Off to Bangalore!

In a couple of hours I'll be getting in the taxi and heading down the mountain to board an Indian train this evening. Leah (the orchestra teacher at KIS) and I are heading to Bangalore which is a 9ish hour train trip North of Kodaikanal. Although there aren't set plans right now, I have every intention of shopping like crazy, enjoying the ability to wear short sleeve shirts and capris in public, and maybe seeing a movie in the theater. The downside to all of this vacation wonderfulness is the current temperature.... 97 degrees Fahrenheit with 20% humidity, dear lord. I have a feeling I am going to have a new appreciation for Kodai's 75 degrees after a few days of constant sweat.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I will be extra safe in this new city, and will be back in Kodai with internet connection by Monday. Until then...

Kodai is point "D" and Bangalore is point "A". I don't think this is the train route, but it might be...

Oh and before I forget I wanted to share some of the pictures from Holi last Sunday! It was great! 1.5 hours of throwing colored powder and water balloons at students...I'm pretty sure I still have a streak of green in my hair, not to mention all of my clothing! Mariah pointed out what a great release of frustration it was towards some of the more...um...difficult students we have :)

I'm Alive! See....

Long time no hear. My goodness, it feels like it has been forever since I’ve talked with you… how have you been? Done anything adventurous lately? I hope you have. As for me, I’ve had quite a few adventures in the past month… from bison to ziplines to more lesson planning than I’ve ever done in my life, I’ve been more than busy. If I had to choose just one, the biggest adventure over the last few weeks was probably my weekend at Poondi camp with the 3^rd-5^th graders.

It was a dark and stormy Friday morning. The ground trembled as 35 pairs of excited feet rushed the parking lot of Ganga campus where 3 humble buses bravely stood their ground. Not a chaperone or parent was minded that morning as it was proven that voices of reasons, regardless of their merit, can not compete with the roar of elementary students on their way to camp. Many brave souls lost their voice that day, attempting to choral the energy that only children can possess…. Haha, actually it wasn’t that bad. Although I went into with mixed feeling, dread and excitement, the time at Poondi camp was a great experience. And yes, there were 35 excited 3^rd-5^th graders that morning, but it seemed like the mass of accompanying chaperones were just as excited. We finally got everyone in their respective busses and started heading out of Kodaikanal around 10am. It was about a 2 hour drive on a road that made me sure that someone was going to lose their lunch before we ever reached the camp. Strange enough, the drive may have been my favorite part, it was definitely the most beautiful. I was super touristy the entire time as I constantly had my camera out the window and definitely overused the words “beautiful” and “awesome”. But can you blame me? All of the land surrounding Poondi is used for farming, so everything is green and lush on this gorgeous terraced land.

After the bus ride came a bit of a hike. See, the “road” that leads to Poondi is too much for the buses. Only a jeep full of our luggage could make it up. So toting pillows and empty snack containers, our troupe set off. Arriving at the camp was a welcomed break, and seeing that assembled tents and food were waiting for us just sweetened the deal. The school apparently owns quite a bit of land, because not only did we have some lakefront to enjoy but we were able to take the kids on a walk that stretched a good mile or so into the woods (and by woods I mean less MT and more George of the Jungle).

 Poondi Lake!! Camp was another 10 minutes walk to the left...

The rest of my day was spent manning the zipline (one adult at the top getting kids in the harness, and another at the bottom catching them before they hit a tree… not joking), learning archery, and helping with the homemade rock-climbing wall. By the time dinner rolled around I think the kids were still on an adrenaline high, but the chaperones were spent. After dinner there was some much-needed downtime as the activities director readied (what I would soon learn) the biggest bonfire I’ve ever seen! We had all the students sit around the bonfire and turn off their “torches” (aka flashlights) as the fire was lit. It was glorious, it was wonderful, it was awesome, and then it was hot…. Too hot…. Way too hot! Within 5 minutes of this fire being started, everyone had abandoned their spots on the benches and had moved a good 25 feet away. And that is where we all stayed for the next half an hour. Everyone ended up spending about 2 hours at the bonfire. There were kids singing, some were dancing, a few were testing their bravery against various ghost stories being told, but everyone was loving it! The bonfire ended with dessert: banana, chocolate, and marshmallows wrapped in tin foil and thrown into the fire for a couple minutes. The result was a sticky, gooey, goodness that provided everyone a massive sugar high (and hopefully the inevitable sugar crash)…. Ya, that didn’t work. To make a long story short, I wasn’t the best of chaperones because by the time 12:30 rolled around I ended up just putting my earplugs in and giving up. I went to sleep to the sounds of “whispering”, giggling 5^th graders, and woke up to the sounds of “whispering”, giggling 5^th graders. There were students talking in their tents at 12:30am, and there were students up chatting at 4:30am… then 5:30… then 6:00… and by the time 6:30 rolled around there was just no use in trying to sleep anymore. To say I woke up grumpy would be a bit of an understatement. I swear the only reason some of those kids lived that day was because I had pancakes for breakfast (my favorite).

