Pea soup in India

Yes, we did have a finnish labour day celebration in India and Yes, it did turn out to be quite exceptional. We decided to invite a couple of Janne’s local friends and our mutual friend Ben to have a little taste of Finland. In Finland the labour day is usually celebrated on the eve of the 1st of may, but as in India work is streched to last up until saturday a very few quests would have been able to join us, if any. So the celebration was held on the 1st of may. Of course we didn’t have too much to offer, but we did manage to make some traditional pea soup and potato salad, and luckily we had some finnish rye bread left that the visitors from Finland had brought us a couple of weeks back. Balloons were the only decoration we found and in the spirits of an water- and environment project we also made a couple of water balloons to which I turned out to be the victim of. With the finnish music in the background we had the most fun preparing everything for the evening, but still the highlight of the evening was to see our quests tasting the finnish food. Spoons were quickly thrown aside and pea soup was eaten with fingers, or forced inside a rolled ciabatta. Nevertheless, all of the food was complemented and everyone had enough to eat.

I have been doing the video interviews and it has not been hard with these characters. I hope each and every one you will have a chance to see those tapes one day, you would meet the wonderful people that are working here and how excited they are of everything that has been done with the project. The only problem I have faced is the editing, but I hope I will find an answer for that problem during the summer. Cutting is no problem, but I will need a more professional program to do the sound editing. I tried to load an trial period from the internet, but with my connections it’s just not humanly possible. But I decided to collect all the material I can get and I am interested on trying to edit it myself. We’ll see what I come up with..

As it is may already, we are all starting to realize how quickly the time is passing by. Just as we got fully started, we have to start thinking about leaving. We have made some great friends and the faculty in the hospital has complemented us for the fact that we do our business one at the time. By this I mean that we have all found our own responsibilities and through that we interact much more with the locals than what we would do if we would just stick together. Thiruvalla is a nice town, with friendly people, and I have been enjoying myself here. It’s nice to know the corners, to notice familiar faces in the crowd and to feel welcomed to a such a different culture. I would recommend this to anyone remotely interested in volunteer work, but keep in mind that it’s up to you how much you learn during your journeys. Keep an open mind.