7/3-15/3

Well this trip was a very entertaining and very busy trip, from the second we got off the train in Agra to the time we got on the bus to go back to Yavatmal.  After the 12-hour train ride from Nagpur to Agra we were greeted by a tour guide at the bus station.  He told us he would drive us around all day, taking us to three hotels, lunch, the Red Fort and Taj Mahal and then some shopping.  This man and the driver took us first to a hotel it seemed good enough for the both us so we took it.  After freshening up we went for lunch and then they took us to the Red Fort.  This fort was massive.  The biggest and oldest thing I’ve ever seen.  It’s called the Red Fort for obvious reasons.  I experienced what discrimination feels like when we bought our tickets to get in.  Indians: Rs. 20.  Foreigners and N.R.I.s: Rs. 300.  At the Taj Mahal it was worse, Indians: Rs. 20, Me: Rs. 750.  I told Danny it was because I was 37.5 times the man he is.  The Fort was spectacular and seemed unnecessarily big.  We opted not to take a tour guide and just walk around ourselves.  I don’t know why anyone would use a tour guide, everything that is of importance has the information written right next to it.  After spending some time walking around this beautiful structure, we then headed back to our drivers.  While walking back a vendor came up to me and tried selling me a whip again.  He had come up to me on our way into the Fort trying to sell me a whip.  I thought it was funny that he first started talking to me in Hindi, then when I said no in Hindi, he started talking to me in English.  But anyways, we wanted $20 for this whip.  I thought it would be funny to buy and bust it out someday during English class, but what was I going to do with a whip when I got home?  Beat Tom with it?  He lives to far away for me to get my moneys worth out if it.  So I told the man no again and then he followed us all the way back to the car and continued lowering his price.  His final price he yelled out as we drove away, Rs. 100.  He then called Danny a bad man for helping an American over a fellow Indian.  Our driver then took us to some shops.  I think they get commission from every shop they take us to.  The first one was a jewelry shop.  They had some pretty impressive stones here like one black stone they said is only found in Agra.  When light is shown on it, it reflects a natural cross on the stone.  After we left here we went to another shop that I think has to be the most impressive shop we saw.  It was a shop that specialized in making hand-knotted rugs.  These were some very impressive rugs and we watched one of them being made.  These are hand-knotted rugs, not hand-woven rugs.  Meaning, they take the loom and individually place a tiny piece of string on around the loom’s strings and once that row is finished, he then knots it by running a piece of string across the loom, much the same we did in art class back in second grade.  Just to put how long making a rug like this takes into perspective, it takes five people, five months to make a pretty standard design on a rug about the size of an average dinning room table.  This kind of rug would cost about $1000.  I would have loved to have bought one of them, but this isn’t the right time in my life to be spending that of cheddar on a rug.  Next we went to a shop that specializes in making the marble designs with the inlayed stone.  Watching them make these art pieces was very impressive as well, and takes the same amount of patience as making the rugs.  They have to first grind down the stone into the shape that they want, mostly flower pedals.  Then they chisel out they size they need from the marble and glue each pedal individually together to make the flower.  This is the same process they did when constructing the Taj Mahal and these workers are the descendants of the original artists who worked on the Taj Mahal.  After watching them make these designs and seeing how long it takes, I can see why it took 20,000 men, 22 years to build the Taj Mahal.  After this it was time to head to the main destination of our trip.  After telling us a few of things about dealing with the tour guides and things like that, they dropped us off at one of the entrances.  We began walking the quarter mile to the Taj Mahal.  On the way we turned away many tour guides and even some bicycle rickshaws before finally letting one drive us for Rs. 10 total.  This old guy turned out to be pretty funny.  As we headed down the road we got our first glimpse of the Taj Mahal and he said, “Here is the Taj Mahal.  It is very dirty.”  We had a good laugh at that.  He dropped us off at the ticket counter and we bought our tickets and went in.  The security for this is a joke.  It felt like the same security service they provide at the McDonalds in Hiltop.  The building is the most impressive thing I have ever seen, and it’s size is hard to capture on film.  After taking some pictures of me wearing my Cake Face shirt for my buddy (www.cakefaceclothing.com) showing how Cake Face is taking over the world, Danny and I just sat on this platform in the middle of the pools facing the Taj Mahal.  We sat there for at least an hour just starring at it, we could have easily stayed there all day.  We then moved in closer for some more pictures and to check out the inside of the tomb.  The inside is actually not interesting at all.  In the middle is the wife’s tomb and next to hers is Jahan’s tomb.  Since I’m an advocate for symmetry, I hope to be buried on the other side of the wife’s tomb.  We stayed there till closing when they kicked everyone, and even a pack of monkeys, out.  It was quite an end to a very busy day.

The next morning at 11:00 we were picked up by the same guy and he drove us this tomb in Rajastan.  This tomb was pretty massive itself and like the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort, it was built by a Muslim.  This king had three wives, one Muslim, one Hindu and one Christian.  So all the artwork depicts each religion.  Compared to yesterday, there really wasn’t much here and I would have rather had spent my day at a nearby bird sanctuary.  What was impressive, though, was seeing the entrance to an underground tunnel system that connects this tomb to the Red Fort, which is connected to Delhi and then continues on to Lahore.  After leaving here we began the hour long drive back home, had some dinner and then boarded the train for our 23 hour trip to Pune.  This train ride was the longest, hottest, most crowded and dirtiest train ride ever.  We rode in sleeper coach which is non A/C.  And it’s times like this when I’m glad I am a man.  Peeing on the train is like peeing into a hole between your feet while standing on a roller coaster going through a helix.  I have no idea how women can do this.

