Tuesday, 15 March 2011

You know you have had an awesome day as a tourist in Mauritius when...

First...a bull which is pulling a sugar cane mill poops infront of you
Second...you watch live sega dancing
Third...you eat at an Italian restaurant and you get to swin in your underwear at the restaurant's pool
Fourth...you go to the home of a local musician
Fifth...you get to eat a home made delicious dinner with your friends
And last but not least...you take the very last bus out of Port Louis to go home =)

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Sextet in the city

Wednesday night some of us had the pleasure of going out after the sunset and attend a free concert that was part of the Independence Day of Mauritius.  We watched Sextet in the city who come from Australia and enjoyed classical music for string instrument for one hour and a half.  Here is a small segment of the performance.  Enjoy...

Presentation on 10th March

Today we do presentations at COLLEGE DU ST.ESPRIT RIVIERE NOIRE.
It is a nice school,of course the nice people there.
Four countries do the presentations there,Czech Republic,Poland,Russia and China.It's pity cause I don't have enough time to show chinese culture,but I really enjoyed the other three countries' presentations!So nice!
We didn't go to the school together,cause some of us got ill.Wish you a speedy recovery:)


 

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Today is not a wonderful day. It's rain, MaurĂ­cio and Lucas are sick, and some people com some problems throat and others are coughing.
To enjoy this bad wheater, the best thing to do is watch movies and eat a lot. :)

Monday, 7 March 2011

Hindu gods guide for dummies;)))

Ok, what can i tell you about Mauritius?
Fascinating beaches, friendly people, exciting diversity of cultures, sometimes too annoying males))...what else?  Something that i never met before?

At last week we visited some holy hindu places and seen a lot of temples and all that stuff. I never been religious person but Hinduism attracts me at least cause all their gods and goddness so colorful and positive.
So today we had a free day and tried to understand who is who. Here you can find Hindu gods guide
for dummies;)))

Be frankly my brain is blowed away to nowhere))
Here just few facts:
1. Don't be suprised but sometimes Hinduism have few variants of the same event. They just can't decide which one is more "probable" (see below).
2. There are thousands of gods BUT mostly they are just different avatars of few gods and goddness!! And it's up to you to which one you wanna pray.

By the way in India people give god's names to their children, stores and businesses))And I saw these also here.

3. The main players at this religious ground are Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. Hindu triad - Trimurti - symbolize the entire circle of samsara: Brahma as creator, Vishnu as preserver or protector, and Shiva as destroyer or judge (wiki helps me).

4. According to the Puranas (?) Brahma was born from a lotus flower which grew from the NAVEL of Vishnu at the beginning of the creation of the physical universe. According to another legend Brahma was born in water in which Vishnu put his sperm which later turned into a golden egg, a type of cosmic embryo.
The remaining components of this golden egg expanded and evolved into the universe!!
Nice legends...both of them))

5. Hindu deities have particular vehicles or 'vahana' on which they travel!!!Vishnu sits on the primal serpent,  Ganesha's carrier is a rat and this guys have birdman!!!
 Vishnu & Lakshmi

6. By the way about Ganesha! Here actually something crazy for me, i mean his origin:)
While some texts say that Ganesha was born with an elephant head, in most stories he acquires the head later.The most recurrent motif in these stories is that Ganesha was born with a human head and body and that Shiva beheaded him when Ganesha came between Shiva and Parvati. Shiva then replaced Ganesha's original head with that of an elephant. Details of the battle and where the replacement head came from vary according to different sources. In another story, when Ganesha was born, his mother, Parvati, showed off her new baby to the other gods. Unfortunately, the god Shani (Saturn), who is said to have the evil eye, looked at him, causing the baby's head to be burned to ashes. The god Vishnu came to the rescue and replaced the missing head with that of an elephant. Another story says that Ganesha was created directly by Shiva's laughter. Because Shiva considered Ganesha too alluring, he gave him the head of an elephant and a protruding belly. How do you like it?))

