Sally+R

On Monday the 17th of August, we interviewed a lady named Sally R using Skype. She had lived in India for two years and worked as a teacher in an international school in Pune. There were approximately 5 million students at the school which is considered a small amount of people. The major difference between India and Australia is the fact that no money is given out from the government. This results in the people being either very rich or very poor.

The two other main differences are the clothes and the food. One of the customs that is very different from in Australia is the weddings. Sally attended a wedding once that began at 9:00pm but the actual marriage took place at 3:00am. It is normal that the married couple pays for all the costs of the guests getting to the wedding. The guests also recieve a gift from the newly married couple to thank them for coming. The wedding that Sally attended went on for five days!

The celebrations and events celebrated in India mainly revolve around Hinduism. One of the common celebrations is Diwali which is the festival of light. During this event people throw coloured powder around and at each other. There are also many events centred around Gods.

The climate in India takes adjusting to. Between March and April the temperature is 33-45°c but the other half of the year is very humid and in the afteroon there is often heavy downfalls.

In India, rich children are able to have an education. However, for the poor chidren it is much more important to beg for food so they can survive. A major religion associated with Hinduism is that everyone is made who they are for a certain purpose, whether they are poor or rich, they must not try to change who they are. This implications of this is that if you are poor and cannot afford to pay for schooling, you will never have a job in the future.

Basicly everyone plays cricket in India. Whatever they have, they manage to still have fun and play a game.

If you were to visit India, these are some of the historical sites and attractions you might want to visit: Taj Mahal - The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan for his wife. If you look carefully at the towers and buildings surronding it, you will notice that they are all slanted slightly outwards. This is in the case of an earthquake so the others buildings would not fall on top of the Taj Mahal. Rat Temple - The rat temple is filled with rats scurrying around the place. It is a place where people give gifts to the sacred rats. Old Goa - Old Goa is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city was constructed in the 15th century and was used as the capital of Portuguese. Gate Way of India - The Gateway of India is located on the water front in Apollo Bunder in South Mumbai. The monument is an arch twenty-six metres high. It used to be the first thing visitors would see when arriving by boat.

In India, there are many yummy, quite spicy foods. The people use their right hand to eat and when using the toilet use their left hand. Another large difference in India is the fact that the McDonald's doesn't serve any beef because the cow is considered sacred in their culture. This makes it very hard to eat a steak na dalso means that many people are vegitarian.

Sally thinks that one of the funnest experiences she had in India was riding a camel. She said that the streets and towns were very crowded.