We reached Pune around 16:00 and were greeted by Danny’s sister.  The three of us road in an auto rickshaw to their Aunt and Uncle’s house.  And I got to now check two things off my “To-Do List in India”: See the Taj Mahal and ride in an auto rickshaw.  On the way we stopped off and bought three boxes of sweets for the three houses we were going to visit tonight.  The first house we visited, which is where we stayed most nights, was Daddy’s oldest sister’s house.  Daddy is one of six and is the second oldest.  This sister is the third oldest.  After freshening up Daddy’s mom stopped by.  I showed her some of the photos from Agra and the Home and then we went and visited another families house who I still can’t figure out how they are connected to the family.  They live a whole two doors down in the same apartment.  After that we walked a whole minute to another Aunt and Uncle’s house.  This aunt is the youngest, and looks exactly how Daddy would look if he were a woman.  I met their family which included two daughters, one was taking the tenth standard exams this week and the next, and the other, named Yerusha, who is in fifth standard.  She was very shy and wouldn’t talk to me and kept hiding from me so I had to learn how to say “Don’t be shy” in Marathi.  I also came to learn that one of her nicknames is Tinger Padre, which means “Farting Ass”, which made her even shyer of me.  This was a great family and we spent a good deal of time here and one day they tried taking us to see some tourist things like a building where Gandhi was imprisoned by the British and a small fort that was inside the city.  Both attractions were closed because our half hour naps turned into two hours.  I blamed Yerusha for not waking up in time.  So then we drove around the shopping centers of Pune and they bought me a shirt.  One night we stayed at one of Daddy’s uncle’s house and I met some more of this family including the two most naughty children ever, a little four year old boy named Nahum and his cousin Sheva.  To show you how naughty they were here are some examples, most are stories I was told: He once broke his arm and when he got his cast off, he showed his aunt how he broke it the first time, and broke it again.  One time at church some women were coming up to him and pinching his cheeks.  They didn’t know Marathi and he said to them, “Keep quiet or I’ll beat you.”  The ladies asked his mom what he said and she said, “He’s glad to meet you.”  When he comes home from school he shares an auto rickshaw with seven other boys and he makes them stand so he can sleep on the seat.  He woke me up from nap by slapping me on the head, and he wasn’t wearing any pants.  And finally, I was tickling him and he said to me, “Hey stone!”  Stone is what the teachers call a student who doesn’t know the answer, meaning, they are as dumb as a stone.  And how little Sheva was naughty is she was shy around me at first and just before going to dinner she said to me, “I’m going to kill you.”  Apperently she doesn’t know what that means, which means she heard someone say that to her (most likely Nahum).

One day we drove two hours to Daddy’s hometown with his mom, where his brother lives, the oldest of the six.  Once we got there we were introduced to more family and went around the town and saw some of the places that Daddy used to visit every day.  Grandma stayed at the home for a few days so Danny and I drove home by ourselves, and it rained.  It poured on the way home, which is the first time I have seen rain since London on Nov. 28^th.  We also got stuck in rush hour entering Pune which took about an hour to get back to the home.  Back at the home where we spent most of our nights, we got to hang out some more with Auntie and Uncle’s daughter and son-in-law and their 11-month old daughter, Stuti.  Stuti was a very funny girl and her mom told me to take her to America with me, but she also told me not to go back to America.  I actually think about not returning, I love it here that much.  And I’m not even joking a little bit.

One night we left for a beach town with Stuti’s father, Sachin, and Danny’s friend, Arbin.  We stayed one night at the parents’ of a friend of Arbin’s house that was about two minutes walking distance from the beach.  This whole trip was intense, and we had a blast, and we’ll leave it at that.  The first night we got there we went to the beach, which was the dirtiest beach I’ve ever seen.  We swam for a little bit and then went back to the house for dinner.  The next morning we packed up and headed out for a tourist spot farther down the coast.  We went to see an old fort that was built on an island by a king from South Africa 900 years ago.  To get to it you had to take a sail boat, which was by far the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done.  And once you get to the fort, there is no dock to unload the boats.  They just throw you off the boat onto some stairs leading down to the water and then disappearing below the sea.  Who knows what happens if you missed the bottom step.  Getting on the boat is even scarier, as everyone acts like it is a race to get on the boat and when you’re standing on that bottom step and everyone is pushing forward trying to get on the boat, that can be a little scary.  The fort was pretty interesting but very dirty.  They don’t try to preserve it at all.  On the way back home we stopped at a beach along the way and swam some more.  This beach was so much cleaner than the one yesterday.  We got back around 23:00 and went to bed, this was my last night in Pune, and our last night of our trip.  The next morning we said our good-byes to all the family and then got on a local bus, the ones where you have to be insane to drive, and drove three hours to another families house.  We spent the afternoon with this family playing with their one year old daughter before it was time for us to leave and head back to Yavatmal.  Our bus left at 19:00 and will drive us 12 hours to Yavatmal.  I am writing from the bus now and it is making me sick.  The bus is bouncing around, I’m trying very hard to read what I’m typing and we just ate dinner, which is trying to make it’s way back up.  I will go to bed here shortly and when I wake up, I’ll be home.

