The trip started with a bang... they say things come in threes! A car broke down, someone forgot their passport...and someone also forgot their suitcase! Hopefully, this means the rest of our trip will be plain sailing!
We all made it in the end, with some parents having to do a mad dash back home. After devouring some lunch, it was time to head to the gate. The first plane ride was 7 hours and although it was long, we watched movies, read books and played games so the time passed fast. Finally we arrived at Dubai airport and went straight to our next flight to Kolkata. This one was only 4 hours and we all tried our best to nap before we finally arrived in India at 7 am.
Needless to say, we were all very tired but the excitement kept us going. After a bit of a wait, we all made it through immigration and visa checks without anyone being sent home (although, someone had left their boarding cards on the plane!) We got our bags from the conveyor belt and made sure not to forget any luggage this time before we headed off. We walked outside to get on our bus to St.George's. We were all hit by a wave of amazement at the drastic difference in culture over here, despite having not even left the airport. We were struck by a flood of car horns and people hanging out of bus doors.
The drive to St. George's was almost silent as everyone stared out the windows in awe and wonder at the colourful buildings. After a 30 minute drive, we arrived at the school at around 8:30 am. On arrival, we were stunned by the beautiful, towering, red and green building. Unluckily for us, we had to carry our huge, over-packed suitcases up what felt like a million stairs before reaching the top floor. Although we were all out of breath, we quickly moved on to admiring the views, from that height, of Kolkata.
We had a quick cup of tea and then headed for a much-needed nap. At 12:30 we had lunch- a delicious chicken and noodle dish. We then got ready to venture out into the city. We got the Metro and were pleasantly surprised that it was empty. But we were informed by Br. Ronnie (one of the Christian Brothers hosting our trip) that it is not normally like this. We also got a shock when we got on, to realise that there were 'women only' sections on each carriage. Our first stop was visiting St. Mary's; we walked through a street market to get there and were overwhelmed by all the different smells. St. Mary's is a beautiful school that we will also be visiting during our stay. We will be helping to teach the children with special needs who attend the school; we are so excited for this.
We then returned to the Metro and we set off to the inner city. We arrived and it was packed with street vendors and people browsing. We narrowly avoided cars and motorbikes as we attempted to follow Br. Ronnie and Shyanthony, a young lady teacher who also accompanied us, as they weaved between traffic. We made our way to a bank where we exchanged our euros for rupees. Not ignoring the watching eyes, we roamed the city where we stuck out like sore thumbs. We then headed to the supermarket and picked up some essentials (sweets). After shopping, we got to see more of the city as we walked the 20 minutes to our home for the next 10 days.
We walked through the door and were greeted by the smell of a lovely beef, veg and rice dinner prepared for us by the Brothers. After quickly scoffing down the much-needed food we had a short reflection and then we all organised our lesson plans for tomorrow and headed to bed, where not a single eye stayed open past 9:30, despite the streets still being rampant with traffic and the persistent car horns of Kolkata.
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