Mumbai

India Exchange Program 2016-2017

Rijnlands Lyceum Oegstgeest

 Content

Participants ...................................................... 4
Host overview………….…………………………………….5
Program ............................................................ 6
Sunday…………………………………………………………………………………………..6
Monday ............................................................................................. 8
Tuesday ............................................................................................. 9
Wednesday ..................................................................................... 11
Thursday ......................................................................................... 13
Friday .............................................................................................. 15

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 Participants

Emiel Borsboom Arent Jansze Rachel den Otter Danny Schaye Yulian Durand

Weronika Jeroen de Laat Noa Smink Elyse Kimo Li Koppers
Kagchelland Groenewegen

Dimitri Messing Siebe van der Kirsten van Tijo van Munster Kevin de Wolde
Veen Klaveren van Heuven

Lars Heerema Menno
Woudstra

Host overview


Name Girl Boy

Emiel Borsboom Yashish Hirani

Arent Jansze Soham Mehta

Rachel den Otter Aneesha Navlakha

Danny Schaye Rohaan Thadani

Yulian Durand Zeshan Shiekh

Weronika Kagchelland Sanchi Rohira

Jeroen de Laat Anay Rajgarhia

Noa Smink Disha Bafna

Neysah Luthria, Goenka
Elyse Groenewegen
Vrinda
Kimo Li Koppers Vatsal Gada

Dimitri Messing Krysh Wadhwani

Siebe van der Veen Yajat Thanawala

Kirsten van Klaveren Juhi Haria

Tijo van Munster van
Rishil Kishanchandani
Heuven
Kevin de Wolde Rudr Jalan

Lars Heerema, Menno
Woudstra Arsh Chhabra

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 Sunday


In the morning, all of us gathered at the parking lot of
Jamnabai Narsee School. We stepped into a typical yellow
school bus to start the city tour. The tour started with a
visit to Dhobi Ghat. A slum where they wash clothes from
Mumbai’s hotels and hospitals. Over 7000 people were
hand-washing clothes at the same time! After Dhobi Ghat
we drove over the Sealink, a famous bridge in Mumbai
that connects the districts Bandra and Dadar. If the Sealink
weren’t there, we would have to go around Mahim Bay.
That would have taken us 1,5 hours longer. We also saw
one of the most important buildings of Mumbai: the Gateway. It’s a huge building that looks a
bit like the L‘Arc de Triomph in Paris, but bigger. Next to the Gateway, there is a huge hotel: the
Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. On 26 November 2008, exactly 9 years before our visit, there was a
terroristic attack on the hotel. Therefore there was a lot of security around.

After the city tour we had lunch at a typical Indian restaurant. It was a
small place and our group took in almost all spots. When we were all
seated, a lot of different waiters came by and put a lot of different
foods on our plates. This continued the whole lunch and you had to
clearly show that you did not want more or they would just lay down
another piece of food. The food was very spicy and most Dutch people
were not used to this food. Even though I thought some of it was too
spicy it was a very nice experience, especially seeing that at the end of
the week I had only eaten typical Indian dinner two or three more
times. Except for the too spicy food the food was all really nice and
lived up to my expectations of delicious Indian food.
When we were all full from a nice Indian lunch we had some shopping time. Even though it
started of with some chaos to find a good working ATM in the end we all had our money and
headed to the small shops and stalls that provided us with cheap souvenirs. There the girls
found the occasion to buy Indian skirts for the goodbye party and necklaces/bracelets with their
name in Hindi. People also bought cheap sunglasses and presents for their family. In the end,
though, we all agreed that the shopping time was too short and we did not succeed in buying
enough souvenirs.

After the souvenir shopping we vistited the Mahatma Ghandi House. It was very impressive to
see how he lived. His entire life was portrayed in pictures, quotes and little pieces of scenery set
up in boxes. His house was actually pretty small, and I was very impressed with how Mahatma
Ghandi could end a war without using violence.

