My project over the last few days has been trying to force creativity out of the class 10 kids. For the most part, they aren’t very good at making things up and using their imaginations (there are a few exceptions though). I personally think those are some very important skills, so I tried to come up with an activity where they couldn’t help but be creative. I had them make their own monsters.
It’s so hard to come up with things that they don’t think are stupid. I knew that I had to make it as easy and guided as possible so that even the boys who hate everything would be interested enough to turn something in. Then, I gave them class time to work on it because as soon as you say “homework”, you lose at least half the class. Finally, most importantly, I hovered. A lot. Here’s my strategy:
This thing is terrifying looking but apparently is very nice and just wants to be friends.
I walk around the room and start peeking at people’s papers. They’re all panicked for some reason as if I’m grading them on the spot. I go up to a kid who clearly is not working and say, “how’s your monster coming? Do you need any help?” He looks at me like I might be brainless because he obviously has done nothing. “Can I see what you have so far? Where’s your notebook?” He gets out his notebook and shows me a blank page. “Oh, it looks like you have some work to do still. Do you have any questions? Were the instructions unclear?”
“No, ma’am,” he says, trying to get me to leave ASAP.
“Okay, I’ll come back in a few minutes to check on you.” And then I just keep standing there until he starts working.
The dog-bunny-bird thing is creatively named (x+y)^2 and is a nice monster who helped a lost time traveler.
I can’t say it completely worked because I still had some people turn in practically nothing, but I think there’s only so much you can do about that. The important thing is that the people who DID turn it in actually did a decent job! After imagining and drawing their monsters, I told them to write a story about them too. I knew that was a stretch.
“I want you to write a story about your monster. I don’t care what it’s about, as long as your monster is in it?”
A girl comes up. “I don’t know what to write about.”
The girls were really into monster vegetables. Super weird.
“You can write about anything… like the first time your monster meets a human, the best day of your monster’s life, your monster’s first day of school…”
“Monsters don’t go to school.” *Mental facepalm*
“But maybe they do. Maybe they go to monster school.” Blank stare. “Orrrr maybe not. Just write a story with your monster in it.”
Really?? MONSTERS DON’T GO TO SCHOOL?? As if that would be the most unbelievable thing in a story about an IMAGINARY CREATURE.
Anyway, all I can say is, I’m happy it’s the weekend. Despite having school on Saturday, at least we don’t have English class. Oh yeah! And guess what today’s surprise was! I assigned some homework to class 9 and said, “this is due on Monday.” And then they said, “we don’t have school on Monday!” Surprise! To be fair, this actually was on the school schedule. Either way, it was a surprise to me! Happy Weekend!
There is a lizard in my room (or maybe it’s a gecko… does anyone know what the difference is? We’ll just go with lizard). Now, I’m not afraid of lizards or anything, but that doesn’t mean I want one in the room where I sleep. I have some lizard-related nightmares that I’d rather not have come true.
Nightmare #1: There’s this scene in The Parent Trap (the newer one with MK and Ashley) where the step-girlfriend ends up with a lizard half in, half out of her mouth. I keep having these horrible visions of me waking up in the middle of the night with a LIZARD IN MY MOUTH. Ew ew ew ew ew ew.
There he is, lurking right next to my air conditioner like he has no idea what danger lies inside.
Nightmare #2: I don’t know if you recall the lizard-meets-A/C incident of 2016, but apparently, I’m scarred from it. Today, my new roommate was hanging out on my wall, my air conditioner was running (which is rare, but it was HOT), and all of a sudden, it decided to move TOWARDS the A/C unit rather than away from it. COME ON, LIZARD! Be smart! It disappeared from view, and I was sure that at any second, a dead lizard was going to be dispensed onto my bed. I’m currently sitting on bed #2, far away from the drop zone.
My A/C is now off, and my lizard friend was last spotted heading away from my bed, so I think we’re safe at the moment. Nothing is for certain though. On the bright side, these lizards make this weird sound… I don’t even know how to describe it. My best attempt would be that it’s like when I try to imitate a dolphin. I know, that’s very unhelpful, but it’s the best I can do right now. I’ll start trying to catch it on video. Anyway, that’s a positive in my mind because then you can always tell where they are. I would rather know if my room has been infiltrated, even if it’s going to freak me out a bit.
