I left on the 27th of December 2008 and arrived the day after. When arriving in Delhi, we (the kids and I) where supposed to be picked up by CISV members from Delhi, but this wasn´t the case. Instead, there where 2 men, one of them could hardly speak any English. We were really worried and concern, specially me..travelling with 3 eleve- year olds..but luckely we met another delegation there. The Norwegian delegation were also going to the same place, so we both joined and tried to ask the men for directions and after a loooonng while, we manage to understand that we had to take a taxi to get to the domestic airport. It took forever to get a taxi and when we did, it was an adventure. The We had 3 taxis..one for us, one for the Norwegian delegation and one for the luggage..the luggage was of course distributed between all the taxis. It was supposed to be only 2 km to the domestic airport, but it took us 2 and a half hours to get there!! We were left in the wrong place, the luggage somehow dissapeared..and etc...but finally we found it.
Once inside, we were denied the entrance, because they only allowed passengers whose flight was due withing 2 hours..ours was not due until 6 hours!We begged to get in because the kids were tired, hungry and needed the rest room....so, finally, we managed to get inside. What happened there was even worse..once we were to do the security check, the man checkin our passports refused to let my kids travell with me, although I had all the permissions and papers in order...he wanted money!!I got really angry, but scared at the same time. There was this man standing between me and the kids, holding a gun, telling me that he was not going to let them go with me. I got so pissed that I started to yell and draw attention to myself..which in the end turned out to be a good thing. His superior saw me and approached us, told the man something in hindi, and we were on our way..
When we arrived in Lucknow, we were greeted like movie stars...there was a lot of people taking pictures, there was music and we had to walk on a red carpet...my kids didn´t understod what was going on..me neither. Eventually they explained that this was the way they were going to greet all the CISVers coming to Lucknow. The kids were sent off with their host families and I got sent to the camp. This is where the real adventure began...
It would take forever to write down all the things we did at camp, so I´m just going to mention some of them..
The first week was spent getting to know each other, all the kids, the staff, JC and the leaders...it went ok, but soon we saw that some kids were being left out, so we immediately tried to solve it by engaging the kids in more activities during their free time..and it actually worked quite well. The kids btw were so sweet, inteligent and great!!I miss them all so so so very much..I never thought I could get so attached to 42 kids from 12 different countries...in the pic below, there are only some of them..couldn´t find a pic with all of them...but don´t worry, I´ll probably write more about this trip =) Btw, we only had 3 JC, the nicest we could ever ask for!!There were from Brazil, Germany and Canada...I got along really well with 2 of them...=)
As for the leaders..there were some that I felt really connected to from the very beginning..the leaders from Finland, France, India, USA, Denmark, Japan and Norway were the ones I spent most time with. However, there were 2 that became my best friends there..two very amazing, loving and absolutely great people..Kiti and Eric, from Finland and France. These guys became my best friends..I miss them, I love them..and I really hope to meet them again soon...
I experienced a lot of things there, as I mentioned before...but for now, this is all...I´ll write more about this amazing CISV experience later...the pics that I put last are from the entire leaders group, then pics with my best friends there..=)
Stay tune for more...