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After the Gandhi House, we went to a temple of which I don’t know the
name. It was beautiful. The temple was made completely out of Marble,
even the giant Buddha statue. The temple had 3 floors: a library, a giant
Buddha statue and a sort of Madurodam, where various other temples
were made in miniature size.

After these activities, we went back to school. Some of us immediately
went back home, but some went to Disha’s appartment. She had a
completely empty apartment one level below the one where she lived.
We hung out a bit and enjoyed the view from the balcony. At about
dinner time, everybody went home.

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 Monday

This morning we went to the Jamnabai Narsee School. The building of the school was huge,
students of all ages were walking around. One of the first things which was striking was that at
the place where I entered the school, there was a place where a picture of the founder of the
school hung. This kind of surprised me. It looked like the founder of the school still is an
important man for the students.

To go to the class of my host we had to take the elevator, because it was on the 5th floor. In his
class there was a very chaotic atmosphere. It took some time for the whole group to gather. But
when the group was complete, we went from the class to the assembly hall of the school. There
we had to give a presentation about the Netherlands. I thought that our hosts would be our
only public, but when we entered the assembly hall, there were sitting more than a hundred
students. Our accompanying teachers gave a small speech in which they introduced the whole
group of the Netherlands. Then, all of our hosts told the public something about us and the
exchange program. What none of us knew, was that we quickly had to introduce ourselves and
our host to the public.

After this we gave the presentation, which went better than I had expected. The public did not
seem to be bored during the presentation, so we did a good job. So today we experienced 2
lessons at their school, namely; English and art. We started the day off with an official assembly
in which both the Indian kids as us gave some presentations. After the presentations we went to
our first class which was English literature. In the lesson we analyzed Tears, Idle, Tears written
by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The English lesson was pretty much taught in the same way as our
English lessons. Although the teacher spend the whole lesson analyzing the poem, whereas in
Holland much less time would be spend on that and we would be given a lot more space for
individual work instead of listening to the teacher all the time. Also, the teacher kept asking us
questions on the poem, with a lot of “supposing” included which resulted in a very low energy
level from us, as we were already jet legged, so this lesson didn’t prove useful in terms of
getting our energy level up, let’s put it that way.

After the English lesson we got to experience an Indian break, so we were sitting in the canteen
of the school and some us bought some food and others ate things they brought from the
homes of their hosts. The extraordinary thing about their lunches in my opinion is that it looks
very much like a diner, every Indian meal, even the breakfast could be diner pretty much, and
with that I mean; legumes, sauce, rice and bread are involved in each meal and snack. After the
break there was quite a bit of chaos as we didn’t know where we had to go, we didn’t know
what lesson we were going to have, but after having visited some classrooms we found that we
were going to have an art lesson.

So the art lesson wasn’t a big success I think, it didn’t look organized in my eyes and we weren’t
doing anything related with India. We were just supposed to decorate some cards while the

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Indians did their schoolwork. On top of that in the middle of our art lesson we were interrupted
and told to move classrooms, which was quite chaotic, again. When we finally moved to the
different floor the teacher was gone and again we had no clue what to do so we just left the
classroom with our teachers to have a talk about the slums we were going to visit the next day.

I feel like our school system is totally different from theirs, as in Holland we have everything
organized, from classrooms to activities. I mean if exchange students visit our school we really
make sure everything is planned perfectly and each activity we do connects to our culture and
will actually learn them something about our country, whilst the activities we did today kind of
felt like time filling, and that was a shame as there are a lot of impressive things to see and do in
India.

Furthermore it was in a way a good thing to see how education can be different from ours, it
does make us thankful we get such a good, organized education here at the Rijnlands Lyceum.
We should be thankful for that.