2/3-7/3

This transmition is being sent to you from the Taj Mahal.  However, despite having already seen the Taj Mahal earlier this morning, I am not going to include today’s events until next week’s post.  So back to this week.  The week didn’t start out that well.  I returned to the Home Monday afternoon after spending the day in Yavatmal to the fact that the well had maybe two feet of water in it.  Obviously this is no good for a home with 60 kids, but add the fact that is doesn’t rain in this region till July and August and you have a real problem on your hand.  Luckily that night Daddy was able to go to a nearby restaurant owner and pay him to pump water into our well.  This is nice for the time being, but we can’t always rely on that.  This region experiences this type of drought every year, but this year is worse than others.  The rainy season was very poor and didn’t provide the people with enough water.  That’s why the kids are getting out of school early and the nursery kids have already gone home.  Right before dinner Mommy was told by the high school girls that Esther, Jyostna and Suvarna skipped class during lunch time and went to a restaurant and ate food.  The high schoolers got out early on Monday and saw these three girls on their way home from school.  I had not seen Mommy cry before, and these three girls had disappointed Mommy so much that she couldn’t hold back any longer.  I was sitting with Mommy, Dede and Auntie during dinner that night and Mommy wasn’t eating her food.  Auntie kept saying, “Eat Mommy.  You have to eat.”  But she just kept turning her head away from the kids and starring off into the night.  However, Mommy let me show the kids the photos from our trip to Rajesh’s village, which he wasn’t there to watch.  Tuesday night was also able to show the fourth video I made about 1.5 months ago.

English classes went alright this week until it was time for me to give them an oral exam.  All this week I had the 1-4 and the 5-7 students reviewing all the things we’ve learned this year, getting them ready for the oral exam I was going to give them on Friday.  When Friday came around I was surprised with the exams.  They took way longer than I thought and most of the kids didn’t do so well.  So I wondered if it was me or them?  Some of the kids got all the questions correct, and they are the ones who are always paying attention to me when I teach and never goof around.  The ones that struggled the most are the ones who goof off in class and are always doing other work and not listening to me.  I wasn’t able to finish the exams, even when I tried to finish them after dinner.  Although I wasn’t able to finish, I already know what the kids need to work on before I give them a written exam on the Friday after I get back: Everything.  I will ask Mommy if I can make it optional for the ones who got perfect scores on their oral exams to make it easier for me to teach the others.  I think most of them got over excited because it was a test.  Some of the students who answer the same questions everyday weren’t able to answer them during the exam.  I had to stop some of them and tell them to breathe.  For my high school class I wasn’t able to have a consistent class because current would come and go at unpredictable times and they also had a weird schedule for school.  They would go early some days, and other days normal.  And from Thursday on, the only have school for like one hour a day.  They leave at 7:00 and are back by 9:30.

All my crew are now gone.  The last three left on Tuesday.  It was sad seeing them leave.  On Wednesday I pretended to play tag with them in front of the girls’ hall, our old stomping ground.  The other kids just laughed at me.  On Friday we had an ice cream party for the kids to celebrate everyone’s birthday.  Doug and Lu had wanted to have an ice cream party for Jyostna’s birthday so Danny bought butterscotch ice cream for all the kids and we had a mass celebration.  That mass celebration was the last time I would have with the kids as I left Saturday morning with Mommy and Daddy because we had to leave to Nagpur right after Mommy got done with duty.  So like I said, Danny and I are now in Agra, we saw the Taj Mahal earlier today, but those pictures and account wont appear until next week’s entry.  From Agra we leave Monday evening at 16:00 and arrive Pune at 16:00 Tuesday.  So looking forward to that tomorrow.  But then we have a fun filled week scheduled for next week in Pune, so that will be fun.  Until then, take care.

23/2-1/3

Well I thought I had at least another week to go but I got surprising news Saturday night that nursery school was over and most of my crew were leaving tomorrow.  These are the kids that I play with all afternoon, everyday, while we wait for Mommy, Daddy and the other kids to come home.  In fact, we bonded so well that many days we played on our own even after the other kids have come home.  Roshan lives at the home, so he’s always here.  Stuti will most likely go home with Sunil, but may leave before that if here grandma comes and gets her.  And Yerusha was back Sunday and ended up staying the night which surprised me because I would have thought that her mom would have only brought her back to get her things.  So she might leave tomorrow.  And Salomi was still here tonight.  So total, nine of he nursery kids, my crew, have left.  I told the remaining nursery kids to never leave, to stay at the Home forever and I would stay also.  But let’s jump back to the beginning of the week.

