jaipur. He calls it the "ferrari" It even had a strobe light!