In the evening of Monday a less serious but mostly less academic activity was scheduled: the
Welcome Party. It is still unknown to us fi our Indian hosts had any particular reason to organize
the Welcome Party on Monday instead of Sunday, our first full day in Mumbai and therefore
presumably a more logical day for a welcoming. This was not, however, a problem, as we would
have probably preferred a full day with all our hosts before having a party. Even though it is a
Welcome Party, it tends to be more fun (and especially less awkward) if the participators
already know each other and feel comfortable around each other. The knowing part was of
course covered during the week that out Indian hosts stayed in the Netherlands, but the feeling
of comfort around everything and everyone benefitted from that full day beforehand. After all,
there was a couple of month of no face-to-face contact between us and our hosts.

The Welcome Party was
organized at Vrinda Goenka, one
of the hostesses of Elyse
Groenewegen. It took place on
the terrace of Vrinda’s building.
The terrace was pretty large and
on top of a 6 floor building, so it
provided us with an impressive
view. When attempting to get a
glimpse of the things going on
the ground beneath us, one
realized how green Mumbai
actually was. Most of the ground
view was in fact blocked by trees
filling up the holes between the
buildings. Mumbai’s tropical
aspect was shown. The party possessed all the necessary requirements to make it a good party.
The reason why it was very successful Eumind Welcome Party is because many party
requirements were Indian party requirements, meaning that they "gave you a glimpse into the
vast Indian culture" (Aneesha Navlakha, Indian Eumind student). For instance, Bollywood music

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was played and Indian snacks and foods were served. On top of that, Vrinda organized a small
Indian photoshoot. Everyone got to wear traditional Indian clothing, , and take pictures with
their host or other Indian dressed students. The perhaps most extraordinary photo taken that
night is shown left.

Towards the end of the evening, Sanchi Rohira and Anay Rajgarhia (Indian Eumind students)
both gave a short speech. It were the first of many speeches still to come, in which gratefulness,
enthusiasms and mostly happiness were expressed. In their speeches they once again thanked
us for hosting them in the Netherlands six months ago and told us how excited they were to
now host us. With full agreement to their statements, we then told them how much their effort
was appreciated and that it was, which was truly meant, a wonderful way to once more open
the week.

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 Tuesday

It was Tuesday morning and we woke up at 07:00 as usual. We were served a traditional Indian
meal for breakfast and although it was nice to try many different foods, it was certainly not our
favorite! Soon after that, we needed to leave because we had to be at school by 07:50 in order
to go with the bus to the slums. Unfortunately some of us were late, causing the trip to be
delayed a little.

At around 08:10 the schoolbus started driving, but our Indian hosts weren’t coming along
because they had to study for their exams… It was a long and tiring trip and the fact that it was a
fairly small bus didn’t help. But even though it wasn’t the most comfortable ride and we were
quite nervous for what was lying ahead, we were having fun. Somewhere during the trip, we
picked up 3 people of the REAP organization who would guide us through the slums and
eventually around 10:30 we arrived. 5 minutes before that, our
teacher advised us to put on sun block because the sun was
extremely hot out there and believe us, it was!

All of us were not used to something as dirty as the slums at all. So
when the bus was parked just outside the slums and we were
allowed to go out of the bus, all of us were looking around with
amazement. We were not even inside the slums and it was already
a life experience! Once we were inside the slums there were pigs
walking around in the water and open sewers all around us. The
smell was even worse than inside Mumbai city, so that was a great
second impression.

We were split in groups of 4 and send to several small classes where we could play some games
with the children and perhaps teach them anything! We were lucky to have Tijo in our group
because he had a professional camera with him. With his help we were able to take beautiful
pictures of this amazing experience! We played every game we could think of: from dancing to
mathematics. The kids were happy with everything you did; if you clapped they would imitate
you with a huge smile on their face; if you turned
around all of them would follow you with the greatest
pleasure!

