Saturday, September 16, 2006

Two months India

I can hardly believe it is already two months ago that I arrived in India. Although so many things happened, it seems just a few days ago. My hair, though, proves that is has been a while: from black, it turned to brownish with a copper tint and with my own light-brown where it is growing.

Two months ago, that also implies that we arrived in Trivandrum one month ago: one month of internship in which we haven’t accomplished a lot of things, contrarily even. With all these luggage problems, it was quite understandable we didn’t do that much the first weeks, and when it was finally sorted out, it was too close to Onam to start our own project. Then came Onam – one week of holidays (you don’t hear us complaining about that J). But this week we hoped to finally get started. On Monday, it seemed that it would succeed: we would leave on Tuesday and visit the projectsite for some 3 or 4 days, and at the end of the week, give in our first proposal – working hard, but we were really looking forward to doing it.

Monday, September 4, 2006

Happy Onam!

Onam celebrations in Poojappura

While in Belgium school started, the beginning of September for us meant holidays: yesterday at work, we celebrated the start of Onam, a 10-day lasting festival that takes place all over Kerala. For that, we needed traditional Keralan clothes. We had the choice: a sari or a salwar kameez – a long dress + trousers and of course the usual scarf, worn the Indian way, which means starting from the back, draped on the front and ending on the back again…