My experiences from the last month – Hannah Wild, Germany

My experiences from the last month – Hannah Wild, Germany

I’m in India since 6 months and I already got so many impressions, met so many nice people and learned so much about the culture. In addition to the regular language class, I can learn a lot from the children in my project, and from the people I work with. My knowledge of the language Tamil is not very big, but it is enough to talk to the children and for the daily life. For example, to buy fruits or vegetables.

In my project “Baby Sarah’s Home” at Pondicherry, I work with disabled and orphaned children and help them to manage their daily life. For example, I’m feeding and doing physiotherapy with the children who need it. We also have a special school near the orphan home. We bring the children there, and together with the teachers, we play water games, motion games and knowledge games. We also do activities like drawing and other crafts. We always try to bring in as many children as possible, which is sometimes very difficult. Sometimes, we have some activities outside of the project activities like beach cleaning and planting.

My accommodation is in the orphanage which sometimes makes it difficult for me to separate the work from my free time. However, that’s not always bad, because I also like to spend time with the children during my free time. On festival days, we are always invited to celebrate with all the kids and Baby Sarah´s staff. That´s the best way how we can learn a lot about the culture and traditions.

In my project is also another volunteer who became a very good friend to me. We spend a lot of time together and we already traveled to several places like Mahabalipuram, Kovalam, Pune, Bangalore and many more. On my travels, I made so many experiences and learned some new things about the country, the people and and myself. One thing that I learned about me is that I was always very focused on the “tomorrow”, or what happens next. Now, I want to focus what happens just right now, and what I got at this moment. So, I want to be more thankful to all the little things in my life. For sure also, for the big things like that I got the chance to make all these experiences on my own. That’s something I learned for my life, so I got a small tattoo as a little reminder for that. It´s on my right wrist and it’s the Tamil word “Nandri”, what means “thank you”.

On all my travels, I always met new people and get more impressions of the Indian hospitality. At the beginning, I had to get used to some Indian behaviors, like not to say thank you all the time, eat with hands and so much more. In general, I can say I´m already in love with this beautiful country and I really enjoy discovering the colorful culture and the nature in all the different places.

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