Kate’s Diary

Thursday, 25th

Leaving my mum at the airport was grand. I was having great craic with the girls and she was talking to the other parents. It still hadn’t hit me that I wouldn’t be seeing her for three weeks. The plane took off at about three o clock. The journey to Heathrow was fairly boring as I was sitting beside an elderly couple. But we had a little chat and I told them what we were doing. I then showed up his sudoku book by whipping out my electronic game J.
In Heathrow I ate a little and shopped a little, nothing very much. Vivienne and I did get lost for about ten minutes though because an Indian man sent us the wrong way, but we found the others soon enough. Security sucked! It took us a half hour at least to get through. At the start of the line I had a full bottle of coke so I thought I’d better get rid of it fast, I downed it in less than a minute (proud of myself) and then lined up for ages (quite annoyed). But we got through eventually.
We hopped on the plane at around nine and by then I was very hyper, I couldn’t sit still in my seat. Some of us got a couple of hours sleep and some stayed up and talked. The flight attendant was mightily annoyed at us all. For hours all you could see when you looked out the plane was desert, it was really cool. They gave us Indian food for dinner. The man was not very happy that I was a vegetarian. Here’s the conversation;
“vegetarian?” I asked the man
“no, lamb”
“can i get vegetarian?”
“lamb”
“vegetarian” pointing at myself
“no vegetarian”
“ok, never mind”
“lamb”
“no”
Ten minutes later he throws me a vegetarian meal, twas nasty.


Friday, 26th

We landed in Calcutta hyper as hyenas on AIDS (quote courtesy of Sorcha). We all got our bags easily enough and stepped outside to a bad smell and dirty, hot air. But it didn’t dampen our spirits one bit. Immediately two young boys ran over to us to beg for money but we were warned not to give them anything, I think a couple of people did though. We all piled onto a small bus and took off. We were all amazed and shocked at what we saw on the way to the school. The Indians are mad drivers. Road rules? What road rules? Horns are constantly a honkin’ to notify other drivers of their presence. Twas quite annoying at first but you get used to it. Of course there was rubbish (a lot of it), dirt, public toilets (without doors, enough said) and random animals walking around doing their own thing. What was really exciting was the Dominoes pizza we saw driving by, we were already planning a nice night of western food.
We were greeted very warmly in the school by the rainbow children (children that came in off the streets and go to a school down the road until they learn enough English to go to Loreto). They were all very excited to see us and were hugging us and holding our hands. We all went up to check out our room and call our beds. The room fitted us all comfortably; the beds were a mattress, a sheet, a blanket and a pillow. We then went back down to the kids for a while. I wasn’t expecting them to speak such good English, an older girl actually knew a little Irish. They were all so smart and aspired to be doctors and lawyers. They were amazing.
We then headed out to the market for a quick look around. People there sell the most random things, from padlocks to watches to clothes pegs. Everyone was either selling us stuff, staring at us or taking pictures. Odd! I clung to Alice to keep from separating or being groped. But all in all it was enjoyable. We took an auto rickshaw back to the school, just for the craic. We had dinner then went to the common room for a class chat. Twas great craic altogether. Then off to bed we went.



Saturday 27th

We were introduced to the school at assembly. It was kind of boring and it wasn’t helping that I was feeling a bit light headed. We then went off to join in with a class 10 (same as 4th year) for a history lesson. The lesson was interesting enough. We told them of our independence and they told us theirs. We then talked in separate groups about what we liked about our school and then presented it to everyone.
We then went out to the market again and I, borrowing 20rupees, bought a pair of flip-flops. The boys stopped in every single tailors to check for cheap suits.
Later we went to a Chinese for dinner because we, already, missed good food. I didn’t like it though. Had good craic though.

Sunday, 28th

Today was brilliant! We had a day out visiting temples around Calcutta. We walked the little bit to the train station where we hopped on a dirty, smelly and crowded train, but I was still excited. We jumped off somewhere and headed for the first temple. At first it was nice, no beggars, happy faces (white people are great entertainment here) but I nearly threw up after seeing men chop off chickens heads and legs and fish. We also saw a truck run over a cat. And to make matters worse, we were lost. So we found our way to a group of rickshaws and used them to get to the temple
.....more to follow
- Kate