Pentakatha School Act Project-DAY 6
Today was a great day of painting and fun. We were all happy to be finished with the preparation part of the main section of the school and ready to start the painting. We finished off the walls with primer, painted the ceilings white and finally started painting the walls. We managed to put the first coat of paint on 4 classes today and we are hoping to finish all 8 classes in the section tomorrow – we’re all so excited to see the children’s expressions Monday when they return to school and see their newly painted classrooms! A few paint fights broke out and by the end of the day we had multi-coloured polka dots all over us! At the end of the day while waiting for the car to take us to our hotel, we sat up on the roof and took photos of our beautiful surroundings and played a couple of ball (or actually, guava) games with Dmitri and some of the workers helping us. All in all it was a lovely and very efficient day, since we were all working together and tackling the classrooms with our full force, while jamming to some music.
We went to the Hotel Resort where we have our meals, which also happens to be a prime spot for hosting weddings! We saw a very impressive looking wedding taking place after dinner and decided to take a closer look. What we saw took our breath away – a scene of beautiful bright colours created by a variety of flowers, coloured lights and Indian woman in their stunning sarees. The bride was appeared on a throne, carried by 8 men and was led to a podium where she joined her groom. The bride and groom both sparkled like diamonds, and with the combination of music and glitter falling around them it turned out to be a very romantic wedding, even though it was arranged.
Once the ceremony ended the bride and groom took their places on the stage where photographers and family members joined them for the photo shoot, which Dmitri immediately joined. Floren, Shruti and Chris went back to the hotel but we hung around with Dmitri while he was taking photos of the bride, groom and their 400 guests. By Indian standards it was quite a small but very glamorous wedding, since their weddings often have an attendance of 2500 or more guests. The Indian people at the wedding, including the bride, groom and their families were extremely hospitable and accommodating considering that we weren’t guests, and everyone conversed with us, wanting to know where we were from and offering us a variety of foods, drinks and sweets. Dima took many, many photos of the people and also of Pawel, Jose and I with the bride and groom. He took photos of some of the chefs serving the people and photos of the many strange and interesting people we met. One such person was a man preparing a drink of hot milk, sugar and saffron which he would cool for serving by pouring it from one jug to another from a great distance, performing twirls and twists all the while. It was amazing to watch and a lovely end to a fascinating evening.