Our first view of the tents!

Some of my 5th graders on our walk around the lake

Didn't I say it was George of the Jungle-esque?

The waterfront and end of the zipline.

I was a pretty good shot too...

The bonfire before it got too hot to stand.

The rest of the day I was put on raft duty. Due to this experience, I feel I am now more empathetic to drivers education teachers than I have ever been in my life! The rafting done on Poondi lake entails a homemade raft that gets your butt all wet from water coming up through the cracks, 6 students in ancient life jackets with varying degrees of previous rafting experience, and 5 mismatching oars. “Teach ‘em how to raft!” they said… “It’ll be fun!” they said… and after I got over the culture shock of what rafting in India means, it really was a lot of fun. In each batch of rafters at least 2 of them had never touched an oar in their life, but you should have seen the excitement on their faces! I made each of them create a pirate name for themself and name our “ship”. (I was The Fearsome Captain Cupcake) In the end, it was pretty great getting to know the students in such a unique way. And thank God that no one fell in!! Because let me tell you, although this lake was way warmer than any I’ve been in (you should have seen the kids’ faces when I told them how cold Flathead Lake gets :) is was the dirtiest body of water I’ve ever seen! Brown and opaque are the words that come to mind. The students that went swimming were promptly directed to the showers (bucket showers of cold water) when they came out of the lake because they had a visible layer of dirt clinging to every inch of their body.

The rest of the morning and afternoon was spent ziplining again, and learning how to play cricket with the 5^th grade boys. By the time we started heading back to buses, I think we were ALL ready for a nap. I got home afterwards and went straight for the shower. Mariah summed it up nicely when she asked, “if I was feeling human again yet” after a shower and a change into my comfy pants.

So that was Poondi…now for the school section of things. The Monday following camp marked the beginning of a 6-week unit that I would be organizing and presenting as the main teacher. Up until this point my main role in the class had been observing, helping wherever Nandini needed me, and teaching a lesson or 2 every week. Needless to say, I was incredibly excited and absolutely clueless as I was lesson planning that weekend.

So here I am. I teach all but math most days, so that can range from 2 class periods to 6 class periods. The end of this week means that I’m halfway through my unit on Freedom and the students will start working on their final, summative assessment projects as soon as we get back from long weekend (more to come on that shortly). Overall I feel pretty good about it so far. There are definitely lessons, and sometimes even full days where I don’t know what the hell I’m doing until I’m in front of the class teaching. And then there are the lessons that I can’t wait to introduce to the students because I know how excited they’ll get. I spend every evening and most of my weekends lesson planning and trying to gather resources, so it’s given me a nice glimpse into the 10-hour days, and the social life-less future I get to look forward to :) But I can’t even come close to describing how incredible it feels when a lesson you’re excited about gets the students excited too. Just this week Nandini and I co-taught a lesson on the differences in the structure of government in India vs. the United States. The lesson ended with students voting for a Prime Minister, President, and Cabinet Ministers within the class. Later that day we announced that those elected leaders had the responsibility of coming up with the schedule for the following day. The kids were floored when I told them that they didn’t have to have Math if they didn’t want it, or that they could take a 2-hour break in the morning if that’s what they chose. The catch was that students had 3 assignments/activities that had to be completed by 3:45pm or be taken home as homework. So they had the freedom to choose their own schedule, but the responsibility of completing their assignments. Students took it so seriously, and it ended up working out great! I loved it!!

This was another awesome lesson where we looked at freedom of choice at lunch, but the responsibility to choose healthy foods that will keep us full.

