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Bangalore, India
12° 59' N 77° 35' E
Sep 27, 2005 10:26
Distance 507km

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Other entries in Bangalore

Bangalore, Mysore

Text written in: English

Hello everyone,
Well India continues to be an interesting experience and I feel I am settling
in at last. The problems at school still continue to a degree but last week I
sat down with my host and the principal and we disgussed my troubles. Since
then they have agreed to give me some older classes. Although some of these
kids are only 2 years younger then me I am finding the classes much more
relaxing to teach. The kids seem more indepedent and have much better english
so I am able to work outside of the text book. So far I have just been
reading each class chapters from "Guliver's Travels", which I bought at an
Indian book shop on a day off, and then getting them to take notes on the
characters and themes. This seems to be working nicely and I think they
actually understand my english. My host has also complemented me on slowing
and clarifying my speech to, so I think things are heading in the right
direction.

Aside from school my travels have continued and last weekend I made my
longest journey yet, which was equal in richness to the prior. The trip was
pretty spontanious and I didnt even know I was going until 15 minutes from my
departure. It started on a wednsday afternoon when I was talking to my host.
We were mainly on the subject of school but he casually mentioned to me that
there was an upcoming bus strike which would result in no school thursday or
friday. I had recently recieved an invite to go to Bangalore and meet some of
the Canadian Gap members for the weekend but had declined since Bangalore is
12 hours away and there simlpy was not enough time to see them. With this new
4 day weekend opening up  however I quickly made plans. The Bus strike did
not happen till the next morning so it was a now or never type of scenario. I
litterarly threw everything into a bag, ran out the door and jumped on the
last bus out of town. The bus left at 5 and went through the night, which is
good in theory since I could travel while I slept, but I overlooked the
difficulty of sleeping on an indian bus. One sleepless night later I was in
Bangalore and spent the next couple of hours finding my way to the residence
of the Gap memebers. In my rush out the door I did not have time to warn them
of my visit so they were under the influence that I was not coming. This made
things all the more interesting when I showed up at their door.
The residence was only that of two canadians but almost every canadian Gap
member was there. The plan was that all the canadians were gonig to meet in
Bangalore and then go down to Mysore(a couple of hours) for the weekend, so
they were already expecting guests. Since everyone had been travelling we all
spent this day relaxing, watching indian tv and eating.

The next day we got up early and took a bus to Mysore, we arrived there
around mid afternoon, checked into our grimy hotel and then went
out sight seeing. We started by goign to the Mysore Gardens, this is a big
fountain filled park at the base of a large dam in the area. It was another
bizarre situation, the park was filled with tourists and neon coloured
lights. Not relaxing by any means but we had a good time and the traditional
Indian bus rides to and from there were very fun to(traditional Indian:
packed with people). This took up the
majority of our day and after that we had supper and then turned into bed.
The next day we woke up early and grabbed an excellent forty ruppee (roughly
$1.5) all you can eat breakfast which was delicious and lasted us through
till supper. After breaky we headed to the Mysore Palace which was a
supposed "must see". The inside was filled with art and carvings but
unfortuneatly they were very strict about cameras so no pics:S. After that we
took a bus up to the top of Chamund hill where there are serveral small
temples. The view was excelent and we enjoyed the antics of the temple
dwelling monkeys native to the area. We had some time to spare so we decided
to walk the thousand step staircase to the bottom of the hill. Our legs were
rubber by the end but it was a much needed bit of excersise.  It also
provides a good story because half way down the hill we looked up and had a
good jump when we relized for the past couple of minutes we had been walking
under a mssive entanglement of spiderwebs accompanied by hundreds of spiders
at least 3 inchs in leg span. It really can't be described properly and the
pictures I took do not do it justice but periodicallly from this point on we
would look up and see these massive webs just a couple of feat above us
strung between trees. It was a bit daunting, like something you would see in
a horror but no one lost their nerve so it was just another interesting
experiance. After that we had another great meal and then I went off on an
overnight bus at 8. Looking back on it it doesn't seem like I did a lot but
the 3 days were packed and it was excellent to see everyone again. I got back
to Kollum 11am the next morning and hung out there for a bit. Then I took a
bus back to my placement, got back to my room by 1ish and collapsed. My sleep
deprevation caught up with me from the weekend and I slept straight from 1pm
to the next morning only waking up once in between to grab a quick supper.
Well that's about it from me, it is wednsday here now and I have another long
weekend coming up so I might be heading off to the cochin area again. Other
then that it has been good getting emails from you all and I hope to hear
from you soon.
-Adam