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Good evening everyone and welcome to the best blog of the whole India trip. After waking up at 6am from the bed made of steel, Mrs Garvey rushed us to do morning yoga with the sisters. Miss Turley was the best by far, but special mentions to Miss Wood who didn’t even manage to get out of bed after a rough night. ... yes she has Delhi Belly. The tiredness was beginning to show however, as many began to show weary positions as they could barely reach past their knees when they were trying to touch their toes. After what felt like an eternity of back breaking pains, yoga was over and we could finally go for a rest...... ...Only joking. Mrs Garvey was quick to announce we had an action filled day with a speedy breakfast consisting of the well known mixture of chips and eggs. Next we headed to the child parliament of Theni. This is where they would put forward problems in the local area such as a lack of running water, as well as improvement needed for drainage. They explained their plans to move the government forward by continuing the initiative and trying to complete the 18/ goals set by UN. The young girls shared the fears the face daily from sexual assault and the costs attached to providing a dowry. After the meeting with the youth parliament, we were blessed with a 10 minute break before being taken to the school to go into some more classes. Tales emerged from the classes, for example Liv and Orlagh were encouraged to sing ‘Hot and Cold’ by Katie Perry, and Lottie and Izzy did their debut performance of ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ for the excitable students. The students loved seeing us and had several questions they wanted answering like ‘what’s your favourite vegetable?’ or ‘when are you next visiting?’. We managed to spend around half an hour with the children, before being informed we were going to a Hindu Temple... On the journey to the temple, the boys were informed that we would not be allowed to enter without the sacrifice of our T-shirts and a towel around the head. This was very unexpected, and we were taken by surprise as this is definitely not what we thought we were letting ourselves in for. The Hindu men welcomed us by instructing us to take our shoes off and run to the temple in order to not completely burn our feet. The girls and boys were separated onto different halves of the temple, and experienced how Hindus pray. This was quite different to how catholic’s would normally celebrate mass, for example the Hindus made us all line up and put chalk on our foreheads and arms, and gave us all a banana, lemon and sweet. We explored the temple for a while, before getting back on the boiling bus, and heading back to the convent for a well-deserved lunch of.... you guessed it chips and ice cream. Kanta and Joe Erratum. Despite his protests, Kanta was first to whip his T shirt off declaring his body was ‘Beach ready’. He was also the only student to be reminded by the Sadu (holy man) not to take selfies, posing in front of the divine mirror.