If I’m being honest, the lizard was probably the most eventful part of my day. I’m still sick, so I went to school for 1st period and then came back to sleep. I need to take advantage of all the rest time I can get because tomorrow I have three classes to teach. Jenrika has been with the class 9 English class doing grammar the last couple of days, but I have them back tomorrow, plus the class 8 Science period. Wish me luck!
Oh! The other mildly exciting thing that happened today was that it was a kid’s birthday at school, and that means candy! I love how birthdays are celebrated here. This is another “I don’t know if this is an Indian thing or just how things are done at this school” thing. Every day during assembly, they ask if it’s anyone’s birthday. If it is, they come up to the front, and everyone sings “happy birthday” to them (and it’s a much better version than the one we use. I’ve decided that our “happy birthday” song is horrible and kind of sounds like a funeral march. We should work on that). The kid doesn’t have to wear his/her uniform that day, and they walk around the school giving out candy. Tell me that doesn’t sound like the best thing ever! With almost 400 kids in the school, we have A LOT of candy days. This should be a thing everywhere.
Finally! Test day! And it’s also Pastor Daniel’s birthday! Today was another one of those days that just reaffirmed the fact that I know what’s going on approximately 10% of the time. More likely, that number is 0%, but 10% of the time, I just don’t find out that whatever I thought I knew was actually wrong.
I got to school around the usual time, and it was chaos. Kids were getting sent over here and over there, teachers were running left and right, and it looked like there had been a balloon explosion. So, what did I do? I asked once if there was something I could do to help, got a half-answer that I decided to take as a no, and stayed as far out of the way as possible. Everyone was getting ready for a small birthday ceremony for Pastor Daniel.
The “We Wish You A Happy Birthday” kids. Hilarious.
Here’s the 20-second summary: Pastor Daniel showed up, and everyone clapped. A prayer was said, a Bible verse read, and then he was serenaded by a happy birthday remix (including a rap), courtesy of the class 9 and 10 boys. All of the teachers were called to the stage for something that we were apparently supposed to be aware of, and I was happy to see that the couple of teachers I was standing with also got the panicked “ummm whattt???” eyes. We tried to refuse, got forced onto the stage to perform some songs that I didn’t know, and quickly returned to our hiding spots in the back. Paper letters were pinned to the backs of some kids’ shirts to read “WE WISH YOU A HAPPY BIRTHDAY”. That was kind of awesome. The cake was cut and some pieces were stuffed into the mouths of random, nearby kids. The gifts were presented, a “thank you” speech was given by Pastor Daniel, and that was that.
Pre-cake cutting
Speaking of the cake thing, that’s something else that I don’t understand. Anytime there’s a cake cutting here (which, in the two weeks I’ve been here, there have been more cake cutting ceremonies than the rest of my life combined), there are like 10 people with their hands on the knife, and after the cut is made, everyone feeds each other cake. It’s like what people do at weddings except it’s not a wedding. Today, Pastor Daniel cut the cake and then fed pieces to like 5 random people who were standing close-by. I need to do some asking around about this because I really don’t get if there’s some method to the whole thing or what, and with my luck, I’ll end up doing a cake-cutting at some point and will offend everyone with my lack of cake-feeding knowledge.
That about wrapped up the birthday ceremony, but SURPRISE! Half day of school to celebrate! Of course. I totally knew about that… not. The one thing that DID go according to plan was that the English test actually happened. Spoiler alert: I was in physical pain after grading the class 9 tests. Teachers of the world – is that something that happens to other people, or is it just me? Class 10 did pretty well. I personally think that everyone should have gotten a 10/10 because it was insanely easy, but they at least had a large majority who got 8/10 or higher. Class 9 though. My gosh. There were so many questions that people didn’t even answer. What is wrong with these kids? When you don’t know the answer, you GUESS! You write ANYTHING and hope that you’ll get partial credit. Anything is better than nothing! If you write nothing, you’re going to get zero points, guaranteed. We’re going to have to talk about that. These are essential school skills!
The teachers!
