Following the trip of a lifetime to work with street children in India, Brimscombe teenager Amber Prosser says she has changed her life. Reporter Sian Davies spoke to her about the trip and her plans for the future.

BEFORE setting off on the 10 hour flight to Bangalore to work for three-and-a-half weeks, Amber, 18, had never been in a plane and had only ever been abroad once before.

So just the journey there must have been nerve-wracking enough but having never met the other 17 Gloucestershire teenagers in her group, Amber's trip was a big step.

"When we first got there it was really surreal and I thought 'oh my god' what have I let myself in for, but it was absolutely amazing," she said.

Just weeks before her trip, Amber's mother sadly died and Amber wondered whether she should still go.

She said: "I thought about not going when she died, but I knew she wanted me to do it, so I'm really glad I did."

During their stay the group, bought together by the Gloucester Diocese, who organised the trip, spent most of their time working with homeless boys aged five to 17 at the hostel in Bangalore and painted them a mural on one of the their walls.

Amber said: "We took them out babbles and balls as gifts and they loved it because they'd never seen bubbles before."

The group also took trips out to other schools and hostels and visited a Maharajah's palace, the Chukki waterfalls, the Nandi hills and a number or Indian churches.

Amber said: "We visited some lovely churches with amazing stained glass windows - it's a really beautiful country."

Amber said before the trip she couldn't eat spicy food, but the different flavours in Indian cuisine has transformed her taste buds.

"The food was so different - when I got home our food seemed so bland," she added.

Since the trip, that she heard about through her church youth group, Praise God Barebones, Amber said she has changed her life.

After returning home from India Amber left her job as a nursery nurse in Cirencester to return to college and study for her A-levels and is hoping to eventually train to become a teacher.

She said: "I decided to start doing something with my life, so I'm now at Stroud College studying for A-levels in psychology, English literature and language and human biology."

"I grew up a lot while I was out there and now I've got the experience of living in another country and that's just an amazing feeling because there's not many people who have been to India to work with children.

"The hardest thing was leaving at the end of the trip because we built up a good relationship with the children who we were working with - leaving was really sad leaving because they were so lovely.

"I hope I can get the chance to go back. Eventually I want to set up my own girls' hostel out there."