Back in Yangon from Kalaymyo, Myanmar

We had an amazing whirlwind trip to Kalaymyo. We had teaching sessions two or three or sometimes four times a day. I finally ran out of lessons and one day when I was asked if I would like to say a few words, I had to tell them that I had nothing prepared! They treated us royally and one day they even killed a pig and had a love feast where they must have fed a hundred people. And of course they wouldn't let us go without giving us gifts. I got to ride on a motorcycle lots (as a passenger) and it was a lot more comfortable than riding in the "taxis." Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures in about a week and tell you more about all the events. Love to all.

Kolkata

We leave tomorrow for Myanmar and the plane is supposed to fly at 10AM (10:30 PM Saskatchewan time). We attended a church service in downtown Kolkata and there were 15 of us altogether. Swami and Violet provided a great meal for all of us and we took a taxi back to our hotel. We ate supper at the hotel an will pack up and get ready for our flight tomorrow. Everyone on the team is feeling well and is in good spirits. The last picture is of the Class 5 students that I taught a math lesson to (plus I talked a bit about Canada also.) There were about 100 students in the classroom as they had put two classes together. The class was at Brighter Academy in Imphal in the school the Shyam owns. His son Joshua helps run the school and his grandson Luchinglen attends this school. I had a wonderful three days stay with the family and they treated me as if I were a part of the family. Two mornings went for a walk with Shyam and was able to see a part of the city.

Shyam Salam's school

We had a terrific welcome when we arrived at Syham's place. His school has 1500 students and they have two shifts. the School starts at 6:30 am and goes until 10:30. Then the Class 6 through 12 starts at 11:00 and is finished at 3:00. Yesterday I taught a Class 5 math lesson to 100 students and then a Class 10 math lesson to 30 students. The Class 10 was more fun to do since I was able to do a demonstration of the proof for the Area of a Circle. Later on I was able to go to a small rural congregation and do a lesson on the book of Jonah.

We fly to Kolcutta today and tomorrow will visit Mother Theresa's Orphanage. On Monday we will fly to Rangoon in the south of Myanmar. We are over half-way on our trip so the last half will probably fly by even faster than the first half.

Shyam Salam's place

Monday we arrived back at Imphal and went to check into the Classic Hotel and discovered that they only had two rooms for us even though Ray had booked three. I volunteered to stay at Shyam's and they have treated me as if I were a part of the family. Joshua, his wife Ranita and Luchinglen and Hannah their children live with Shyam and Peggy. The two children are 6 and 4 years of age so I get to play with them and/or read to them in the evening. Thursday I am to give a lesson at 3:00 but in the morning I will go early for a walk with Shyam and when school starts I am to give a math lesson to a level 10 class! Ray is going to be going to a different place to visit on Thursday.

Imphal

After landing at the Imphal airport we took a taxi to Churachandpur and we stayed at the Hotel Venus which was more like a guest house. We had four rooms and because it was so cool at night, I used both of the thick blankets that were in my room. We took a trip out to Sagang which is a small village where we were involved with a blessing ceremony and reception for Hrutching and his wife. On the way we stopped to observe the harvesting of rice which was happening right beside the highway. At the reception the groom had hired a cook especially for the food for the Canadian visitors and it was HOT. They had cooked up food for all of the people who came to the reception and they ate just outside. They also gave us a gift of a traditional shawl for the men and a traditional shawl and a skirt (phanek) for the ladies. After leaving the village we went back to Churachandpur to the Venus Hotel and the next day we left by taxi for Imphal. When we arrived we discovered that they only had two rooms for us so I volunteered to accept Shyam's offer to stay at his place. I also got to ride on a Shashi's motor scooter (he is one of the teachers at Brighter Academy). Shyam took the rest in his car along with my suitcase. When we got there, they had prepared a presentation of a program of dance/exercise that they had been practicing for three months and had already competed and won a local competition. (If they win in the district, they will go on to a national competition.

More visits in Guwahati

This last full day in Guwahati was on Sunday and this was the third place that our team visited. The couple who lived in this place were well off since he had some kind of executive position in the Bank of India. One could see the office tower that he worked in from his place. We had a worship service here and the group picture is of their members.


The next picture is of a family whose son was a friend of Andrew McMillan's. His mom and dad and two sisters are standing in front of him. Next is a picture of a teacher named Medha Bharadwaj. She is in her kitchen making chapattis. She helped me do some shopping on Monday and helped bargain for me since she knew the value of things. On Monday morning we stopped at another friend of Andrew McMillan's Rahul and he had a sister whose name was Mona Lisa.
So now I can say that I shook the hand of Mona Lisa! I went with our driver Kuldeep to meet up with Medha while the rest had a lunch made for them. After shopping Kuldeep drove me to a place called Pantaloon where I met the rest of the team. After going back to the hotel for a bit of a break we went out once more Monday evening to Samuel and Chandrima Salam live. Mary Salam, her son Spirit, and her husband Richard (who is from England) were also visiting. I gave a Hotwheels car to Spirit and he soon overcame any shyness that he had.They served us a wonderful meal of rice, chapattis, cucumbers, dahl, lintels, pineapple slices, boiled eggs and water. We finally got back to the hotel at 8:30. I took a couple of pictures showing the view from about 8 stories up of the street. People throw their garbage by the curb on the street so it leaves an unsightly mess (and a smelly one too). Some places in the city are kept a little cleaner than others. At our hotel a street cleaner came by and scraped up the soggy garbage with a couple of squares of wood. He piled it in a hand cart. I suspect that the hotel pays for the service.

