Day 8

Hello from Mumbai day 8!
Today we went to the main Pratham Offices in Mumbai to find out what we will be doing in the next few weeks! We were running a bit late as when we got to the train station there were HUGE queues...and they dont seem to go anywhere fast! We met with Kishor at the offices who is the man who arranged our whole trip for us! He seems lovely and was encouraging us to go off and explore more of India as well as seeing the work that Pratham does! So we think we may go and see the Taj Mahal and possibly visit Goa too! Slightly worried about malaria though as we havnt brought any tablets with us (we were told we didnt need them for Mumbai!) although Kishor says it will be fine! We are going to spend the next few weeks doing activities in the Children's shelters near our hotel as well as doing some case studies on some of the children (finding out where they are from, what their backgrounds are, why they have ended up in the shelters etc!) We will then type the studies up and give them to Pratham. We're really excited about getting to do some of the activities that we had planned and taking all the games and activities for the kids! After we had been at the office we had the afternoon free in central mumbai! So we went exploring on foot and found the promenade on the sea front! It was really pretty but a bit hazy (think blackpool plus humidity!!)! We found an awesome pizza restaurant and had gorgeous bbq chicken stuffed crust pizzas! yummm!! Then we got a taxi to the Gateway to India (See picture!) this was something we had both wanted to see and it meant that we got to see the Taj Mahal Hotel as well! A girl tried to give us a sob story about losing her job selling flowers and needing food which put a bit of a downer on things, its so hard as you hear similar stories all day and dont know if people are telling the truth or just taking the piss as you are foreign! She also had the cheek to call claire a liar when she said she didnt have any money- she actually didnt as her bank card hasnt been working!! We saw some gorgeous horse drawn carriages which we were really tempted to have a ride in but we resisted!! Hoping to visit that area again as we saw some amazing shops on our way out- Jimmy Choo, Prada, Fendi, Mochino, Dior and Louis Vuitton! We're excited for tomorrow as we have the day off and then we're going to the boys shelter to meet the boys and do some activities with them in the evening!

Missing you all- 18 days left in India!
Love Lisa and Claire xxx