After having a great time with the kids, we went back
to the bus to have lunch at the REAP headquarters.
When we arrived we had to take off our shoes, we
entered the building and sat down facing a REAP
instructor, he showed us a video about the REAP
organization; what they did, what they achieved etc.
After the video was finished he gave some additional

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information. They were very nice people and the food was delicious! After lunch we put our
shoes back on and went deeper into the slums and it was shocking to see how the people lived.
It was dirty everywhere and the houses looked poor, we walked through very small alleys and
the people were staring at us. Some were smiling and some looked very grumpy. After a short
walk we ended up at a huge lake in the middle of the slum, it was beautiful and we took many
pictures! It was around 14:00 and we headed back to the bus, some of us slept and many had to
process all the things we had seen. At school our Indian hosts waited for us to arrive. Many of
our group went home to change and eat something very quickly because that evening we would
together with the rest of the EUMIND group eat at a restaurant. We gathered at a coffee place
(Café Coffee Day) at Carter Road. This was a boulevard full of restaurants and shops. We walked
as a group down the boulevard and ate something at a restaurant. Eventually everyone left the
restaurant and went home to sleep and prepare for the next day!

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 Wednesday

It was Wednesday; we were told we would be doing a cricket clinic and go to an arcade hall
later. All of us got out of bed early, as usual, and went to school. Jeroen and Elyse were brought
to school by car, and Noa walked there together with her host. When we arrived we went to our
usual classrooms, but we were quickly called to go and change. This was done in the toilets, and
Elyse and Noa noticed that there wasn’t any toilet paper present. There was only something
which looked like a mini-showerhead. We decided not go to the toilet at school for the rest of
the week! After having changed, we waited for the rest to call us and go to the sports field.

The temperature was way to high for us as always, and we were wondering how we were going
to survive a PE session with this weather – but when we arrived at the field, it wasn’t bad at all,
because the trees were providing a lot of shade. We were shocked to hear that this was the
ideal temperature for the Indian hosts, and that this was the coolest time of the year! This of
course was one of the many differences between the two groups, and we were really surprised
that they were enjoying this weather, while we weren’t as much.

After we got an explanation on how to play cricket, the PE teacher picked two Indian students
to create the teams. They both chose someone from the line of students, taking turns when
doing it. In the Netherlands we never created teams this way, but we didn’t say anything, until it
started to bother some of us. While Jeroen and Noa were chosen almost right away, Elyse
wasn’t. And when both teams had about eight players, the teacher suddenly stopped and said
that this would be enough. Elyse, among many others, wasn’t chosen yet, and apparently this
meant she didn’t get to play! She had been very excited to, so she was a bit angry. She just
ignored the teacher and joined the team Noa was in. Nobody noticed and we all had a very
good time playing. The cricket clinic turned out to be very nice, and we definitely learned
something along the way.

So the clinic turned out to be really good and we were all having fun. We started with a practice
game, after which we played for another round, which our team won. Then we played some
‘adult tag’, which was a very fun game to play. It was a bit hard at first, but in the end we were
really enjoying it. After having done the clinic we changed and went to go and do a dance clinic.
It was done on a song called ‘Tamma Tamma Again’, and whenever one of us hears something
which sounds only a little bit like the song, we start doing the dance again. It was so much fun to
do a dance with the whole group; we were laughing a lot during the clinic and we realised that
some of us aren’t that good at dancing, but it really didn’t matter because it was a lot of fun.

That night, the whole group went to an arcade hall. A lot of us had never been to an arcade hall
before, and it was really amazing to see all of the different games. There were all kinds of them,
and we got to try all of them once. The trampoline park was Noa’s favourite, because she got to
show what sport she was in. We also went to go bowling, karting and all kinds of other small
minigames.

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When most of us were standing outside, waiting for the drivers of our hosts to pick us up, a
woman suddenly came up to Noa and Elyse. She asked: ‘Can we take a picture with you guys?’
We were startled and told her ‘Eh, yes, of course!’ A few children ran up to us to join in for the
picture. We only realised what just had happened after the picture had been taken and they
had walked away. We really felt like we were celebrities for a moment!

Our final activity was when we went to the Hardrock restaurant. We had never been to
‘Hardrock Café’ and really enjoyed our time there. We were doing karaoke, ate a lot of spicy
foods and even did YMCA with the entire restaurant! The whole experience was very unique,
and we all had so much fun while we were there. After that, all of us went home after another
tiring, but successful day.