Part of the reason I’m bummed about the scores is because I know that when kids do poorly on tests, it’s partly a reflection of how the teacher did preparing them. That means I have work to do. I’m not going to take all the blame though because part of the problem is the way they’ve been educated up to now. The way I see it, the kids in classes 9 and 10 have been speaking and learning in English for at least 10 years at this point. How long does it take to get a good grasp on a language when you’re speaking it every day? And when you start from a young age? They should be able to write complete, coherent sentences by now. They should be able to read and comprehend a basic story. They should know how to study for a test where they don’t know the questions ahead of time. Am I being unreasonable? You remember how I mentioned the big board exams they have to take at the end of year 10? They’re in English! There’s no escaping the fact that they need to be able to read and write proficiently.
Sorry, I’m ranting. It’s frustrating though! Now I’m all invested in these kids, and I want them to do well! I want to help them do well, but I think I probably care more than they do. Teacher life is exhausting. I don’t think I’m emotionally cut out for this.
No, of course I wasn’t taking pictures of the class during the test…
Anyway, after school, I headed home to finish grading the tests and was interrupted by a knock on my door. It was my sister (#2), Prisha, asking if I was ready. Ready for what? I never know. I figured it was something to do with Pastor Daniel’s birthday, and she was wearing a dress which meant I should probably change out of my pajamas. I said, “of course!” like I totally know what was going on and then rushed to get changed into something presentable before running downstairs. I caught the car just as it was pulling out of the driveway. Phew.
It turns out that Pastor Daniel puts on a lunch for the teachers every year on his birthday. We were headed to the Bible school where we enjoyed a few more birthday serenades, another cake cutting/cake feeding, and a lunch. I was directed towards the “non-spicy” foods which means “tolerably spicy for a non-Indian and non-spicy for an Indian”. One dish was pointed out as being spicy, and I steered VERY clear of that. Trust me, if you’re a normal human and an Indian tells you that something is spicy, run the other direction.
All in all, it was an exhausting day. It was really cool though to see how much the teachers respect Pastor Daniel. I’ve talked to more than one who mentioned how he’s been a mentor/a friend/like a father to them. He’s one of those people who makes everyone feel special and appreciated. I really admire him as a leader, and more and more I’m realizing how lucky I am to get to spend so much time with him. I have so many opportunities to talk to him and ask questions and learn from his experience. To put it simply, he’s kind of a big deal, and I get to be part of his family. How awesome is that?!?
*This post is from Monday, but thanks to a power cut, I was wifi-less yesterday.*
Today was definitely a T.I.I. kind of day. I’m still not feeling great, so I decided to go to school just for the morning because the kids were supposed to be taking the English test. I figured I should be there since it is, after all, my test. The test procedure at this school (not sure how they do it at other schools here, so I can’t only speak for this one) is not what I’m used to. For the entire week, the kids have a test or two per day (depending on the grade they’re in and the number of subjects they have). The test takes place in a “0 period” that happens right after assembly, and after that, the normal class schedule follows with 35-minute periods instead of 40-minute.
Okay perfect. I had my plan to go for assembly and 0 period, and before I left, I was going to give the class 10 kids a writing assignment to do in-class during period 1. Since nothing gets printed out or photocopied here, everything is handwritten. For the test, I hand-wrote the questions on sheets of paper and handed them in to the woman who is in charge of keeping the test papers. Then, when it’s time for the test, she takes the appropriate test paper and gives it to the class teacher (basically the homeroom teacher) who goes to the classroom to write the questions on the board and administer the test. The kids all copy the questions from the board and then answer them. If that whole thing sounds complicated, then you have the right idea. I can’t even explain to you how much easier life would be with a photocopier!
So this morning, the English test papers had been handed out to the class teachers, and they were about to leave the staff room when… oh, wait. Monday is MATH, not English. Of course it is. It’s not like people have been telling me for almost 2 weeks that the English test was on Monday. “Oh, yes. It says it right there. English is Tuesday.” Great.
I stuck around until the end of 0 period, and the class 10 kids were still working on their math tests. It didn’t look like they were going to finish anytime soon, so I left. A productive day, right? I actually have managed to be pretty productive considering the circumstances. My big goal for the day was to get a loose framework for my lesson plans for the next three weeks, and I kind of have one. Halfway through my planning, the power went out which means that the wifi went out, so “loose” is really the key word here.
