Sachin’s Diary
WOHAA Trip to India
Day 1
We all managed to arrive at Heathrow in one piece and as were about to check in we hit rock bottom as our worst fears had come to life, Hamza had gone missing in the airport. However after finding him, I distributed our group hoodies and we set of on our way. After landing we left and made our way to Star City Apartments with our driver Lockesh who was affectionately know was “lok” or “the lock” for the rest of the trip and Ravi Shankar who was referred to as “Shanks.” After an hour of aimlessly wandering around the hotel breakfast opened and we enjoyed the first of many meals. After a few hours of sleep and we were ready to go to the beach only to be disappointed on arrival that we couldn’t actually swim. That evening Mrs. Sriram joined us, so that’s where this diary ends, thanks. No im only joking, that evening she treated us to some tasty north Indian food. Branavan decided to ruin the evening by eating a peanut and getting a reaction. You should know that he is allergic to pineapples and nuts. Back at the hotel Sahil and I were joined by the others for a session of doing nothing.
Day 2
After a late night and a tiring previous day a lie in was in order, however we were awoken by a call from reception at 8 am, lovely. Rajni got our hopes up by telling us we would see A R Rahman, at this point Matt was totally oblivious as to whom he was, but we were truly disappointed as he refused to see us. Instead Lok took us shopping, seeing Shiv bargain in English to a man who only spoke Tamil was possibly one of his funniest moments of the trip. Earlier that day we had an invitation from Branavan’s father to join him for dinner, for the whole trip he was referred to as “The Rud’s” and so that’s what his name will be for the rest of this diary. As the 6 of us went swimming the rud’s ordered “about 3 coffees,” the waiter walked off with a confused look on his face. We went for a swim on the rooftop pool and then were treated to dinner by the rud’s. That night we once again gathered in our room to play a somewhat epic game of truth or dare.
Day 3
We were taken to a 5* resort out of town along the coast. Shanks took us to lunch and we were serenaded by two local men named Ryan and Andy, it was the start of a great friendship between us. Cleverly enough we all came to the resort without swimming shorts and so and had to buy some, Branavan and Shiv decided that they would try and pull of the Daniel Craig look by wearing skin tight Speedos, as expected Shanks was not impressed. We had to find something to do to pass the time and managed to find out that we could go quad biking, all excited that it would be a brutal race as we all thought of ourselves as real men we arrived to find one quad bike standing alone and were told it would be one at a time. The midday sun took its toll on us and we had to get to the swimming pool. We played some sort of game with a volleyball and Branavan suddenly left us, 5 minutes later we found him playing catch with a 5 year old girl. Once again we were treated to dinner at the resort and were listening to live music from Ryan and Andy. In walked three girls and at the same time a song was announced to Rodger, a man sitting there with a drink and the look on his face as if he was planning something terrible. Boys being boys we made up a desert dish of chocolate cake surrounded by a syrup heart and got the waitress to send it to the girls and say that it was from Rodger, at the same time a dish was sent to Rodger from the three girls. Once again we congregated together, this time in reception with hotel staff, after a quick round of arm wrestling between Branavan and someone from the hotel we actually went upstairs and fell asleep pretty quickly.
Day 4
You may have been thinking that the point of this trip was to go and teach and up till now we had actually just been enjoying ourselves on a holiday. Well Monday morning arrived and by 8 o’clock we were out the hotel and sitting in traffic on our way to the school. Upon our arrival the principal was waiting for us and we had our first meeting. Sahil and I then went on to teach the kinder garden students, having prepared magic we had to sway from the plans as they were too young to understand, we ended up singing baa baa black sheep and other nursery rhymes together, at the end of the class we handed out toys one by one. We moved next door and did the same thing with another slightly older kinder garden class. Before lunch we were absolutely smashed at a game of volleyball by the school team who are at a national level. They seemed to have a little joke between them as they watched us try our hardest but fail. After lunch we showed a year 6 class some card magic before playing a game of cheat, with them being so young we weren’t sure if they’d understand it but they were fully experienced and even had their own version called fraud. We finished the day by teaching a year 11 class some basis economics. Before leaving to go back to the hotel we sat with the school for their daily prayers. Back at the hotel we all showered and got ready for dinner, which was supposed to be at pizza hut, Lok being Lok got us lost and we ended up at dominoes. Back at the hotel we had a lot of toys and clothes to sort through and so after that the hotel staff joined us up in our room for another round of arm wrestling. Branavan wanting vengeance from the day before fell to the ground and starting doing press up’s and then almost tore of his shirt in true movie style to show us his “guns.” Once again the other guy won.
Day 5
Waking up tired we were reminded at breakfast that on our last day we had to put on a show for the whole school, with that worry in mind we headed off for the second day at school. We begin the day with a double lesson of origami with years 4 and 5. One particularly clever child managed to finish it before us! After being treated to a typical south Indian lunch we headed to a science exhibition that the school had taken part in. They had made a model based on planting food using our waste materials; they successfully got through to the national round, so congratulations to them. We headed back to the hotel and cleaned up and got dressed as that night we would be dining with the owner of our hotel as well as many others across Chennai. We had dinner with him as well as his family. Back at the hotel we were sad that our holiday was coming to an end and so decided that night would be something out of this world; unfortunately we ended up in our room stuck for ideas on what to do for our assembly the next day. Our team clowns Shiv and Bran went to another room and an hour later came back with a fully scripted play. After three practice rounds and falling on the floor with laughter we went to sleep confident that we would impress at the school. Branavan decided that he would stay the night in my room, he found a sari from the clothes we had to hand out and decided that would act as clothing and a duvet for the night.
Day 6
We actually woke up full of enthusiasm that morning! We arrived at the school and gave our final lessons of the trip, this time it was Spanish and towards the end the whole class was reeling of numbers 1-20. As we were leaving children ran us to us to ask for autographs and handed us there drawings and paintings, for me personally this was the most humbling moment of the trip. After this lesson, we were called out to the cricket pitch and although we played some simply inspirational cricket our captain took us to a loss, so that was two matches we’d had lost. Still this did not deter us from eating lunch with the principal and then sat and watched the children of the school put on an incredible show, with karate and some yoga which we could not imagine doing even in our wildest dreams. Then it was our time to shine, acting out what we did to be in India the children didn’t really understand us and only laughed when we danced around or when Shiv ran around the stage “woofing” and pretending to be a dog, this was his best moment of the trip by far. Back at the hotel we decided that we would have a rooftop chappal rave as it was our last night, Sahil and I went to the rooftop armed with chappals and a set of ipod speakers and engaged in chappaling it. Rajni decided to join us on the roof and enjoy the sight of the sunset over Chennai. At night we went for dinner to rud’s hotel once more and this time we treated him! A group effort was made to convince Rajni to take us clubbing but we were refused entry as we were single, Branavan and I made an attempt at being a couple but still we were refused entry. We saw no point in sleeping that night as we had to leave as 4 the next morning. We stumbled into the car but Lok made sure we were awake by the time we got to the airport, only to find out that for the first time in my life I was early to check-in!
Day 7
The short flight to Delhi consisted of us sleeping and that’s it. We somehow spent 4 hours at Dheli airport and then sat on board our journey home. Sahil, Branavan and I started coughing and sneezing as to scare people of swine flu and were told to stop otherwise we would be left in Delhi, apart from that the flight back was uneventful.
