8th of October

On 6th of October I bought an Indian sim card. Per this very moment it is not working. Apparently I was lucky enough to buy from a company that was having trouble all over the Himachal Pradesh region. But, determined as I sometimes can be I walked back to the cell phone shop (now my second home here because I spend so much time there) where I asked them to fix it for me. Indians are very helpful, so the guy has been working his butt off to locate the problem, get in touch with the company and explaining everything to me. Supposedly it is going to be up running by tomorrow evening.

Today I have been hanging out at the cell phone shop, doing some laundry, trying to tidy up where I sleep and stuff like that. Nothing exciting really, but we went to the only Italian restaurant in town and we had garlic bread with tomatoes and stuff, pizza, soda, some fancy stuff I can’t remember the name of, and warm apple pie. It was like a small feast and we only paid 625 rupees. Which is approximately 75 kroner, I love India! That very same meal would have cost well over 1000 NOK in Norway.

These past days we have been hanging out at the blind school a bit and it has been really nice. The children there are very eager to speak English. We worked with the youngest ones who are 3-7 years old. When they are unsure of how to express themselves in English, they confide in each other to find the right sentences and words. It always makes me have to learn some Hindi. I only know a few words, but pani = water and Ma = me (I must add that I have no idea how to spell these words!).

After a while you forget that you are working with blind children and you say stuff like ‘look at this’ and when you can’t see something that is just in front of you, you find yourself saying ‘gosh, I must be blind’ Those moments are a bit embarrassing, but they usually don’t pay attention to it. We played some games with them while we were there. We had clapping games, ring games and gave them stuff they could make shapes out of. We would ask them to make a shape and they greet the challenge. One boy in particular was very keen on this. I asked him to make a heart. He had been so fast at the other shapes I had asked him to make, but this one was a real hassle for him. Then it occurred to me that he might not know the shape of a heart, so I drew it on his arm to help him. I couldn’t be more than 6 I think, but you never know; some of these Indian are quite short for their age. Anyways, he kept on struggling making the heart, so I made one that he could feel his way around and before you knew it he was on the right track. But he didn’t quite get the top of the heart where it goes a bit down. Suddenly the language we spoke was in our hands, me guiding his hands over my heart so that he could feel the shape and then over his heart so that he felt what part was missing. We had to do it a couple of times, but he managed. I showed him that now, our hearts were the same shape and the proudest smile came on his face. I could even see it in his eyes even though he was blind. I never expected a blind person to express such emotion through his, or hers for that matter, eyes as they could not see with them. It was a good moment.

Tomorrow we (Fiona, Kitty, Eloise and I) are going to Manali to visit some of the schools and orphanages there. It is about an hour and 30 minutes away from Kullu. We’ll stay at a hotel and come back on Saturday, because tomorrow morning we are going on a hike to one of the mountain tops. We’ll be able to see all of Kullu and probably more. Fiona said she heard something about a temple being at the top. I’m really excited about it, but it is going to be very steep. I’ll bring my camera and take some pictures J