Now I’m writing this blog post that will probably have to be posted tomorrow considering the power situation. It’s been out for over an hour now… usually they aren’t that long. It’s a good thing that I’m a power cut pro at this point. The lights go off, and I roll my eyes and grab my flashlight, completely unfazed. What a spoiled life I live in the States! There, the power goes out from a storm and I think it’s incredibly inconvenient. Here, the power goes out for at least a few minutes every day (a few minutes to a few hours) and I think it’s no big deal. Sometimes it’s good to get a reality check to help me realize just how lucky I am! I’ve been getting a lot of those over the last few months. I’ll share that ever-growing list another time.
This was my first weekend of school on Saturday, and let me say that while it wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting, it also wasn’t good. I mean, school itself was fine. The problem is that now it’s Sunday night, and I don’t feel like I’ve had any time off. Sunday nights are hard enough when you have a full weekend!
The other thing that’s making me a little grumpy is the fact that I’m sick. Ugh. Being sick is the worst. Ruth is sick too, and she thinks that it’s because we got caught in the rain on our walk Friday morning. I’m not so sure. It was only drizzling, and we weren’t in it for more than 15 minutes. It is suspicious though. We’re the only two in the house who are sick, we got it at about the same time, and we’re the only ones who were walking in the rain. I didn’t think that getting caught in the rain could make you sick, but maybe things are different when everything is polluted.
Everyone waiting for chapel to start, girls on one side, boys on the other, as usual.
I’ve spent most of the weekend sleeping, trying to get over it. Ruth is in much worse shape than I am. I just have a tickly throat and maybe a slight fever, and I think I’m going to be over it in just a couple more days if I keep taking care of myself. From the way everyone is treating me, you’d think that I was on my deathbed. I skipped lunch today so that I could sleep, and I got a mini-pizza and hot milk delivery once I woke up. They also keep asking if I need to go to the doctor, but I really think that I just have a cold and will be fine soon enough.
Yesterday was my first school chapel experience. Besides the fact that all I really wanted to do was sleep, it was fun! I helped Jenrika plan it, and we went with an Easter theme since classes were cancelled last week for the holiday. We were supposed to have a projector, and I found this great video for kids that explains Easter, but when we got there in the morning, the projector wasn’t there.
Remember how in Ghana we used to say “T.I.A.” (This Is Africa) anytime something happened that we either couldn’t understand or was just so classic Ghana? Well, I think I need to start saying “T.I.I.” or something like that for here. T.I.I. would apply in situations like this, where nothing happens the way you’ve been told, or at times when you end up being assigned some responsibility that no one tells you about until the last minute, or when an event starts no less than one hour after it’s supposed to.
Like I was saying, so T.I.I., the projector wasn’t there, and we had to go with the backup plan. Luckily, we had one because Jenrika said that we couldn’t count on what anyone told us. Thank goodness for her because she’s one of the only people I can count on for reliable information. I don’t know if it’s because she knows more than other people or if she just understands my questions better. My current way of getting answers to my questions is by asking everyone I come across and then trying to piece together what I think the actual truth is, based on all of the information I’ve gotten. Jenrika has consistently been correct or the closest to correct.
Dancing during one of the songs, I’ll need to take a video next time because this really doesn’t adequately convey the scene.
Wow… my mind is wandering all over today. Again, like I was saying, the projector wasn’t there. Instead, I gave my best attempt at telling the Easter story. No pressure, right? Just trying to get 300 some kids to understand the most important event in all of Christianity. I think I’m getting better at knowing how to phrase things and which words to use though because even the little kids seemed to understand what I was saying. When I finished the story, we asked a few questions about it and gave out chocolate to the people who answered correctly (there’s nothing like candy to get kids motivated).
The chapel session ended with a few songs which I think was my favorite part. The kids love to sing and dance, and the songs that they teach all have fun hand motions and dance moves to go along with them. The kids were going crazy, jumping around and singing along. It was awesome. After that, I passed out, and that’s pretty much been the story of my weekend since then.
Tomorrow is English test day, so I’ll at least try to go to school during the test period in case there are any questions. Fingers crossed that I feel better in the morning!
