More painting, praying and sightseeing!

Well the last two days have been great (as if they'd be anything else!)

After a full on Indian meal on Friday night (where everyone ate a lot more than they could manage) quite a few woke up Saturday morning with a bit of a wobbly belly! We headed back off to the slums and got straight into our painting! We were amazed at how much we got done; our farm yard scene now has fields, tractors, a scarecrow and lots of animals! Everyone was so eager to help, so we'd choose a colour, pick an area, point and within seconds around 20 little hands with paintbrushes would violently attack the wall with their paint! It was great to talk with them a bit more, i was amazed at how well some of them spoke English! We had sort of split into three different groups one managed to paint the entire inside of the courtyard and outline some fantastic looking dinasours to go on the wall, and the others sanded down and painted two rooms! We're nothing if not efficient!

A group went off to walk around the slums and prayed with some of the people in the afternoon. They were praying for around 8 or 9 women who either were ill themselves (one had cancer) or their husbands or children were ill (often TB). It was really encouraging that they let us pray for them in their homes, and we'll have a few more opportunities to do that again before we go. On Monday we'll be going to a big prayer meeting for all the slums in the area!

Shortly after returning we headed back home and went out for dinner with Dr.Martin, Freddie, 3 other English men and an American girl named Grace. I was feeling a little shattered so didnt join them, but by the sounds of it they had a fantastic time and again ate a lot (it was an all you can eat buffet!)

On Sundays no work is done in the slums, so we took it as a sort of forced day off and decided to do some sightseeing. Due to trains being fully booked and the fact that a car journey would take too long we decided not to go to the Taj Mahaal...instead we got to know Delhi a little better.

We started off at the India gate, which is around 50 feet high and has the names of Indian soldiers who were killed in WW1. It's surrounded by little stalls set up on the road sides selling all sorts of goodies, and in the park by the entrance we saw what looked like aroudn 5 games of cricket going on at once.
Looking like obvious tourists we were targets for hasselling, though it seems the team have mastered the art of saying no! One guy asked if he could have his photo taken with me, i naively agreed and before i knew it there were about 30 of them with their camera's ready waiting for there turn! They then spectacularly printed the picture on the spot and tried to sell it to me! I should have known.

Just a short way down from the gate was the Presidential Palace. We were warned to look out for monkey, but sadly saw none. But we did get to peer through the gates and look at the stunning gardens and admire the Indian architecture. We felt much like all the tourists who gather around Buckingham Palace on a daily basis.

Third up was Lodi Gardens, we were told that during the week it can get really busy, but on Sunday's it serves as a lovely quiet place to take a walk. We wondered around the gardens for about half an hour admiring the various tombs and the serenity of the place.

After deciding that we'd put our stomaches through enough Indian cuisine we headed to TGI Fridays for lunch (please don't all hiss and boo at once). We enjoyed spice free lunch, and spent a little time shopping in the local area afterwards, handing any of our left over food to some of the beggers on the street and those who met us at traffic lights.

Having gone back and forth in opposite directions a few times already we then headed back to the other side of town to visit Humayuan's Tomb. We spent hours trying to capture the perfect photos and often lost each other as the urge to go off and explore took over! We watched the sunset and took lots of group photos, which i'm sure we'll show you when we return.

Lastly we headed to a lovely market place, and had fun bartered with the shop keepers ended up with some great bargins and lots of goodies to bring home. We let our driver go home after he'd dropped us there and decided to take another mode of transport home...the trusty Rickshaws! They are India's cheap taxi's. To give you idea of what we were getting ourselves into you must understand that Delhi roads already feel like a pretty unsafe place to be, but at least in our minibus we were bigger than most other things on the road. Rickshaws however, are three wheelers, they have no doors and are about the size of the old mini, but with a higher roof. They're rusty and give off the sense that they could fall apart any minute and it wouldn't take much to topple them over! Libby managed to get a good price for us, having been surrounded by around 20 taxi drivers she put them up against each other and they were competing to give us the best price. Michael S, Graeme and myself got into one, but as our driver wondered off for a few minutes we were asked to get out and get into another one...so we did. Our old driver soon returned to find us gone and came over to give our current driver a piece of his mind. A crowd soon gathered around us as they shouted at each other and tried to each force the other to give us up. One kept trying to drive away, almost running the other man over, so in retaliation he tried to steal his keys from the taxi. Big boss man soon came along and sorted out the problems, taking us out of that Rickshaw and back into our original one! Oops...
We got lost a few times on our way back but managed to find the YWCA in one place where the rest of the team were waiting for us!

It's now dinner time so i'm going to sign off and join the rest of the team! We've really enjoyed having a day off to relax see Delhi, and will be heading off to the slums to finish our painting bright and early tomorrow morning.

The spell check isn't working and i'm pretty exhausted so you'll have to excuse any writing mishaps! :)

Hope you're all well, we'll see you soon!

Every blessing.