Our first week

An afternoon stroll amongst the tea

We've been here for a week now and it's been good! Pastor Sam has been gracious and busy enough to let us have this first week just to get a feel for things and to rest. It's unexpectedly comfortable here which was a particular blessing in the first couple of days when we were still feeling naff and our bodies were still on English time. We have a nice double bedroom with a couple of tables, wardrobes, an ensuite/wet room and a lovely balcony looking out over other peoples' roofs (which are constantly adorned with colourful laundry and potted plants) and a tea plantation.

We've slept and eaten a lot which has been lush and leaving us feeling rather plump! Food here is delicious and varied. We were greeted with toast but then thrown into Indian food with a whole host of different curries using various meats and leaves, chapatis, poori, rice, couscous, rice noodles, omelettes(!), poppadoms and potatoes. Best of all we get to use our fingers for everything! My technique at this has been poor enough to warrant advice and demonstrations on numerous occasions. Daniel, on the other hand, is more practised at this so gets away without too much attention! There's also a LOT of it, our plates are piled high every meal (inc. breakfast) and we're always offered seconds. Thankfully, Jeswin (Sam's eldest son) taught us the word 'pothum' which means enough, and this has come in quite useful!

We're starting to get to grips with the very basics of the Tamil language. The kids have taught us the numbers 1-20 and we can say short phrases like 'how are you?', 'lovely curry' and 'white tea please'. It's rather amusing to see peoples' reactions to us saying these small things. We get lots of claps and laughs...not sure whether that's encouraging or not!

Lydia (Sam's youngest) has shown us into the noisy babble that is Coonoor town centre. It's about a 5 minute downhill walk past a local school and the station into the town. Your senses are immediately overrun with sounds, smells and lots to see. There are no pavements here so it's just about hedging your bets as to which cars will be safest to dodge between! There's a variety of shops and a huge market place which sells everything from cricket bats to shoe polish to fruit and rice. We've really loved exploring this place but have yet to put our bartering skills to the test! We have, however, bought some material for me to have a salwar made up! This is basically a long tunic with a scarf and trousers and is what most women wear. All women dress great here, so many colours and fabrics just flowing off them – a real feast for the eye!

Emily, AKA life-size Barbie, has her hair done...again

In the evenings we have been playing with the kids downstairs. There are about 70 living in the Coonoor orphanage and about the 50 in the other orphanage near(ish) by. They get back from school around 4-5pm so we head down about then and Daniel usually plays cricket with the boys whilst I have my hair brushed and played with to within an inch of it's life! We've also taught the Hokey Cokey which is a huge hit. Whenever I go down a gaggle of girls run to me going “IN, OUT, IN, OUT!”. I regret teaching the macarena though... We're gradually learning everyone's names but it's fairly difficult when there are so many of them and half the names we've never heard before and have no reference for either!We've also introduced some card games to the family upstairs...who knew Snap could be such an intense and enjoyable game?!

We went to church for the first time on Sunday and brought greetings from the UK. Sam was our translator which was great although I'm sure there were times he said a lot more than we did! He then told us we should go and help out with kids work because it would be more interesting for us. Turns out we were leading it! Bit of a bodge job but the kids seemed to have fun, especially when Daniel was narrating the story of the Good Samaritan and got the kids to act as we went along...the boy being the donkey got quite a lot of stick!

All in all we're doing well and this week promises to be busier than last. For example, today is “poor outreach” where we take people of the streets for a wash, hair cut, nail file, hot food etc ...let you know how that goes next time! Hope you're enjoying the snow. Apparently 25° is cold for here!