Sorry I’ve been MIA the last couple of days. I’ve been crazy busy! I’m having trouble putting together a good schedule that allows me to get everything done each day and also get enough sleep. This week was so good though! I can’t believe that only one week of teaching has gone by (one day last week does not count). I feel like I’ve been in the classroom with these kids for like 3 months. You know what else is crazy? I’m giving a test next week. Me! A test!
Morning walk street views
I don’t know how often they do test weeks… every month maybe? Anyway, they have a test in every subject next week, and since I’m currently the English Lit teacher, I’m giving the English Lit test. HA! I have NO idea how this is going to go. It’s only for 10 points, but they have 40 minutes to do it. I’m not really sure what that means for how I was supposed to write the questions. I personally think that the tests I wrote are incredibly easy and that if everyone doesn’t get a 10 out of 10, it means that they somehow managed to put in less than zero effort. I’m sure that I’ll be unpleasantly surprised when I get the papers back though.
In other news, I think my campaign to be a normal person is slowly working. I’ve been going to the pre-school assembly every day, and the kids have stopped staring at me like I’m an alien. I even have some teacher friends!! All of the teachers have been so nice, and I’ve especially hit it off with a few of them. It’s so much more fun going to school each day when I know that I get to see my new friends. I mean, if we’re going to spend six days a week together (school on Saturdays though… like why?), we’d better like each other.
Besides people starting to treat me more normally, I’m realizing that there are some things that I thought were special but were actually just normal. For example, bringing me hot milk every day at school. Okay, so I might be the only one with a special order for milk instead of tea (though honestly, they might as well just give me tea… it’s all the same to me now), but ALL of the teachers get tea delivered to them during school. How was I supposed to know? You don’t see teachers in the US getting teacup deliveries in the middle of the day. That’s a thing here though, and after I realized the truth, it made me start looking more closely at everything.
Today’s random thing of the day… this cereal box. “Prolonged storage and exposure to air may result in infestation.” I’m sorry… what?? Can you be a little more clear? What KIND of infestation???
There are a lot of things that just come down to manners and the way that people are taught to be polite here. People are always offering things to others, especially food. If someone is eating lunch, they offer it to everyone else around. It’s not just an “asking to be polite but you should say no to be polite”. It’s a “please, have some. Seriously, I want you to”.
The kids are taught to have respect for all adults. When a teacher enters the room, everyone stands up and greets her/him with a simultaneous “good morning, ma’am” or “good morning, sir” and remains standing until you give them permission to sit. They ask for permission before entering or leaving the room. At the end of class, they stand up as you’re leaving and give a “thank you, ma’am” or “thank you, sir”. Here, like in Ghana, the kids are always expected to do things to help out. They’re responsible for keeping their classrooms clean, they offer to fetch and carry things for you, and you can ask them to help you with practically any task, no matter how random, and they’ll do it. Don’t get me wrong; they’re not perfect. They’re definitely still kids and don’t always do what they should, but there’s a respect and willingness to help that are just trained into them. It’s very interesting.
Remember when I said that my lack of sleep was going to catch up with me? Well… it didn’t take as long as I was expecting. I completely crashed today. When I got back to the house after school, I took a quick 20-minute nap that turned into a not so quick 3-hour nap. Ha. Oops.
Normally, I would try to just hold out for the weekend, but brace yourself to hear the worst thing ever… They have school on Saturdays. SCHOOL ON SATURDAYS. I also somehow JUST found this out because they’ve had school holidays on the two Saturdays since I’ve been here (one because they get off on the second Saturday of each month and one for Easter). At first, I thought that they just had chapel in the morning, but no, after that, they have two classes! CLASSES ON SATURDAYS. They get off at 11:30, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s SCHOOL… ON SATURDAYS.
The school coordinator literally laughed at me when she told me this and my jaw dropped. I just… that’s horrible! I know that I’m supposed to say that just because things are different here doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but this… this is so wrong. I am a big supporter of vacation time and weekends and not working on the weekends. How am I supposed to survive the week if I have literally ZERO days to sleep in? Six days a week I have to wake up for school, and on Sundays, I have church. I know, I know. I’m complaining. But did I mention that they have school on Saturdays??
