It's christmas time!!!!

I was a little lazy to write in the past few days....sorry!!! :) But here comes a little update of christmas happenings. Right now I am sitting with denise in a little cafe in fort cochin, she is reading a book, I am typing on the laptop...a little scared of showing the laptop in public...but I think it should be safe. We are sitting in one of those places where you would never see an indian person anyway...there are three other guests here, three german girls. The amount of tourists seems to be increasing in cochin the closer we get to christmas...but still does this touristy town seem quite empty.

Christmas has arrived to Cochin. You can see decorations all over the town, houses are decorated from the outside with stars and lights, some streets with silver lametta, christmas trees were put up and christmas songs are being played. Also in our house!! We have a 2,40m plastic (!!) christmas tree in 'our' living room!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's the first time in my life that I have put together a christmas tree from a BOX hahahah and the decorations are ever so beautiful hahah lights blinking in red, blue, orange, pink, green, white...all imaginable colours actually. When we get up in the mornings and we step in to the living room we are at least immediately awake :-)

Also in our internship place we were busy decorating the physiotherapy room for the christmas celebrations which took place today. Coloured stripes of paper were put up on the walls and windows and...well actually every spot you can imagine :-)

Soooo today was the big day, the christmas party :-) In one of the big halls a stage was build and almost every child performed something. Singing christmas songs, dancing, performing in a christmas play. It was a very colourful and fun event. It was wonderful to see the children perform and having enormously much fun with the santa clause, dancing with him. But the highlight seemed to have been: denise and me in saris hhahahah denise and I were wearing the traditional indian costume today. The female physios put a lot of effort in to it in the past few days, chosing the saris for us, organizing jewellery etc. So today we were their dolls hahah they made our hair, gave us jewellery, they put on our saris!! (they really have to be put on us by them...i would never be able to cope with so much fabric on my own) And tadaaaaa we were the higlight of the day hahah. To me a sari feels rather uncomfortable. Very warm and not being able to move...or actually not daring to move because being afraid of the whole thing falling apart. In my opinion saris are not made for white people...it just looks horrible and wrong on us!!! But everyone told us how beautiful we were. It was a nice experience, but I was also glad to be able to change my clothes again after a couple of hours....and we were lucky to not have to had the problem of asking ourselves: how on earth can you go to the toilet with a sari?????

Anyway, I seemed to be the more problematic person. I am too tall for 6 meters of fabric!!!!!!!!!!!! We were wrapped in to 6 meters of cloth!!! 6 meters!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and it needed two people to tame my hair to where they wanted it (it even almost worked :-) ) hahahah and ofcourse my wrist is too big for indian jewellery...i managed to get it there with the help of soap and water...but now I still have the rings around my wrist....they will stay there until they brake, no chance to get them off again :-)

The physios (especially grace, who works there for 25 years) were so cute!!! she was so proud of us and so happy to see us in a sari, she was really excited. They were very sweet!!

Last week 5 Indian 3^rd year physio students started their one month “posting” in the school as well....this means we are now 7(!!!!) students and 3.5 physios......but we discovered that they aren't allowed to touch any patients yet...so they have some other tasks (such as listing up all of the equipment and games in the physio room....) and they are there only half day. They have to wear a uniform for uni and have to wear a white something shirt for the internship. And they are always really very quiet and shy. It's almost possible to not notice them!!!!! Also when talking to them they are shy and sweet. TODAY we arrived this morning and the students were there in their normal clothes (because of the christmas party), laughing, giggling, excited, singing, much louder than usual and they were so sweet!!!!!!!!!! ( I know I am using this word quite a lot right now...but this day was just full with cuteness and love :-) ) First thing happening when I arrived to the room, they grabbed me and had to take a photo of me with each of them!!!! I felt a little shocked at first, then like a superstar and then honoured. After that the girls helped with “decorating” me, helping making my hair and even lend their jewellery to me. It was so nice!! And then the girls were taking my hand, hugging me, touching my cheek and then kissing their fingers hahahah it sounds very strange, but they were incredibly nice gestures.

