The Taj Mahal, celebrity status then...... ohhh emmm geeee

To start off with, "ohh emm geee" for those of who aren't hip to the lingo is a spelled out version of "OMG" which stands for "oh my god".  Ok, now that we are clear on that, onto the good stuff. 

  Sunday morning we all got up around 5:00am, got all of our stuff together and headed off to Agra to go and see the Taj Mahal.  Most of us slept in the car or listened to music on our ipods. 

Notice everyone wearing ipods... i thought it was kinda funny

We finally got to the Taj Mahal after about 4 hours, we had to get onto a battery powered bus and get taken closer to the Taj then walk the rest of the way.  They are doing this now to try and lessen the amount of pollution around the the Taj to try and preserve the color.  It apparently used to be a pure milky white color as opposed to now where it is a slightly yellow color from all of the polution.  While its a great start, they have a long way to go before pollution is anywhere near eliminated in India.  I'll talk more on that later.  Anyway, so we walk towards the Taj and are again bombarded by street vendors trying to sell us snow globes with the Taj in them or picture books or this and that, all small trinkets which non of us had any interest in, but my god they are persistent!!!! I just kept looking forward and walking and not paying attention to them and eventually they lost interest.  Then we walk into the first part, we get a little story from our guide then continue on.  Oh also, Sunday was a big celebration so entrance was free (woohoo!!!) but that also meant that the entire world was there (booo).  So there were musicians playing  everywhere which sounded pretty cool and the actual tombs inside the Taj were open.  We walked through the passage way and BOOM!! There was the Taj Mahal!! such an amazing and surreal sight.  After all these years of seeing pictures, to actually be standing right there in front of it was just like.... WOW! No other words can really describe it.

Pretty amazing huh?!

  So then we actually walked in and it was shear madness!!! but we managed to get a group shot then a couple of me

So here are some pictures of the Taj Mahal of course.

So, now onto after we left.

We left Agra and headed back to where the program coordinators house was in Faridabad.  We got there around 7pm then had to wait for our various taxi's to come pick us up to take us to our placement.  I was supposed to go to an orphanage that was near a hospital where I'd be working with the children on health related issues.  Sam and Alice's taxi (aka rickshaw) came and got them then it was Nicola and I left waiting for another 30 minutes.  Then Nicola's taxi came, she got her stuff and headed out, as I was sitting there my stomach started doing flips and I started thinking in my head "oh my god, I can't do this! I can't go by myself into some place where I don't know anyone.... everyone is at least paired up with someone else from orientation week, Sam & Alice, Megan and Jeni, and Nicola is going to meet Richard..." So I jumped up and ran out of the door just in time to catch Nicola as she was about to leave, and I yelled out "ok wait! I'm coming with you!!" I grabbed my stuff and jumped in the taxi and felt remarcably better.  We headed towards our placement in our little rickshaw, It took about 30 minutes to get there, as we went from paved streets to dirt roads to then feeling like we were suddenly on a motorcross sport course with bumps and divets in the road, getting bumped around all over the place.  We finally arrived to our placement, in the middle of nowhere, in a place basically a step above being called the slums.  Back home it would have been called the projects area.  We walked in, there was a sweet looking family with 5 kids, and only 2 bedrooms, and there were already 3 other volunteers there, plus the two of us who just arrived.... can you do the math in this equation??  The bathroom.... well there was no toilet seat, just a toilet, no shower, just a spout and a bucket.... mind you we had also just spent all day in 105 degree weather in Agra, so my clothes were somewhat dry now from sweating through them and had, had high hopes for taking a shower once I got to what I was imagining would be like our orientation week house.  From all of the wonderous information we had gotten about our "volunteer house".  Oh the LIES IVHQ has told us.  There was no volunteer house, instead it was a bunch of volunteers, in a "house" which had a family already living in it.  The area around it was not what we might consider to be so safe.  So, after trying to contain my freak out inside my head, along with the tears that wanted to come flooding out.  We socialized a bit with the other volunteers.  Finally Catalin, one of the volunteers who had been there for a week, said that he hated it there, he hadn't been out of the area for the whole week he was there and he had tried everything he could to leave.  So I burst out, "oh thank god, thats exactly how I am feeling right now, I don't think I can stay here".  So we talked a bit more, then finally headed off to "bed".  When I say bed, really I mean a plank board with a sheet over it.  Awful.  I managed to finally fall asleep.  Then at about 2am my phone kept ringing, finally after about the 7th time calling, I answered, it was Alice calling from her and Sam's placement.  They were leaving their place in the morning, cuz their place was even worse.  They were staying at an orphanage that was about 60 kilometeres away from Delhi, and absolutely nothing else near them.  There was another volunteer who had been there for 8 days already who was so thankful to have other people there to help save him.  The guy who ran the place walked around with a gun, and a chain of bullets around his chest, he also had a machine gun in his room.  There were rats and mice all over the place along with slaves........... need I say more? So the next morning we arranged for a taxi to come pick up me, richard, nicola and catalin, Lauren was the only one who wanted to stay for some reason.  I called Jim and told him what happened and asked if we could all come and congregate at his place till we figured out what to do.  He of course said yes, so we all waited around until about 2pm when the taxi came to our rescue.  Sam, Alice and Raj also got a taxi and went to the YMCA near by and then came over to Jim's to have a pow-wow.  We all sat around and just talked about how crazy this all has been and how we need to contact IVHQ to get our money back.  We all then decided to go get a drink to wipe off the stress, which actually turned more into hanging out in Richards lavish 5 star hotel room (ahh richard and his posh lifestyle living Lol) then later nicola and I headed back to Jim's house to crawl into our real beds and drift off to a real and comfortable sleep!!! I woke up this morning around 11 then nicola came blearly eyed out of her room around noon.  We both definitely had the same expression on, which was that of an actual rested one.

 So now.... I am going to  contact another family friend who lives here who has done work with other charities and will know of some safe legit volunteer work that I can do for the remainder of my time here.  For now I am going to be crashing here at Jim's house until I figure out what all is going on.  But, just know, I am safe!! and I am so incredibly glad that I had my friends here with me and that we all went through that experience together and not alone.  Another incredible life experience for the books for sure!

 Hugs and Kisses everyone