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I successfully submitted my documents to the police yesterday, so pending an interview on the 19th of March I should be all good to go. Those submitted then, I am free to visit Hunar Ghar! Yep, I’m pretty excited. I’m going to get the train the Udaiput tonight and meet Ash tomorrow morning. Together we’ll see Sharmaji of RBKS and then we’ll head over to Hunar Ghar for a week.

It’s feeling really good to be living in Ahmedabad. It is changing Hunar Ghar from a far off inaccessible kind of all-or-nothing place where I bust a gut for months on end then don’t see it for months on end, to a normalised experience where I will be able to come and go in a natural way; much healthier for me and the team, less pressure on any of us to get things done in silly short time periods.

It’s Monday afternoon. On Saturday afternoon Pascal took a long (6+ hours) training session, it was good to get straight into it in depth. Today I’m just trying to get the correct police documents together before heading to the station at 3pm, but that isn’t coming as easily as I’d hope as I’m eager to go and meet Ash and the guys and girls at Hunar Ghar.

Hopefully tomorrow I’m going to sit in on and join in some classes with the kids that I’ll be working with. I’m looking forward to that. I feel like I just want to jump in and get on with it, trying, succeeding, not-succeeding, learning, but although I feel right at home already, I get the impression that some people don’t see me as part of the furniture yet, because of course I’m not, so I guess I’ll have to curb my enthusiasm for a few weeks and take the slowly-slowly approach until people get used to me being around.

Well, I’ve arrived in my new home for the next year. I’ve been to the police station to start the registration process and am now just wandering around trying to familiarise myself with the place, drinking lots of fruit juice to try and ward off plane-and-really-long-train-journey cough.

In a move not usually associated with me, I’ve started my packing for India, with a full 8 days to go before I, er, go. I spoke to Pascal at MGIS this morning so they know when to expect me, and I think I’ve pretty much got everything in order so all I have left to do really is get on that plane.

It’s a bit of a journey at the other end – 20 hour wait for my train in Delhi then a 20 hour train ride – but there we go. I’ll take a couple of good books.