Speaking of the school, I realized that I haven’t explained much about it and how I ended up there. The missionary couple who is hosting me (I’ll have to tell their story sometime too… it’s awesome!) started the school. To give you the short history, they moved here without a plan. They didn’t already have the idea to start a school; they just came and observed and decided that it was something that the community needed.
Ruth said that she and Pastor Daniel used to take walks around the city, and they saw so many kids who weren’t in school for one reason or another, often money problems or because they were girls. At the time when they first came (around the year 2000), many people here still didn’t see education as important for girls. Girls are already expensive because they need money to get married, so why send them to school and spend even more money on them? (Women/their families often have to pay a dowry/bride price as part of marriage agreements. Apparently there are laws against this now, but as far as I can tell, they’re not very effective.)
They started out by setting up free classes that were open to all kids. They taught them songs and Bible stories and gave them something to do besides roam the streets, and the number of kids grew and grew until they had 300-400 kids showing up. Can you imagine? 400 kids! Eventually, this transformed into a small school that started with just kindergarten and then grew with the kids. Now, they have Pre-K through 10th standard. Here, after 10th standard, the kids take board exams that determine where they can go to school for “+2”, or the equivalent of 11th and 12th grade. It’s normal for kids to go to a different school for +2, and many schools are just Pre-K to 10th. After that, they take another round of board exams and can go to college to get a bachelor’s degree in 3 years.
The families pay what they can towards tuition, and the rest is covered by scholarship. Some kids are on full scholarship and even get their books, uniforms, and other materials provided. The classes (besides language classes) are all taught in English. People speak a lot of different languages here (Hindi, Nepali, Bengali, and more), so English is the language spoken in a good number of schools in the area. It’s a Christian school, but students and teachers of all faiths are welcome. The kids have morning assembly where they sing Christian songs and such and have chapel on Saturday, and the teachers have a prayer time after school each day. Everyone is required to participate but obviously not forced to believe.
Pastor Daniel said that they’ve had parents who transferred their kids out because of the participation requirement, and within the year they were begging for their kids to be readmitted because they realized the quality of the education they’re getting. Beyond just classwork, there’s a strong moral education, and the kids are taught to behave appropriately, take care of themselves, and be respectful and kind to others.
From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a cool place. The teachers all seem to get along well, and they actually care about the students. The kids act like kids, but they definitely are polite and respectful. I’m learning a lot from working there, both from the students and the other teachers. It’s an interesting dynamic with the coming together of so many different types of people, but it works!
Yesterday was a fall-asleep-while-writing kind of day, so I decided to call it quits and go to sleep rather than post a pile of nonsense. The last two days, Ruth and I have been doing morning walks, so that means a 5AM departure to avoid the heat and the dust. She wanted to do 4AM, but like… how? If we’re eating dinner at 8PM, that already means 8 hours of sleep is impossible. All those nights of little sleep add up to me eventually crashing and going comatose for a whole day. No exaggeration.
Myra managed to wake up to join us yesterday (and by “managed to wake up” I mean “was forced out of bed by her father and not given the option of not coming”), but today it was just me and Ruth (apparently Myra got smart and locked everyone out of her room). We mostly just powerwalked, but it still made me feel good all day. I missed that feeling… you know, of not being a total bum.
Smog-filled sunrise from a trash-filled field.
We walked to a field about 10 minutes from the house and then did some laps around there. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone else exercising, but the field was actually a pretty happening place for 5AM! There were a few packs of ladies walking back and forth and some solo guys running/walking/potentially doing yoga but maybe just lying on the ground (corpse pose?). When we got back, I did some stretching and tried to summon back the flexibility and strength that I had 3 weeks ago when I last worked out. Too bad it doesn’t work that way, right?
My first real classes were yesterday, and in both class 9 and class 10, I planned to have the kids read stories from the textbooks. There were only a few issues with that plan: 1) I only have one copy of each book and 2) the reading and comprehension level that the textbook assumes is not even close to right. The vocab and the structure of the included pieces is way more advanced than the kids can handle. I guess I just need to do whatever I can to simplify and over-explain things.