Blessed family)

7. And essence of Hindu:
If you a Hindu then you are living in a recyclable soul in a recyclable universe…

You should be happy that you was born in the lowest caste. To be in higher one - it's so hard!
When you die you'll be a tree and finally rest peacefully;)

Fact: the Swastika was originally a Hindu symbol representing happiness and good luck; Hitler flipped it
and gave it a whole new meaning in the Western world. Yeah, thanks for that, Adolf.

And some more pictures!!
Shiva. Why he has blue skin? Sky has the same color!
Hanuman - King of all apes and many homo sapiens;) close mate of Krishna
 
 



Today is a veeeeeery lazy day in the interns house. It was raining almost all day long, so the best thing to do was to sleep till noon, chat with friends or family, read books, share pictures or just do nothing. At least, in the evening we managed to do some parts of our goodbye video ;) Hope that the result of our effort will apear here soon!
By the way, Vera cooked the best pancakes ever - thanks!!! :) :) :)

Presentations and beach on 4th March

As Elena already mentioned, we had great presentations on 4th March even though most of them were without our well-prepared PowerPoint files.
We talked to the students directly, trying to integrate them into the conversation.
At first it was a hard job, but after we performed "dances" from our culture without any music, the atmosphere was more relaxed and the students were less afraid to say something.
At the end of our presentation they even shared their famous traditional dance, Sega with us.

This is a picture of the school




And afterwards we went to the beach and enjoyed a great sunset

As Elena already said: We really had a great time the last days!!! So it's even ok that it's raining today - we can use the time to get some rest ;-)
The best thing for me was jumping off Rochester Waterfalls! God it was so scary!!! But as we are "good friends" with Shiva now - we visited him two times this week - I believed that I will survive this jump! And I am really happy that I did!!! So everyone who is visiting Rochester Waterfalls: JUMP, and you will have a life changing experience ;-)


exploring mauritius

We had the great trip yesterday!
We went to many places, and ended the day with nice sunset:))
loving this beautiful island<3

trip ;)

yester day we went to trip !
but i dont know where it was

please guess where it is from picture

Sunday, 6 March 2011

Wonderful weekend with wonderful people

This past weekend was very busy for A Wink at the World team but we had a great time.  In short here is what we did these last 3 days:
-Best school presentation so far despite being arranged the last minute and the school not being ready for us
-Best sunset at la Preneuse beach
-Fun time sharing our cultures at the Global Village event at University of Mauritius
-Best pool party ever =)
-And amazing 12 hours spent touring the south of the island from waterfalls to lakes and of course finishing the day at the beach for another sunset

Here are some pictures and more will come later...

Saturday, 5 March 2011

Global Village (5th, March)

Today we had the global village at the university of mauritius.
Each countries represent their countries, introducing clothes, foods, drinks etc.
It was very interesting to know about their culture:)) And I also enjoyed introducing Japan.
I think writing names in Japanese entertained people. I'm glad many people are interested in Japan.

Then, we did the performance on the stage. Japan performed the song which was used in Tokyo drift.
Moreover, I was happy Stacy who left on the day visited us:) 

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

Pilgrimage pictures

Here how was our Pilgrimage which took us a little over 4 hours to walk 20 km...





Diving!

Today's public holiday most of us decided to spent under the water, with fishes and corals. For most of us it supposed to be the first diving experience. We went to Traux Biches and the likeable Mauritians "frogmen" taught us many useful things - especially how to prevent from getting drowned!:)
We started with training in the swimming pool. Was good, but just Bruna felt unsure. But next skilled diver dispeled the uncertainity and motivated Bruna to participate;) After all of us got the fitting neoprene (because some of them were small - even for Ayako!! and some of them TOOO BIG!!:D) we could move to the beach. The boat  carried us in the middle of this beautiful ocean and we were full of expectations how the underwater life looks like. Scary moment came, when we had to jump into water - backwards, just how all divers do, but we overcame the fear and jumped! And afterwards we just enjoyed and observed all the submarine life, colourful  fishes and corals.
Any sharks, any baracudas, any problems!! Wonderful day with wonderful people in wonderful nature!!!