Monday I went and made worksheets for my English classes, three for my 5-7 group and four for my high schoolers.  The 5-7 students did very well with their worksheets.  One was on pronouns, one on contractions and one on the difference between is and are.  They did well on the pronoun sheet and I most of them seemed to understood.  The trick is seeing if they can use them when I ask them questions, which most of them can.  The contraction one was easy.  Now actually the third worksheet was pretty easy for them as well.  The interesting part came during the second part of that worksheet.  At the bottom there is a picture of a farm with some animals and a boy.  The directions were to write two sentences about the picture, one sentence using the word is and the other using the word are.  Now Thursday after we finished the first part, I told them the second part was extra and gave them the option if they wanted they could do it and show me the next day.  I don’t think they understood what I told them because they all had it done by Friday morning.  Now half of the students did a great job with this, and the other half copied off each other.  So for half of the worksheets I got I had for the sentence using are: “Chicken licken and started to run.”  I told them that didn’t make any sense.  I was very pleased with other half I got as they all were able to correctly fill out that part.  The four for my high schoolers turned out to be fun.  It’s basically just a word from one of the worksheets that turned into an inside joke of ours.  Two of the sheets were full of words and they had to go through and tell whether the word was an adjective, noun or verb.  So they’re going through the worksheet very easily, with a few questions here and there.  Then they came to the word, squat.  They didn’t know this word and I didn’t know how to define it to them, but I knew they knew what the action of squatting looked like.  So I squatted in front of them and they all started laughing and yelled out, “Bathroom!”  It’s funny because that is the position Indians use when they are dropping a deuce.  Which brings up an interesting observation I’ve noticed.  When Indians have to go pee, they go a little ways off the side of the road and turn away from the road.  But when they are doing #2 they simply squat on the edge of the road and face the road.  I just thought that was interesting and thought I’d share it with you.  So now whenever they see another kid, especially another high schooler, squatting, they yell, “Brother look!  Squatting!” and they all laugh and the person gets embarrassed and changes positions.  On a serious note, I feel as though the high schoolers main problem, besides vocabulary, comes from comprehension and fluency.  And not even really fluency as they can read very well.  Mommy found a comprehension book and I copied some lessons onto my computer, changing the names in the stories to names of the students.  I hope to get these copied so I can use them next week.  The students did very well in computer class this week and I look forward to Vishwas and Peter finally passing Lesson 1.  Overview of this week’s English classes is very impressive.  The youngest kids were using correct verb tense and are learning pronouns and possessive pronouns and my other two groups successfully completed their worksheets.

Pretty much every week with the kids is usually fun, and this week was no exception.  One day while Mommy was in the kitchen observing the girls working I brought her another chair so she could put her feet up.  She told the kids about our recliner chairs in America and that prompted a Q&A session after I told the kids that they will see those chairs for themselves when I take them all back with me in a suitcase.  Some of the questions asked were about how I was going to feed all the kids?  How were they going to take baths?  How would they breathe in the suitcase?  Stuff like that.  I played a little cricket this week and one time I was batting left handed at the Home and hit a monstrous drive.  If it were baseball it would have for sure been a home run as it bounced off the right field foul pole.  However, the foul pole happened to be Usha’s spine.  The shot was very impressive, though, as I was trying to hit Chaitali who was sitting on the other side of Usha.  Usha just got in the way.  One of the best moments came on Saturday after I found out the nursery kids were leaving on Sunday.  I was feeling a little bit sad that my crew was leaving so soon, and I thought I still had a week to go with them.  So I had all of them sign my T-shirt but I was still sad.  My sadness quickly ended as they kids had an evening program where they got to rip each other.  The kids would go up in front of everyone and imitate each other’s actions or just tell a funny story about another kid.  And nobody was safe from this abuse, not even Mommy and Daddy, past and present staff members or me.  Well, I guess Danny was safe and when I asked some boys the next day why nobody made fun of Danny, they said it was because they are still scared of him because he used to beat them when they were younger.  On Sunday we went to Rajesh’s village.  Now when we went to Ashok’s village I described his house that it could fit in my living room, well this village could fit in my house.  There were five, maybe six, houses that made up this tiny village deep in the heart of India.  We had church service in Rajesh’s house and Vishwas and Stavan’s family came from their nearby village to join.  The boys sang some songs and Daddy gave the message.  Afterwards we had lunch and since it was so hot I didn’t go outside for very long.  Before we left I took some photos of the kids with their families except for Rajesh as he got sick after the service.  I took his families photo without him.

During this week I began referring to all the children as, “Babu”, even the girls.  Babu means little boy and is usually used when referring to your younger brother.  And just like the evening program, no one was safe from being called Babu, not even Mommy, Auntie or Dede.  Another thing I started to call the kids was sparked after I watched “Slumdog Millionaire” for the third time.  I started calling the kids, “walas.”  If someone brought me chai, I called them chaiwala.  When the kids were making papad, they were papad wala.  Some of the other types of walas the kids were: pani wala, cuti wala, cutting wala, food wala, washing wala and I am photo wala.  Obviously this doesn’t make any sense, but that is what makes it so funny.

I leave for my trip to the Taj Mahal and Pune in less than a week.  We leave next Saturday and I am pretty excited.  It’s weird to think that my next blog entry will be from somewhere in Agra.  This trip is defiantly going to be exciting as it will be the first time either of us has been to the Taj.  It might also be good to get to some cooler climates as the heat here is very intense.  It’s now in the 40’sC., which is 104F.  In fact, that is the reason the nursery kids got done so early.  There is massive water shortage all over this region so the schools are finishing up about three weeks earlier and Dede had the nursery kids finish this week.  This is actually an inconvenience for me as, depending on when each grade finishes, Mommy and Daddy said that as soon as they are done with final exams they are going to let the kids go back to their villages.  So basically instead of one big good-bye to the kids, I may have to say good-bye multiple times.  I’m really hoping this isn’t the case but what are you going to do?  I am trying to put together a slide show for the kids before they leave with pictures from my childhood.  I am having my Mom scan and then e-mail them to me.  I am still waiting for her to send me more(hint, hint) as the last time she scanned them some goofy way and I was only able to get 2/3 of the photos she sent.  This upcoming week is going to be interesting to see what happens.  I can just see my journal entries now: “I took my daily nap and woke up around 15:00 and sat around and twittled my thumbs for two hours until the kids came home from school.”  I hope this isn’t the case though.