It really was an amazing day: We got to play the national sport, did a very fun dance together
and overall had a great time together. We learned a lot about each other, and the Indian
culture.

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 Thursday


On Thursday the 30th of November the Dutch and the Indian students were expected
to be in class at 8:30 am. Not everyone was right on time, so when all student arrived
on the sixth floor of Jamnabai Narsee School it was already 9 am. The group was
finally complete so we moved to the conference room. The hallway we had to go
through to get to the conference room was very wide and it went past an hexagon shaped
space that had no roof. So the hallways surrounding it were constantly filled
with air from outside.

We weren’t allowed to wear shoes in the conference room, probably because the
school didn’t want the carpet to get dirty. The conference room was almost shaped
like a triangle. On the tip you had a small stage where teachers would give classes and
on the wider part of the triangle, the students would sit. Every row of chairs was
elevated a little higher than the one in front of it so that everyone would see the
teacher.

The reason we went to the
conference room is that the
Indian students wanted to
teach the Dutch students
an Indian dance. We
removed all the chairs from
the room
and the Indian students
would show us the dance
first. It was a Bollywood
inspired
dance on the song “Tama
Tama Again”. I don’t think
many of the Dutch student
are
very good dancers, but the dance was simple and taught very well by the Indian
students. The song might be around 3 minutes but we took a good 1,5 to 2 hours to
actually know the dance. I think that if you ask any of the Dutch students to perform
the dance he or she probably still knows how to do it.
When we were done dancing we put the chairs back into the conference room and we
headed to the bus to go to the National Park at around 11 am.

After the morning program we stepped into the bus towards the Sanjay Gandhi
National Park. The bus drive was about 1.5 hours from the school all the way to the
Kanheri caves in the middle of the park.

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The funny thing is that the national park is in the middle of Mumbai. You’re driving
on a busy road in Mumbai and you cross the street and you see a huge gate. When
you drive through the gate you don’t realize at first but all the traffic noise is gone at
once and there is fresh air. Right when we had entered we stopped for a toilet break
and already 50m from the gate you could hear less noise and the air was a little
cleaner.

We drove through what looked like a jungle towards the caves on some asphalt and
dirt roads and saw some indigenous people who apparently were allowed to live in
the national park. We stopped at the entrance of the Kanheri caves and already there
were a lot of monkeys to greet us1.

The first thing we went to were two quite big caves2 we couldn’t enter located in a
mountain wall. This was nice but a bit disappointing because I had only seen one
photo of the caves and because of that I expected us to go down into a mountain and
find a whole underground cave system. The next thing we visited was more fun, this
was a Very big room/hall carved out in a mountain with a big dome5 at the end and
two huge statues3 at the entrance. When I realized that people had made this a long
time ago totally by hand I began to respect those people even more because it was a
huge cave with very high ceilings and some very nice details in the pillars4.
After having a look at this we walked up a long stairway along some more caves6 and
saw that there was a whole village and that supposedly every building has its own
function.

Next stop was the viewpoint, we had to climb a couple more stairs to come here but it
was totally worth it and in the end we had an amazing view over the whole forest with
fresh air in the foreground and the city with smog in the background7.
The one thing that amazed me most is that when we were at the viewpoint there was
absolutely no noise at all from the huge city of Mumbai that surrounded the whole
park. It was completely silent. A monkey also came to visit us and see if we had any
nice food he could take8. As soon as everyone had taken in the view and enough
photos of everyone9 where taken we went back down.

Only when we arrived back at school and stepped out of the bus we realized how
clean the air in the national park had been. The smell was awful and exactly the same

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as what we had smelled when we stepped out of the plane on the first day. The only
thing I can compare it with is the smell of the reptile house at the zoo; stale, warm
and stinky.

At night was the goodbye party. All of us were very excited for it, since we were told
that there was going to be a pool. The dress code was traditional Indian. All the Dutch
girls had bought typical Indian skirts and also the boys wore their Indian outfits.
When arriving at the address of Arsh, you could hear really loud music playing and it turned out
to be our party!