My observation is that there is quite a contrast in life style of the families that we visited in Guwahati. The bamboo building did have a smoothly finished concrete floor but the only thing separating their unit from the next was bamboo matting with a drape hanging over the wall. The ceiling had a bamboo matting as well to cover the tin roof material and the fan was held in place by wire wrapped around a bamboo support. They did have a TV and all the adults had cell phones that were newer than mine. At banker's home they had a wide screen TV, two cars in the garage and marble floors, an elevator, air conditioning.

Trip to Shillong

The trip was supposed to take 2 1/2 hours but it turned into an 8 hour ordeal. When we got to Shillong we noticed that the Khasi people dressed quite differently.
We arrived at a place where they had a nursing station and dispensary and the couple who looked after part of the operation was Margret and Philip Ho. She was from Tenn. or Kentucky and he was from Tibet. They met in the states when he went over to study. Their daughter and her family live next door in the same compound so they get to see their grandchildren everyday. They have fantastic flowers growing on their place. The poinsettia tree was in full bloom. Philip told me they get 1000 inches of rain in a year. The house picture is where Ray and Ellen lived for a few years. The school is the next couple of pictures. The upper balcony area is where there were some apartments and Cecil and Lavine Bailey lived in one of them. Ray said that Lavine objected strenuously to having to use a honey bucket so he took on the task of digging for an outhouse facility. (That area is now cemented over and is part of a basketball court---it was all jungle in those days). The traffic jams were caused by the hundreds of trucks loaded with coal going toward Guwahati with hundreds of the same trucks returning for another load. Besides the massive traffic jam we saw various sights. In Umsning we were able to get out to stretch our legs and view the work of the meat-cutters in action. One shop was butchering a pig and the next a cow. You can see the cows head on display by Ray! Ray had to cancel about four meetings with people in Shillong and we were only able to visit the Ho couple and they graciously fed us before we left. We left about 4:30 and got back at 11:00 which was six and a half hours. Total time on the road=14 1/2 hours to go 200 km. My recommendation is to not go there until they have finished twinning the highway!

India firsts

The Hotel Nakshatra has on the second floor lobby area a miniature Hindu shrine. One can find them all over India and most business places of any size and many educational institutions like universities will have a shrine. When we walk by this one going down the stairs, we often smell incense burning. The next picture is a family that we visited where they have started a small orphanage. They don't have a lot of space so they use the outdoors sometimes for their living-room.

At the Kalipani Bread of Life School I found four strands of rusty barb wire laying strewn over part of the playground. So I rolled it up with my bare hands and put it to the side by a fence.
I promised a picture of the elephant that we saw walking down the freeway so here it is.

On the sixth floor of the Hotel Nakshatra

We will be in Guwahati for about a week and we are staying on the sixth floor. Ray always takes the elevator (it has a nice view...all glass toward the outside of the building) but I try to take the stairs. There is not much chance to exercise since we do a lot of sitting and riding in a car through heavy traffic. There is a book about Saskatchewan that says, "You don't know cold unless you live in Saskatchewan." I would say, "You don't know heavy maniacal traffic unless you have experienced it in India!" I have driven on the autobahn in Germany and I've driven in Jamaica and in Paris...but I don't think that I even want to try driving in India. I took three motorcycle rides from two different riders and the scary part is not when they are going fast but when they are just crawling along at a low speed trying to avoid potholes, puddles, cyclists, carts, "Tuk-tuks," pedestrians, and animals. Out on the better road where there is more space and one can go faster, it feels a lot safer.

The first picture is of Bethel English School. To get to it we walked on a grass bridge! (Bamboo is a grass.) Next is the road through a former leper colony. Here Shelby and Laura did a lesson with the kids and did a hands on activity. I noticed a playpen for a toddler just as we were leaving. Everywhere around Bagdogra you can see acres of tea plantations. We bounced over a railway track and crawling over the rough road was a truck full of bananas and sugar cane. The next pictures is a gathering in the basement. The night before we met with them and we merely sat on the carpet with everyone else. However the next day they found some chairs and brought them in and they made their guests sit on chairs. That is the same everywhere in India. Guests are treated like royalty. They will invite you to their home, serve you a meal and will wait for you to leave before they will eat.

The next couple of pictures are of the Marina Hotel that we stayed at in Bagdogra. They were working on an addition to the hotel and a worker splashed water on the brick in preparation for adding the cement finish over the brick.
We took a Spice Jet from Bagdogra to Gwahati. I threw in a couple of pictures of the clouds and the reflection off the water below.
As we passed over a bridge over a large body of water we saw the sun going down. And at the school we stayed at for two nights there was a couple of large flying bugs that sounded like they had diesel engines. They were two inches across.
The students at Little Flower School lined up for school assembly before going to their classes.
The next picture is of the house parents at an orphanage and school also called Little Flower School but this one is in Chakihali.
Back at the other Little Flower School we met with the teachers.
Lunch was rice, curried vegetables, mustard leaf greens, curried chicken and tea.
View from the back of a motorcycle.
We visited with Jugul, a teacher at Little Flower School, and his wife and daughter.
Everywhere we go we are gifted with a "gamosa" which literally means "body towel" but that is not necessarily what it is used for. The last picture is of a typical classroom of a poorer school.