16/2-22/2

Without even doing anything in slow motion this week the days are still seeming to last a long time. In fact, this seemed like a very long week. For my English classes I did a lot of review with the 5-7 group. I was very happy to see how much they remembered. They remembered the difference between “this” and “that” and “these” and “those”. They remembered contractions and pronouns. I also introduced possessive pronouns and they picked it up very quickly. They were using correct verb tenses when they spoke. It was awesome. I just hope that we can build off that. For my 1-4 group I was tired of them goofing off all the time. One day I kicked half the class out and another day I kicked Monica and Sanju out. In fact, I literally threw Monica down the stairs. I love India. Later that day when Mommy came home she asked me why I kicked them out and I said, “I didn’t fly 3,000 miles on a 24-hour plane ride for them to not listen to me.” Mommy laughed and said she wishes she could do the same but she has nowhere to send them. Kicking those students out helped me a great deal though. I was able to get more done with the remaining students. We worked on using correct verb tense and I introduced pronouns and possessive pronouns to them. For my high school class I began the week off by having them work on four worksheets I made for them. Two were on synonyms, one was on antonyms and the other was on possessive pronouns. They did alright with this so I am planning on having them work on the same stuff next week. This week I was also able to have computer class for both groups twice. I had them use Typing Tutor and I also made a chart to document each students progress through the lessons and tests. After every lesson and test that they pass they will get to put a sticker by their name for that lesson. I hung the chart up above the computer so all the kids can see how they are doing compared to everybody else. Now everyday the kids ask me to have computer class. So English classes went well this week. I only have few weeks left so I hope I can continue teaching them enough that when I leave, they can hopefully understand some of what I will tell them.
On Thursday the kids had kind of a holiday so we had a day of fasting and prayer. Now before you label me as a Saint, I have to say that I didn’t really fast at all. The fasting was between 8:00 and 14:00, I don’t eat between those hours anyways so it was like any other day. The fasting was for the kids who had to go six hours without any food. They eat breakfast at 7:00 and lunch at 9:30, so it was more difficult on them. So the kids went to school at 8:00 and then came home at 10:30. It was a day to honor a king from the 1700’s who helped establish the state of Maharashtra. The Mumbai airport is named after him. It was actually quite annoying that the kids had to go to school today. Wednesday night we were all set on taking the kids on a picnic and I was excited to ride in a truck bed full of 65 kids. But then the kids told Mommy that they had to go to school for a morning program to honor him. So no picnic and no riding in a truck Indian style. So the kids came home at 10:30 and the little kids ate lunch then took a nap. At 12:00 the older kids gathered in the big hall and had a prayer session from 12:00 to 14:00. During the session the kids had multiple prayer requests. I also noticed that everyday some kid prays to God thanking Him for protecting them as they were almost killed on the way to school. It’s really amazing how almost everyday one of these children almost gets hit by a car. So there was lots of praying and singing. One thing I really liked was that all the kids were sitting in a circle and Daddy had the kids to pray for their friend on their left. For most of their praying they all pray at the same time, out loud. So it sounds like chanting and it really freaked me out the first time I heard them do this. It reminded me about this time I was having the funniest breakfast in history at Catins in Puyallup with some of my buddies. At the table next to us there were two women and six or seven little kids all dressed the same. And while we were sitting there the women would lead these chanting sessions with the kids and it really freaked us out. Anyways, when the praying was over the kids at lunch and devoured their food. It was funny to watch because they didn’t do much talking with their friends, they were to focused on eating their lunch.
As my time here is drawing to an end, the kids are starting to realize this. They ask me when I’m leaving and they tell me not to leave. Mommy also told me not to go. I told her with Obama leading my country and Gregorie leading my state down the drain, it might not be a bad idea to head back to India after Amsterdam and live there for the next four years. These kids are awesome and find new ways to amaze me everyday. On Friday the high schoolers didn’t have school so I helped out in the kitchen with my incredible chapatti making skills. We had a great time and there are plenty of video clips and photos to prove this. On Saturday night two of the boys, Stavan and Naresh Dongre, slept in the guesthouse and I stayed up with them till 21:30 studying. For the whole hour and a half they went through their English-Marathi dictionary and would ask me the definition of some of the words. Ever answer I gave they would say correct, like they were the ones teaching me. I was really impressed how much they’ve gained from my English classes as for some of the words they would tell me some synonyms and antonyms for that word. I would also show them how changing the suffix on some words changes the word from an adjective to an adverb. These kids are all great and I hope that I’ve impacted their lives in some way, but it might be them who have impacted me more. I want them to realize that this is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. A beginning with no end in sight.

9/2-15/2 The Greatest Week of My Life

So check one item off my “to-do list”, learn how to make Indian tea.  I came, I learned, I mastered.  Indian chai, real chai, not the coffee shop junk, is the best beverage I have ever had.  Everywhere you go there’s always somebody making or selling chai.  It is India’s national drink.  And not only is it amazing and everybody makes it, but every single batch tastes different.  There are so many different ways to make chai, but I learned the basic way.  Step one, mix liquid.  Now there are two combinations of liquid for making chai.  You can have all milk, or mix milk and water together.  Whatever you want, the important thing is that you use the exact amount of liquid as you are going to drink.  So for me, Daddy always has one cup and I usually have two cups, so I mixed two cups of water with one cup of ox milk, in the villages it’s goat milk.  After that you add two teaspoons of sugar for every cup and one teaspoon of tealeaves for every cup.  Since Daddy has the same sweet tooth as Mommy, he calls it just “liking my tea strong”, I added one more teaspoon of sugar and leaves.  Then you boil it.  Once it starts to bubble you turn off the heat and pour through a strainer into your cup and you’re done.  So simple, yet so delicious.  So now I know how to make tea, next is learning how to make dhal fry, my new favorite dish.