The party was on the roof of the building and it was very
well organized. They had hired a DJ, henna artists, a
photographer and there were several cooks. The party
started off with swimming. Everyone was enjoying the cool
water in the warm weather of Mumbai. It was a lot of fun.
The rest of the night was filled with dancing, laughter and
food. At the end of the night, a few speeches were given by
some of the EUMIND students. Though everyone was a little
sad that this would be one of the last times that we would see each other, this night was one of
the highlights of our week in India.

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Friday


The beginning of the day did not totally go as planned. We had to attend school at half past
eight, but it was ten past eight when the cook of our host woke us op. Our alarm clocks also did
not wake us up, so we really had to hurry to get to school in time. After packing our bags and
getting dressed up, we went to school as fast as possible. Luckily we just made it in time. Once
we had arrived at the school, we had a so called ‘Farewell Assembly’. After that everyone had to
attend a lesson with his or her host. We joined the maths class, but the teacher told us that it
would be better if we left the lesson because otherwise we might distract the Indian students
from their schoolwork. We spent the time of that lesson somewhere in the school,
unfortunately though, we could not do much else than talking and sitting

In the afternoon we had an ‘Indian & Dutch food competition’. This was sort of a cooking
competition featuring all kinds of Indian and Dutch dishes, made by the students. Each student
and their host had to take ingredients from home, to then make food from it. Unfortunately our
host forgot to take the ingrediens with him, so we had nothing to cook and could not join the
competition. Eventually when everyone was done cooking their meals, the dishes were tasted
and graded by the teachers. The winner was chosen shortly after that. After the cooking
competition, we could unfortunately not go home yet. This was because nobody was allowed to
leave the school before 3 o’clock, according to the school rules. We tried to arrange that we
could sit in the computer room, with airconditioning. However, there was a lesson going on
inside so we could not enter the place. So everybody was really bored until we finally could go
home.

After we had finished the long school day, we went home with our host. We had something to
eat and had some time to rest. We had to be at a park at 5 for Angel Express, an organization of
volunteers who teach children who cannot attend school. That way, the children learn
something that might help them get a job. We arrived at the park on time, but then we found
out that everyone had to get back in the car because we were at the wrong location. Our driver
had already left, so we had to ride with someone else. The other location was a half hour drive,
while the distance was not big at all. When we finally arrived at the right park we were split into
groups and assigned to a group of children. The intention was that they would ask the Dutch
people questions about the Netherlands, but the children in my group were very shy, so I chose
to have a quiz, and the one who gave a correct answer got 1 of the cars that I had brought with
me. The children clearly liked this more, and they became enthusiastic. Unfortunately, we only
got 45 minutes with the children. Afterwards many children came to me for my signature, which
was funny as it felt like I was a celebrity.

After Angel Express it took a while before our driver arrived at the park, and on the way back
home there was a huge traffic jam. It took us an hour and a half to drive back home. We arrived
at the house at 8:30 and we had to leave at a quarter past 9, so we had to pack everything and

18
eat dinner at a fast pace. After dinner we said goodbye to everyone and got in the car. Then we
had to drive another hour through the traffic jam. At the airport we said goodbye to all Indian
students, and we went inside to check in. As I stood in line to check in, I noticed how beautiful
and clean the airport was, while the city was very dirty, it was a big difference between the two.
Everything went smoothly at the airport, and after buying some souvenirs and food, we went to
the gate and boarded the plane. 8 hours of sleep later we arrived in Zurich. We had to hurry up
to be at the gate on time, but when we got there, we found out that there was 2 hours of delay.
Since we did not get much food on the plane, we searched the airport for cheap food, but in the
end I had to settle with 2 sandwiches and a pretzel for 10 euros. Afterwards we played a few
jars of Mario Kart on the DS with a few people. The 2 hours passed quickly, and then it was only
one and a half hour flight to Amsterdam. We said goodbye to each other, greeted our family,
and went back home again

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