AGS India Immersion Programme 2017/18

Ryan Donovan Leaving Kolkata this evening will bring mixed emotions. Kolkata has been amazing and I have loved the sights I have seen as well as some of the food. Emphasis on 'some'. It has been a great introduction to India and I hope there is plenty more of what Kolkata has to offer in the other parts of India.   I will particularly miss the place we have eaten breakfast at for the last week, 'Blue Sky Cafe'. The food here has been excellent as has the service. The cafe offers a range of food including traditional Indian as well as westernized variations which has been a treat while I have been sick. I will definitely miss this.  Ryan 

Josh Hamilton Future Hope is an organisation helping and providing opportunities for young kids who have run away from home due to personal or family reasons. We spent 2 crazy, action packed hours with 20 young boys, aged between 5 and 12, at their onsite care centre.  Patap, Somai, Saidil are the most intelligent, energetic, and caring young kids I have ever met. Their ability to be fluent in Bengal and then be able to sustain an in depth conversation in English with us is mind blowing. They were able to understand how my Go Pro works within minutes, which resulted in quite a few cool videos that I can now look back on.  The boys were able to run, scream, laugh, and do piggy back wars for an amazingly long time. We were chasing each other, teaching each other new games, creating hand shakes and taking lots and lots of photos. These boys were awesome.  These boys impressed me in every way; they were competing with each other to see who could take the most dishes to the si...

George I've seen the slums in photos, I knew of poverty and disease and death, I knew there were those less advantaged than I, So why am I fighting back tears. I knew of piles of rubbish in streets, I knew of streams running brown with dirt, I knew of the disabled and young living on the streets, So why am I fighting back tears. We are greeted with smiles and warmth, We play games which I knew as a child, We are waved farewells by families in balconies, I know why I am fighting back tears. The children cling to us in wonder, The adults look on approvingly, The teenagers gossip behind our backs, I know why I am fighting back tears. My friends are going hungry for days, My friends are knee deep in faeces, My friends are in the slums, I am no longer fighting the tears. 

Michael I sat on the bed, my legs dangling off and swinging back and forth. My eyes scanned the walls, and although there wasn't a whole lot to look at, I kept coming back to a few particular features of the room. Like the metre squared area of shelf space which, apart from the bed, made up the entirety of the room. On it sat pens, pencils and a tube of toothpaste which would be later put to use outdoors under the smog-covered stars in an exposed, concrete floored, communal substitute for a bathroom. A crack ran along the ceiling, paint chipped and flaked off from the walls, the floor was dusty and caked in grime and a large bed took up most of the room.  All I could think of while sitting on the bed and rubbing shoulders with the 17 year old Jungle Crow who occupied the room was of my spacious and comparatively luxurious bedroom back at home with its pristine walls, vacuumed floor, desk, reclining chair and bathroom next door. Here, there was barely enough space for one person to ...

Raymond  Zhou My time in Kolkata has been quite an unorthodox learning experience. There are some experiences that have left a profound impression on me. Kolkata has added a very human component to everything. It's easy at home to skip a World Vision TV ad or neglect the bucket collector for the Salvation Army on the corner of the road. However here, it is impossible to ignore the beggars and homeless lying on litter lined lanes. Admittedly, it did take me a while to feel any sentiments towards these people. But then you realise that someone's rickshaw is their livelihood and house or the fact that some child has to shower in the streets (from, quite frankly, disgusting water) it put things into perspective. Back in NZ it is easy to just sympathise, to say "I pity them" or "that's just unfortunate" but then simply move on, not act on it and continue with our privileged lives. Yet, being able to experience the atmosphere these peopl...

Today marked our last full day in Kolkata, the City of Joy. Tomorrow we will check out of the lovely Hotel Emirates, sad to leave cold showers and solid beds behind before heading to Darjeeling. Today, however, was difficult for other reasons. We visited Brooklyn, a slum community about 45 minutes from our hotel. It was confronting and challenging and, followed by the fun and laughter had at Future Hope last night, it left each of us struggling for words and reasons why. However, the boys must be congratulated for their strength and unity as they looked out for each other brilliantly through a tough day. Before I rip in, all of us here want to wish Nicki Boswell and Zac Lerner a big happy birthday. Thinking of you both today. Saturday 9 December Sickness Update  ​- Rowan Burns, Ryan Donovan, Matt Illing, and Sam Lindberg are back to full fitness and were amongst everything today. Rowan especially really appreciated all your ...

It feels great to have the strength to be able to type this. Okay, in truth, it doesn't feel great yet, not when my stomach is still turning circles, when trips to the toilet are necessary every half hour, when I haven't eaten since Thursday evening and when I have to sit here all alone in bed having already missed out on a full day of activities. That is probably the toughest part of it all – although the food poisoning 'got [me] pretty bad' (in the words of Tom Rapson), not being able to visit Freeset and Future Hope yesterday and then the Mother Teresa Museum and the Brooklyn slums today with the others pains me much more. Nevertheless, I can feel my body fighting the sickness and this makes me really appreciate how fortunate we are to have such an incredible vessel to live in. Another positive now that I am on the road to recovery is that, as Rowan informed me before he walked out the door this morning: 'at least you'll have heaps of time to write a good...

Ryan Getting a taxi from the airport to the hotel was an absolutely unreal experience, as cliche as it sounds it felt like a movie. The taxis are ancient however got us from A to B. The roads were chaos. Lanes were present however optional as cars, busses and bikes all swerve all over the road. For the 60 minutes I was in the taxi I counted a total of 2 indicators being used. Rather than indicating intention all forms of transportation use their horns on a minutely basis. I can honestly say while I have been in India I have heard the sound of a horn 24/7.  This chaos got me thinking. How does this place work so well? Comparing it to New Zealand it is so very different however the manner in which cars drive works so very well. It's hard to comprehend that something that seems so unorthodox works so well. 

Roni Chapman Thursday saw the boys split into 5 groups to head off around Kolkata, guided by the Jungle Crow boys. While the other boys kept in the city, I felt very privileged to leave the city to travel out to a rural farming area, Dhapa, which was a 40 minute trip away via a range of different transport vehicles. This area also consists of landfill sites where the solid wastes of the city of Kolkata are dumped, and when we first arrived I felt pretty disappointed to see the way plastics and waste material have tainted the picturesque rural aesthetic of refreshing greenery in trees and fields. I was disappointed in realising this was a likely combination of rubbish from the city being moved out here and also local villagers tossing their own rubbish away. It seems as though the village is victim to the city life; they receive all their waste, and they start to follow the lifestyles of city dwellers, where littering of inorganic material is habit. This line of thought was personal...