On Tuesday I held English class and I felt I had a successful session with my high schoolers.  I gave back their “Who you are” stories with a copy of my corrections to them.  I explained a few things on the blackboard like how if you write about the names of your friends, all the words in that sentence need to be plural, like, “My friends’ names are…”  A lot of them wrote, “My friend name is…” and then they would list three names.  They also made a similar mistake when talking about their favorite subjects and their age.  They would write, “I am fourteen year old.”  I also told them that it is more correct to say that you live in a village, and at a home.  So after I explained those few things I had them rewrite their stories with the correct grammar and punctuation.  I told them that it needed to be perfect because I was going to e-mail them to Doug Uncle.  After they finished I had each student read their final draft out loud to the class so they not only got a lesson in writing correctly, but talking correctly.

On Thursday I got experience the frustration that is shopping in India.  The DVD player isn’t working at the Home so I wanted to try and buy some cables that would allow me to hook my computer up to the TV so I can show them my new video I made.  I knew none of the stores would have one of the cables I needed, but I thought for sure I could find an S-video cable somewhere in this town.  Daddy took me to one store, they had no idea what I was talking about.  We went to another store, they had no idea what I was talking about.  Went to another store and again they had no idea.  I even showed the workers the backs of their DVD players they sold in their stores and the port for the S-video cable.  I said, “I need the cable that goes in here.”  But no one had it.  We must have gone to ten stores.  It was insane.  And then to add to my frustration while I was ordering the cables online, Amazon.com wouldn’t deliver them here.  So I had to shipped home, and then have my mom ship them to me, which will most likely take a month for them to get here.

Saturday I went with Mommy, Daddy and Danny to a wedding in Yavatmal.  It was very impressive.  All the decorations and the beautiful colors all the women were wearing.  In India, they use weddings to show your prestige, so everybody was wearing their most expensive saris.  The reception was were the most money was spent though.  It was outside in this large garden area guarded by two guards at the entrance.  There were so many people there and the food was amazing.  I’ve never had better buffet food.  It seemed as though all the who’s who of Yavatmal came out for this one, I wish I had brought my camera.

Sunday could have been the greatest and most fun day of my life.  It seemed as though it was an all day party.  It started with me doing everything in slow motion in an attempt to slow down time.  But not only was I trying to slow down time, it also made things more dramatic and exciting.  Mommy explained why I was walking slow to the kids and they thought it was very funny.  I even got some of the kids to help out with my cause.  After church some of the boys were playing cricket.  I asked where the girls were and they said no girls.  I said sarcastically, “Don’t worry.  I will get them.  I’ll be right back.”  They all told me no but I left anyways to go round up some girls to play cricket.  The girls wouldn’t come and I pleaded with them to come, and I even started crying.  After about ten minutes of this little Salomi came around the corner.  I grabbed her and brought here out to the field, where the match was already in session.  Shortly thereafter it was time to switch sides.  I told the boys to let Salomi bat, some of them didn’t want her to, but Stavan also told them to let her.  So Laxman threw three balls to her, and she hit two of them.  That made her day.  I took pictures of her batting and she kept having me show everybody.  This prompted me to inquire about something that hopefully will turn into a longstanding tradition here at the Home.  I told Mommy and Daddy that I wanted to have an only girls cricket match.  They both said that sounded fine and then Daddy suggested that this could be a new thing, every Sunday the boys cook dinner and the girls play cricket.  So when 17:00 rolled around it was time for girls cricket, although dinner was pretty much done, so we’ll start the tradition next Sunday.  Mommy told me to stay and explain how to play because the girls “Don’t know how to play.”  I quickly found out this was not true.  Not only did they know how to play, but the rules too.  And just like a while back when the girls started playing kabaddi just for fun, the laughter from these girls while they played was amazing.  As lighthearted as they played though, they were also serious about the game, but it was a peaceful relationship.  I took plenty of pictures during, and after, the match.  After dinner we had a singing session.  This was incredibly fun.  The boys told me to play the drum for the songs.  After I did this for a while Mommy was asking me what I wanted.  Some of the boys were telling me Marathi phrases to say, but I decided to use one of my own.  I yelled, “Mommy!  Ghosta!(?) (story)”  The kids yell this every night before devotion because they love Mommy’s stories.  So after some back and forth banter between Mommy and me, some of the kids circled around Mommy and sat down.  I got up and yelled “Ghosta!” and sat in the middle of the kids and I gave Mommy my undivided attention.  This made it very difficult for her to tell her story because every time she looked at me she would start laughing and forget where she was.  While she was talking I would nod my head yes and say, very interestedly, and say “Yeah, yeah!”  All the kids loved this.  After Mommy had me pray in Marathi, all the boys dog piled on me.  I don’t know why.  But then it was time for bed and ended a very fun day, and week.  I wish all my remaining days here last that long.

