Bananas from the CID!

Hello all!
I had a complaint yesterday that I haven't written anything for a while.
I'm sorry.
Well, sort of.
There is just so much going on here all the time.
Plus NOONE LEAVES ME COMMENTS SO I DON'T KNOW THAT IT'S BEING READ!!!!!
Na, I'm not bitter really.
So settle down and prepare to read a very condensed version of some of my adventures in the last 2 weeks:

We decided that as we haven't actually managed to do any of the touristy things around here, we'd better get on with it or we'd run out of time. So last Saturday, we visited Old Manali. That really is the place famed for Hippies. And you could tell. It's where most Western tourists stay, rather than here in the centre of town, and all the stalls were full of hippy clothes and things. But some very cool stuff too. Celia and I now have matching jumpers.... actually, we've managed to accumulate quite a lot of very similar clothes since we arrived. We each had 3 new tops made for teaching this week as well and it wasn't until we got them home that we realised we'd each got one red, one blue and one green - despite spending a good 20 minutes debating together in the material shop!
It POURED with rain while we were in Old Manali, but luckily we'd both been sensible enough to take raincoats. It's about the only place I actually feel normal wearing my flowery mac anyway!!! We met up with Alex and Elyse there for lunch at a very chilled out place - food was pretty good and cheap so a bonus!

Then on Sunday, we knocked another 'tourist place' off the list, and went up to Washist for lunch with Emily. Have I mentioned her before? She's not with GAP/Lattitude, but has been teaching in Day Star School here in Manali for about the same time we've been here. That partivular trip wasn't overly impressive. It's very similar to Old Manali in terms of the type of people you find there, and the only real attraction is the hot springs, which we didn't go to. Lunch at 'Big Fish Cafe' was good, but we had to wait almost an hour for it to be served! But at least it's been ticked off the list.

We were planning to tick Kullu (about an hour and a half away by bus) off of the list today, but having been ignored by the bus driver and walked all the way into Manali, we decided to change our plans around, and I think we'll visit the Hadimba Temple here after lunch instead! And I guess we still ticked something off, as I've said from the beginning that I wanted to walk all the way in one day. But I wasn't planning to do it in plasticy flipflops that give you blisters if you walk in the heat and mud for almost an hour and a half......

In other news, Chris and Felix are on holiday from their placement in Dharamsala this month and came to visit us. They took our lesson with Class 2 for us on Thursday and were an instant hit - Chris ended up teaching them to sing 'Kookaburra' with his mandolin. Some of the girls seem slighly obsessed now. When we said we were coming into Manali today, the first thing they said was 'to see Sir Chris?'! Scarlett and Megan, who came to a placement in Dehra Dun in January and have now finished, have also arrived here this week, although we haven't managed to meet up with them yet.

First term exams at school are next week, so we've been doing lots of revision in our lessons, with posters and quizzes and pictures and whiteboards and all sorts of games; as a result of a straight 3 hours' worth of planning, our floor is absolutely covered in all the above and a whole load of stationary to boot. I'm about a week behind on my diary because we've been so busy...
We've written 2 exams out of 4 so far, but the first one might need to be changed as we think it's a bit too tricky and is for the lowest class. Unfortunate for Celia's hand - she's writing out all the neat versions as my handwriting would make the exam impossible!

Well I think that's about it for now, lots of fun things coming up and I'll be leaving before I know it, but let's not think about that right now.

Oh and incase you've been wondering all the way through what any of this has to do with bananas, the CID apparently check how DUF spends its money every few months, and they paid us a visit yesterday, armed with presents of bananas for all the kids. Celia and I found the concept of bananas from the CID rather amusing, so that had to be the title of this entry!

TTFN xxx