The Village

Yesterday we went on another outing with all the exchange students. We went to a place called The Village is has another Hindi name...
The Village is a larger version, sort of, of the buffet place that we had gone to before. This place though was much bigger and was more of a resort park. There were arcade games, bumper cars, food, a disco, playground, and many performances of different traditional dances. It was not so food oriented but more aimed for entertainment. There was also supposed to be a water park type area with slides and a pool but it was closed to be fixed which was disappointing because we all would have likes to go for a swim in a nice, clean, chlorine pool.
Because it was a week day there were very few people there. We mostly watched the performances of which there were many. At five, they also opened camel and horse rides. We stayed just long enough for Amanda to have a camel ride.
Despite the fact that I the performances were very good there was something that bothered me. I've been waiting for there to be something that really bothered my morally here. At the park there were was a little girl who was about four or younger and was the dancer in one of the performances. She was very sweet and cute. As we were leaving she and her family walked by and she waved at us. As she walked away, I hopes that she would go to school and do something in her life. I thought about how unlikely this was. There was also another girl who was 12 or 14 she was double jointed in her shoulders and very thin. Her performance was to show off her double joints and to step into metal rings with one or both feet and then could slip them up over her head. She also did some tight rope type of tricks. I couldn't help but feel that she was a little sick of the tricks. I think she could have been doing something much better than having her "talents" exploited everyday. I wonder what she will do when her joints stiffen of she is no longer so skinny and shapeless.
Other acts too made me think about child labor laws. On the other hand, I had  to consider that there were much worse things that these kids (especially the girls) could be doing to earn money.

The playground.

Traditional Dancer

The traditional dancers tried teach us the steps, they were easy at first but then got more complicated.

The Magician.

The Monkey Trainer.

The double jointed girl who also did tightrope tricks.

The Little Girl.

Amanda, Nikolas, and Sebastian dancing with the little girl.

Sebastian and the little girl.

Lunch Time. 

Being served a traditional picnic style lunch.

Today I have no school again as there are no exams for any of the 11th class. I'm spending the day at home catching up on organizing my photos and catching up on my journal. It's nice because I haven't spent much time at the house settling in. I unpacked all the way for the first time since coming to India because I'm staying here for a while. My host family has boughten me a wardrobe and desk to keep my things in. There wasn't one in the room before so they bought them just for me. It's really nice to have all my things out and organized. I've noticed that people here keep all their rooms extremely and perfectly organized no matter the room. My host parents made it very clear that I was to organize and have a place for everything at all times. I like to organize things so it was no problem but keeping it like that will be harder.
The other hard thing to get used to is locking my desk and wardrobe. There are keys for both. At home we don't lock anything at all. Here though I have to keep anything at all valuable under lock and key anytime I'm out because the servants move in and out of the rooms cleaning. Having someone clean my room for me everyday is also going to be hard to get used to but I think it won't be a bad thing... Maybe when I get home it'll cause a problem though if I get used too it.