2/2-8/2

On Monday morning we drove 1.5 hours to a nearby train station to drop off the guests that came and stayed with us.  After saying good-bye and watching their train pull away, Danny, Daddy, Mommy and I began our 1.5 hour drive back to the Home.  We ended up taking a 12 hour detour on the way home.  They decided to take me to visit a hill station where Daddy did some Bible study and a tiger forest.  The drive to the hill station took us right through the city that Mommy attended nursing college at.  About an hour later we arrived at the base of the mountain and proceeded to make our way 1101 meters into the sky.  This drive also took an incredible amount of time but the view was spectacular, I just wish I had brought my camera.  He had a late lunch at one of the resort town’s many restaurants.  Daddy showed me the church he used to attend while living here for three months and the bungalow he lived in.  After we toured around the top of the mountain we headed down the other side, through a tiger forest.  Unfortunately we didn’t see any tigers, but who knows how many saw us.

For English classes this week I did a lot of reviewing with my elementary students, to make sure they didn’t forget some of the stuff we’ve learned a while back.  I am proud to say that the 5-6 group is doing very well.  Some of things we’ve worked on so far is the difference between “this” and “that”, and “these” and “those”.  We’ve also worked on contractions this week.  It was difficult for them to say some of the contractions, as they kept saying both words, but they eventually picked it up.  They were all able to successfully answer my questions.  I’m having the most difficulty with the 1-4 group.  They haven’t learned English in school yet so they are behind even the nursery kids.  So it is very difficult to teach them, especially then the boys play grab-ass with each other all class long.  For my high school group this week I had them complete a few worksheets I had printed out for them.  I also had them do a writing assignment for me.  I had them write me a story.  I told them the title for the story is “Who you are.”  There was two parts I wanted them to address in their story.  The first part was who you are, I wanted to know village names, family and friends’ names, favorite subjects, games they like to play, etc.  The second part was who you want to be.  I wanted them to answer the question, “Where will you be in ten years?”  This story I wanted written in English, and they did very well, although they all made similar errors.  For instance, they would leave out pretty much all preposition words or use them incorrectly.  They also would write, “My friend name…” and then list like three or four names.  So I corrected them and am going to give them back to them so they can see their errors and then I am going to have them rewrite their stories, correctly.

I’ve been playing a lot of freeze tag with the nursery kids.  Once you get tagged by the raj you have to stand with your legs apart and can’t move until someone goes between your legs.  This is very difficult for me, I usually end up just tackling them with my shoulder as I try to go under their legs.  It’s actually very fun to play.  I am like the big prize during this game.  Once I get tagged the raj holds on to me so no one can unfreeze me.  So since they hold on to me, I decided to hold on to them.  I would grab them around the elbows, so they couldn’t touch me with their hands, then someone would crawl between my legs and I would be free.  Or, if there were others kids frozen, I would bear hug the raj and let the kids unfreeze all the other kids first.

On Sunday we went to Pandharwani, the village of Priscilla, Rahel, Ashok and Rambhao.  Little Suvarna and Prakash came as well as their village is about two km from Pandharwani.  Nirmala also came with us, but we didn’t go to her village.  Five boys came with us, Laxman, Ishwar, Stavan, Vishwas and Mukesh, to led the worship at the church.  We first stopped in Prakash and Suvarna’s village and met the pastor of that village’s church.  After that we walked to their house and took the other five members of their family with us to Pandharwani.  We already had a packed car, so with the addition of these five and Priscilla’s grandpa, the five older boys and I rode on top of the jeep.  That’s how they do it in India.  Once we got the village we were greeted by the pastor/Rahel’s father.  After the boys messed around and took me to this tree where we ate the fruits from it, it was time for church.  It was great seeing our kids singing so well, and Mommy gave the sermon.  After church we ate lunch, a very hot and very fresh lunch.  After lunch I toured the village and saw some of the children’s homes, like Ashok’s.  I got to see the inside of his three-room house.  And by three rooms I mean, all three would fit inside my family room.  It’s very humbling to see the children’s living conditions.  On the way out of the village we again had to ride on top of the jeep.  Just outside the village we passed a man on a bicycle entering the village.  I yelled, “Bye-bye!” to him.  And then I did it to another person, and pretty soon we were all yelling “bye-bye” to everyone we saw.  I was, however, disappointed that Rambhao didn’t drive me around in an ox cart as he promised me he would.  I told him I was upset with him, but he just laughed.

My tickets are booked, my bags are packed.  March 7^th Danny and I will leave Nagpur around 17:00 by train and arrive Agra at 8:00 the next morning.  Our next train leaves Agra on the 9^th at 17:00 and arrives in Pune around 15:00, March 10^th.  Nothing like a 22 hour train ride through the blister heat without AC.  Once we get to Pune I will meet some of Daddy’s family and will then meet one of Danny’s friends.  Danny’s friend told him to bring me to Pune so we can have an outing.  We hopefully will go to the beach from there so we don’t have to take a ten hour train ride to Goa.  Danny and I will then leave Pune on March 15^th by bus to Yavatmal.  I am very excited about this trip.  It should be a lot of fun and I will have great pictures to share.  And hopefully I’ll get to ride in an auto rickshaw on this trip.