The class 10 period was not great. I wanted to have the kids each read a couple sentences and then pass the book, but everyone whispers when they’re reading and they’re horrible at staying focused and it’s hard to follow along just by listening in a language that’s not your own. I don’t think anyone had any clue what the story was about by the end. I knew that I had to do something different for class 9, so in my one period break, I typed up the class 9 short story and pulled it up on the smartboard so that they could read from there.
That worked so much better!! After each person read, we went through and talked about all of the words that I thought they might not know… which ended up being practically every other word. That was a little discouraging. I don’t have time in the next 4 weeks to catch them up on years of material and language skills, but I am going to see if there are any reading strategies I can teach them so that they at least have some tools to help them in the future. This is a learning process for both of us.
In class 10 today, I typed up their story too, and we completely re-read it. I’m hopeful that maybe it worked? We’ll find out soon enough. Next step is teaching some vocabulary. I picked out words in both stories that I think are good to know, and they will learn them. I’m determined (and determined is one of our vocab words).
The other current struggle is homework. Everyone just copies each other, and with writing assignments, it’s incredibly easy to tell. They all use the exact same words, same order, same errors. I mean, if you’re going to copy, at least put in some effort. I gave them all 3/5 for their copied homework (which I thought was VERY generous… should have been a zero for all of them), wrote “Don’t copy!” on their papers, and outrage ensued.
One person says, “but they copied off of me!” I say, “how am I supposed to know who copied who? All I see is that your answers are the same. And did you let them copy you?” She looks at me with a why-does-that-matter face, “yes.” The next person says, “why did I get a 3/5?!” I say, “did you copy from someone?” “Yes. But why did I get a 3/5??” Oookaaayyy… tomorrow we’re going to have a fun talk about expectations, what “cheating” means, and the importance of homework. Woo! Jenrika, my English teacher friend at school, agrees with me, so at least I have some backup.
Happy Easter!! How cool is it that people all over the world are celebrating Christ’s resurrection today? It’s fun to know that even though I’m halfway around the world, I’m doing essentially the same thing I would be doing if I was at home… just 9.5 hours earlier.
Tuk tuk ride to the rally! Our tuk tuk ride BACK from the rally included 8 people, so I was a little too squished to take a picture (though the India capacity of a tuk tuk is probably considered to be like 45 people).
The day started off nice and early with an Easter rally through the city. Basically, all of the churches in the city get together and walk the streets, singing songs and holding signs and handing out tracts (those little papers that tell people the basics of Christianity) to the crowds that came to gape at us. The rally started at 6AM.
Last night, they told me to be ready to leave at 5:45AM, and like a good US-ian, I was ready at 5:40. I walked downstairs… and all of the lights to the family’s floor were off, and the door was locked. Cue panic! I was sure that they left without me because they didn’t think that I would be able to wake up in time. I ran all over trying to find someone left on the property who could tell me where I needed to go to find the rally start point. Finally, through some broken English and hand motions, I found out that everyone was still at home. Of course.
Pastor Daniel always jokes about Indian Standard Time (IST), and while that’s actually what the time zone is called, that’s not what he’s talking about. The real IST is official IST+1 hour. When they told me 5:45, I should have immediately converted that to 6:45. Beginner mistake. I obviously know that Indian time is a little slow, but it’s confusing because when Pastor Daniel and Ruth say a time, things actually happen at that time. Like church “starts” at 10AM, and it really does start at 10 (probably more on time than church at home, honestly). School “starts” at 8AM, and it really does start at 8. I figured that if they were telling me 5:45, they actually meant 5:45. Today, 5:45 meant 5:45 IST. If I had known that, I could have eaten more than just a butter muffin for breakfast! (In case you were wondering, yes, they are delicious. Though “vanilla cupcake” would probably be a more accurate and less confusing name.)
Easter Rally!
I’m sure this is shocking, but none of my siblings woke up in time, even with the delayed 6:45 departure. Pastor Daniel, Ruth, and I hopped in a tuk tuk and made our way to the rally. It had already started by the time we got there, but only barely. We found our church and hopped into the line, and as usual, I didn’t understand anything that was happening. They gave me a sign to hold so I could feel like I was contributing something, and they even found one in English for me!
The gathering at the end of the rally where people said more things that I didn’t understand, and we melted in the sun.
