Having a fun time with power outs and mosoon rains ;)

How's the weather back in Germany? Cold and windy? I'm kind of envious!
Why? - Well, I suppose you still have light at night, water to take a shower and you're not swept away by the rain. Enjoy it!

I've just realized that there is never any normal week at Shanti Bhavan. That is a good thing though, otherwise it would get boring, right? I meant to write a Blog entry about a typical day at the school but I always get distracted by unexpected events (apart from not finding time to do it).

Last week started with me getting incredibly sick on Tuesday morning. I woke up at 3 am and managed to get a bucket just in time. Shortly after I felt like not having to hug the bucket any more I had to run to the toilet. I stayed in bed the whole day and felt surprisingly good again in the afternoon.
It just seems inevitable to get sick at some point when staying in India for a longer time. Since I arrived here I already have been sick once, that Tuesday was the second time. Now I just hope I'm immune against any stomach bug that's out there!

The rest of that week was dominated by the celebrations for the "International Day of the Girl Child" that took place for the first time on that Thursday. For us, that involved people from Intel (the computer chip company) being on campus, giving an entrepreneurship training for the older girls and helping with organizing the celebrations.
All this resulted in the girls barely being in class, speeches and celebrations during classtime and finally, classes being cancelled on Thursday. It was not too bad though, as it meant I had time to finish reading one of my books ;)

That weekend we (Ally, Lynn, me and two new volunteers, Rebecca and Fanny) went to Bangalore from Saturday to Sunday, staying over night at the Sri Lakshmi Comforts Hotel. The main reason for me to go was to see the movie "Looper" which was supposed to be amazing, according to dozens of critics. I found it extremely disappointing - it just wasn't a good movie. Probably the critics were distracted from the content by Bruce Willis who played one of the main characters.
However, we still had a great time at the mall where the cinema was located, eating frozen yogurt and stuff we don't get at the school ;)
The next day Lynn, Fanny and me went to the botanical gardens of Bangalore which are somewhat away from everything else but are huge! That was basically the most impressive thing about them, together with some trees, planted by either Queen Elizabeth II, Jawaharlal Nehru or Indira Gandhi. The rest was not that well-kept so we didn't stay for too long.
The weirdest thing about the weekend though was that every single auto driver wanted to cheat us. They asked for ridiculous amounts of money, the driver who was supposed to take us to the gardens didn't know the way - even though he said so before, took forever to get there and wanted a ridiculous amount of many in the end, way more than we agreed on. When we refused to pay the got aggressive and Lynn got scared, so she paid him what he wanted. Strictly spoken we should have called the police.
Two! other drivers who should take us to our Hotel wanted us to walk the last 1,5 km so they didn't had to take the turn required to pass by the hotel. The reason they gave us was: "Sir, I can't drive on the other lane here, only one way!"
This was far from being true as the road our hotel was one was one of the biggest roads in Bangalore! He just planned on us not knowing it and wanted to save some time and money by making us walk.

As we arrived at Shanti Bhavan, the power in the school had been out for almost two days. When we came back on Sunday it still wasn't on again. On the weekend and in the following days we also had heavy monsoon rains so supposedly some power lines broke down in Tamil Nadu. However, another problem became apparent on Sunday. The school, being remote, gets its water from an underground well with a pump distributing it to the different buildings. There it is stored in water tanks on the roof. The pump is run by electricity. On Sunday, the water tanks were almost empty, with no electricity to refill them.
The reason that I am able to write this post now, on Tuesday, is that we had power for some time today. However, it only has half the amperage (don't ask me about details! ;) which means it is sufficient for charging a phone or a computer and for the energy saving lamps in all of the buildings but not for running a pump. This afternoon I was able to squeeze half a bucket of yellowish water out of one tap to take a shower after PT...I just hope real power comes back tomorrow.
The other problem is that the classroom light in the school runs on solar power, to be precise, a battery that is charged by solar panels. With the sky being gray and cloudy all the time now we barely get enough power to light the classrooms for one hour in the evening when the kids are supposed to learn and do their homework.

That's another not-so-common week at the school so far, how about Germany? I still wait for the construction workers to hit the main or accidentally cut the power while building Stuttgart 21, should that happen when I'm back again - I'm ready now!