26/1-1/2

Not a lot happened this week.  But that was good because it gave me time to reflect on the sad realization I had early in the week when I saved my journal entry as “Journal Entry 60”.  In four months there are 120 days, this week marked the halfway point in my journey.  Now I’m pretty optimistic, but I don’t see this as, “I have two months left.”  I see it as, “I only have two months left.”  So this week I did some thinking about goals and things I’ve accomplished and things I still want to do.  It made me realize just how much I’ve accomplished.  I haven’t died yet, which is always good.  But most importantly I’ve bonded with all the kids, I quickly learned all their names and came up with nicknames for some and I have inside jokes with just all of them.  I feel like I’ve done great at teaching them English, well, as good as I can do without a translator.  I am learning cricket, which is a lot harder than it looks.  A lot.  I’ve visited some villages and seen where the kids come from.  I’ve learned some of their games and songs.  I’ve learned which kids are ticklish.  I’ve learned why the men wear pants all the time.  It’s because when you wear shorts the kids try to pull out your leg hair.  I’ve learned how to eat with my hands only and tear chapatti with one hand.  I’ve become a master of the bucket showers.  I’m so good now, you’d think I’ve been taking bucket showers all my life.  I’ve been enjoying every second but it’s gone by so fast and there’s no way to slow it down.  I’ve still yet to travel, I still want to get up to the Taj Majal and Danny said he’ll take me to Goa.  I have yet to ride on an ox cart, that’s actually Doug’s wish but I too would like to ride on one, and I also want to ride in an auto rickshaw.  That would be crazy.  I haven’t learned how to make anything yet except chapatti, but I’ll learn.  I also want to create the biggest NCAA March Madness pool in the history of India by having each child and staff here fill out a bracket.

India is a land of great contrasts.  There is such extreme wealth, and such extreme poverty as more than 50% of the population live below any other humanly accepted poverty line.  India has such beauty, and such disgustingness as the ground is littered with garbage and feces.  It’s a country where you have to be conscious of your deucers.  The last think you want is to be out in the middle of the Punjab and have to take a dump in their open air system, using your hand as toilet paper.  One day I asked Danny why a man was urinating just off the side of the road.  He wasn’t even trying to hide behind a tree or bush.  I said, “Why doesn’t he just stand on the side of the road and pee on the road?”  India has the best food I’ve every eaten, and the worst.  Everything has been delicious except for the mango pickle.  The pickle is the name of the sauce, it’s basically a sauce of lemon juice and salt and other spices to give it a sour and salty taste.  Basically, they found a way to make the mango taste horrible.  Now I don’t want to judge a country of over a billion people, but the India’s seem to be the nicest and most welcoming people.  When we would go to people’s homes they would give us everything they had to feed us and make us feel welcome.  And here, the villagers always invite me to come play cricket with them.

Some things did happen this week.  Monday was the 60^th Republic Day in India.  Everywhere the citizens attended a flag hoisting ceremony, and here at the home was no exception.  All the children gathered in their school clothes at 7:00 and watched the flag being raised.  It is a great tradition, one that I wish we did in America.  Seeing the Indian flag going up that pole and knowing that was happening all over the country at the same time was pretty powerful.  I can only imagine what emotions would run through me if it were the Stars and Stripes going up that pole.  As powerful as this was, it was very similar to America in the sense that you only see this kind of patriotism once a year.

On Sunday 12 guests came to the home.  One of them is a board member of Hosanna Ministries and the other 11 are friends and family of Daddy.  All 12 of them attend the same church as Daddy’s mom.  They visited with the kids and the kids put on a culture show for them.  I’ve seen all the dances the kids did twice already, except one, the pillow dance.  This dance is hilarious.  It’s called the pillow dance because they put their arms and head in a pillowcase.  But then they wear a sweater around their waists with a stick through the arm sleeves.  So they can’t see anything and they have to dance around the stage.  It was very funny to watch because they didn’t do the same motions and they weren’t together, they were spread out all over the stage.  One of them, my dear son, kept going into the boys and Dede had to pull her back.

It was a very good week.  I taught the 1-4 students verbs and how to change them into past, present and future tense.  I work with the 5-6 students on the difference between this and that, and these and those.  Also during the same lesson, I was teaching them how to answer the questions who and what.  I would say, “What is this?” and they would say, “That is Ruth’s shirt.”  For my high school class I showed them “The Green Mile”.  When we finished we discussed the movie and then I gave them an assignment.  I told them I wanted them to write about what they thought the theme, or themes, of the movie is or are.  But I told them because I wanted them to get it right, I had them write in Marathi.  I had Danny translate for me.  I was very impressed with Mercy’ and Mukesh’s papers.  They both were the only ones who really wrote the assignment how I wanted it to be written.  And Mukesh mentioned things in his that not only did none of the other students mention, but I didn’t even talk about or discuss.  I was very impressed.

The kids are very fast learners.  One day I was helping Pooja and Salomi pick tomatoes and I while I was looking I was saying, “Let’s see.  Let’s see.”  And as I doing this, I heard little Pooja say, “Let’s see.  Let’s see.”  And all the kids understand when I say, “Get ‘em!”  Like when a kid comes up to me and tickles me, I yell, “Karishma, get ‘em!” and they will, usually, go and chase the kid and try and beat them.  When little Priscilla and Rahel tickle me, I say, “Big mistake!” and turn and chase them while they run away yelling, “No mistake!”  On Saturday I gave all the kids a gift.  I had bought prints of the pictures I took of the kids back in December, the ones I posted on Facebook.  I really didn’t expect the joy it brought them.  I guess I was expecting an American child’s reaction to getting two pictures of themselves as a gift.  I called the kids up one by one to get their pictures and each kid got the biggest smile and just stared at their picture as they absentmindedly stuck out their hand for me to shake while they said, “Thank You.”  For the last few kids I had to yell their names, as it became difficult talking over all the kids’ laughter and other noises they made as they moved about, sharing their pictures with each other.  For ten minutes after I was done passing out pictures the kids were still laughing and sharing their pictures with everyone.  Some of the kids would come up and quiz me to see if I could remember what their action was from their funny photo.  I am proud to say I knew almost everyone’s.