After the rally, we headed back to get ready for church. The service was mostly the same… I don’t know what happened or what anyone said, but they had some extra music added in because it’s Easter. It was nice! And then during post-church tea, I talked to someone new! What a successful day!
We went out for lunch, and the lighting designer in me got really excited about this wall at the restaurant. Ignore all of the extra reflections and glare. Pastor Daniel was laughing at me, but look how cool!
Tomorrow, Ruth, Myra, and I are going for an early morning walk. Commence getting back into shape! We also talked about the bike again at dinner tonight, and it’s happening Tuesday. I’m so happy! They want me to try to teach Myra, and they’ll get one for her too if she can learn. I have no idea how to teach someone to ride a bike, but that’s what the internet is for. In exchange, I’m going to make her teach me some Hindi! Pastor Daniel has a whole list of things for her to do to occupy her time at home. He told her that she’s had two days to rest, and now her vacation is over hahaha. That sounds like the same thing my parents used to try with me over holiday breaks. Why don’t parents understand that that’s not the way this works?
Good Friday was a school holiday, so the only thing on my schedule for the day was church in the morning. I was happy to have some time to keep catching up on all of the things that have been piling up since Peru. Even though I wasn’t actively stressed about them, I don’t like falling behind, and my to-do list was far too long for comfort.
Random fun fact of the day: there is a 99.9% chance that I’m currently using crepe paper as toilet paper.
The Good Friday service was the usual two hours of me understanding nothing, but this time it was slightly better because I have a friend! Her name is Anna, and she’s a teacher at another school in town. She and her mom go to our church, and Ruth introduced me to them saying, “this is Lara. She’s very lonely… be her friend.” Oh thanks. I guess I can’t complain though because now they’ve taken me under their wings, and I don’t have to sit alone anymore! Plus, during the service, Anna whispered what scripture passages were being read, so at least I could kind of follow along.
After the service, we all went over to the school to pray over the building, the students, parents, and teachers, and the school’s quest to become accredited. They’re been trying for five years now to get the official government accreditation, and they meet every requirement. The problem is that no one will pass through your application without a bribe, and Pastor Daniel refuses to pay. At some point, I’ll explain more of the background of the school, but the important thing in this situation is that a lot of kids are on scholarship. If a bribe is paid, that means less kids get to go to school. Not being accredited isn’t the end of the world. The school can still operate, and the kids can take the exams they need to go on to further education. With accreditation though, the school will attract more students, and with that, they’ll be able to give more scholarships to kids who need them.
I don’t know if you can read it, but the label on the muffins is “butter muffins”. I don’t know what that means, but I can’t imagine that they’re anything less than calorie-packed and delicious.
For the rest of the day, plus all of Saturday, I holed up in my room and got stuff done. It feels so nice to be able to cross things off of my list! Friday night, my third sister, Myra, arrived from boarding school in the south. She’s on holiday now for about the next month. With her came Pastor Daniel with a pile of baked goods for me, even though I said I didn’t need anything. At this rate, I’m going to roll home from India. Workouts start Monday!
Saturday afternoon was supposed to include a trip to buy me a bike, but that got scrapped when it started pouring rain. I’m really hoping it isn’t forgotten because I will lose my mind if I can’t go anywhere without a chauffeur for my entire trip. I’m working at the school in the mornings, and that’s fine because it’s literally across the street from the house, but there is another project I’m hoping to help with in the afternoons.
This is maybe like 1/5 of the books… I think they said it’s around 4,000 total
At the Bible college that Pastor Daniel started, they are cataloging and organizing a huge donation of library books. Since I’m now a professional library organizer, I said I could help. The college is about a 30-minute walk from the house, but I’m not allowed to walk anywhere by myself. So, currently, the only way I can get there is if someone drives me. That’s fine every so often, but it’s ridiculous to expect someone to do that every day (it also doesn’t help with my “don’t treat me like a princess” campaign). Chances are it will just mean that I can’t go half the time because everyone is busy, and the other half I’ll be wasting hours and hours waiting for rides.
I’ve been struggling a lot with the feeling of losing my independence. I can’t walk alone here because of safety and all that, and it makes me feel like a child. I’m trapped in this house. A bike is my ticket to freedom.