One of them was singing shakiras africa song on stage, it actually sounded quite horrible hahah but it was so courageous and nice and fun, we were clapping our hands, laughing and dancing a little.

All of this was over at around 12:30 pm. After that until 15h nothing happenend and denise and me were once more regretting to not have brought our books. There were no children to treat, all the physios were just lying on the mats sleeping and I started to sing lullaby’s hahahah and thats a little how the past 1.5 weeks looked like. VERY relaxed. In our first week (last week) we had the thursday off, because of the islamic holiday. This week instead of treating many children we were decorating the room for christmas, were lying in the sun on a bench, sleeping and reading. Today christmas party and tadaaaaaaa our vacation started!! we will have 11 days of christmas vacation now!!! ( my family will come and visit!!! juchaaay!!) So until now we actually haven't learned a single thing. Wait, no, we did learn a little actually: This monday we already presented our first study goal: denise had cerebral palsy, I had tay-sachs disease...i have never had such a relaxed presentation. I was expecting so many questions afterwards because they are very good and interested in the theory...but neither denise nor me received a single question...we were talking 10 minutes, they said fine, all good and we went home!!! I am everyday suprized of how little is expected from us and how little we do. But I am starting to learn to enjoy it. It can also have something nice to be able to lie in the sun and be unproductive ;-) We have high expectations of much change in the new year ;-) probably it has been so little to do until now because of the christmas time...(at least we hope so...) But we also talked to the school principle today, she will talk to the physios and whenever there isn't anything to do we will go into the class rooms and help there. The school really needs help especially in one on one support, so we offered our help today and hope we can be a little bit more active that way.

Anyway, I will just leave our further impression of this place without comment. I don't think it is fair to be too much complaining here. We just have to wait and see and hope it will get better. I miss the fysiotherapie heikant practice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

We will move to a new home stay on the 18^th of januray. The place we are staying at right now is very expensive and somehow a little lonely. As I wrote before there is actually no one really living there... it's no HOME to anyone. It s a very clean and good place..but just nothing for the following three months. So now we will move to "beena homestay". This is a place my parents will be staying at. We visisted beena last week and we just fell in love with her and her family. And they got very good comments on tripadvisor! We will have one room again with warm water and they will make us breakfast and dinner everyday!!! And she is a health inspector!!! Means terribly clean rooms!!! :-) We are very happy to have found a place in an indian family. They have five more rooms which they book out to tourists, means it will always be busy there. Looking forward to that!!! The only down part will be: no constant internet any more....we will be able to use the internet every day for around an hour....has to be sufficient for the next few months!!

I wrote last time I will report on the aryuvedic massage!! It was great!!! It was one hour of being soaked (!!!) in oil and having a whole body massage. The massage was very rough. VERY rough. But it was still somehow really good...The massage takes place on a wooden table. No soft surface what we are so often used to and due to all the oil it was really difficult to try to turn around without slipping of the table hahah. After that they give you a towel and shampoo for having a shower. The oil is every where!! They really take a whole body massage literally: even the scalp is massaged. It takes several hair washings to get that stuff out of your hair again hahah But I would recommend this massage to everyone!! I felt great afterwards and it is deffinetly an experience!! I felt very scrubbed clean afterwards. Denise and I will probably use our time here to follow a 10 day aryurvedic massage course!! Looking forward to that!

And our yoga classes are also becoming more fun!! This week we booked three times, always at 7 in the morning. Nice way to start a day. ( and it also forces us not become tooooo used to this life style with starting work at 10h etc :-) )

Okay, this was a loooong text...i hope it wasn't too long to take your motivation to read it...!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Enjoy it!!!

streets decorated with stars and silver tinsel

washing my clothes :)

Anneke and the christmas tree in a box

putting the tree together

christmas time in the sunshine

christmas decorations in the physio unit

these are the indian physio students, busy with putting up the xmas deco

And here the same students again on the celebration day

 

this is what it feels like to be a superstar

It's hair time!!

It takes two to tame my hair hahah

tadaaaa it's sari time! Here with the three female physios

All the children dressed up for their performance

hard working physiotherapists :)

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just couldn't resist to take some pictures of this...:)

 

the roof top where we have our morning yoga sessions