So it’s definitely worth it in the end, but I feel like I’m always planning. I get home around 4:45 (when there aren’t meetings) and am on my computer until well past 9:00. Therefore, although I would love to promise another blog post soon, I can’t guarantee it. But don’t you worry about that just yet, because I’m just getting warmed up with this one…

Field Day!! The 2-day event that students look forward to all of second semester. Everyone from the preschoolers to the seniors in high school sign up for various track and field events that they want to participate in. Students win points for their house (either blue house, orange house, or white house) based on how they place. It started with an all school pep-rally last Friday morning (no school that day) and continued until lunch on Saturday, culminating in everyone sitting on the field eating a traditional Indian meal off of banana leaves. Everything from hurdles, to shot put, to long jump, to cross country is represented and the students LOVE IT! Some treat it like the Olympic qualifiers, and others couldn’t care less, but the atmosphere in general was fairly competitive. My favorite was watching the preschoolers and kindergarteners do their events :) They did a 25m dash first. All of them ran their little hearts out as at least 100 parents, staff, and peers cheered them on. But as soon as they neared the ribbon at the end, they stopped! They didn’t know to cross THROUGH the finish line, so the student who would have come in last ended up winning because she stepped over the ribbon first… haha it was great!

Nandini high-fiving the preschoolers after their race :)

Some of my 5th grade boys waiting for the next race.

A couple of my 5th graders bringing it home :)

I honestly can’t believe that it’s half way through March. Long weekend starts next week, after that there’s one more week on school and then it’s April! I already have less than 2 months left in India….Holy crap!! Speaking of long weekend, let me update you. A week from today marks the beginning of a 5 days break from school, Thursday-Monday. For a while now I have had plans to travel to a city called Bangalore with Leah who is a music teacher at KIS. She is going to watch a friend graduate which is what prompted the whole thing, but Bangalore is also a great place to shop and eat good food. So that’s what I’m going to do! We take a taxi down the mountain from Kodai Thursday evening. Immediately after the taxi we get on the night train and try to sleep for 10 hours or so until we get into Bangalore around 5:30am on Friday. Then we have all of Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday to shop, eat, watch movies, and be merry. Come Sunday night, we board the train again, to get on the taxi to get us back to Kodai early Monday morning. I found out that Ms. Jessica and her kids will be there for long weekend too, so there’s another person that we could meet up with. I would also like to let my mother specifically know that I now have a functioning phone that I will be taking to Bangalore. I would also like to reiterate to my family that Bangalore is still in Southern India and is therefore safer than the rest of the country. It is also quite westernized which adds to the level of safety. I will let you know exactly where we’re staying when I get there, but until then just know that it’ll be at the college where Leah’s friend is graduating. I am definitely looking forward to shopping, eating western food, and then coming back and appreciating the familiarity of Kodai.

Last but not least, miscellaneous. Here are just some random things that have been happening this last month… 

• lots of dinners! We’ve been out to eat at a couple new places and have been invited over by other staff members (Nandini showed Mariah and I how to make idily, a traditional south Indian dish, and just last night the vice prinicipal invited us over with all of the French exchange students and French teachers to welcome them to the school). 
• Spirit week happened at Ganga campus the week of Field Day. Students and staff alike participated in crazy hair day, backwards day, twin day, and pajama day. For twin day I borrowed a sari from Nandini and joined in with the younger elementary staff… I’ll show you a picture. And for crazy hair day I sat down in my seat about 15 minutes before school started, pulled out a mess of hair ties and bobby pins and told the 5^th grade girls to “do my hair” :) …a picture of that one too. 
• Lots of bison! Thankfully I haven’t seen any super close, but there was a stretch of about 3 days where I saw 1-15 bison on my walk home from dinner every night. I also learned that there is a lone bison (the biggest one I’ve seen yet) that likes to hang around Ganga. He’s so massive and hairy that the kids have named him Hagrid after the Harry Potter character. 
• And finally, Holi. This is apparently a big holiday in India. Here is what Wikipedia had to say about it:

Holi celebrations start with a Holika bonfire on the night before Holi where people gather, sing and dance. The next morning is free for all carnival of colours, where everyone plays, chases and colours each other with dry powder and coloured water, with some carrying water guns and coloured water-filled balloons for their water fight. Anyone and everyone is fair game, friend or stranger, rich or poor, man or woman, children and elders. The frolic and fight with colours occurs in the open streets, open parks, outside temples and buildings. Groups carry drums and musical instruments, go from place to place, sing and dance. People move and visit family, friends and foes, first play with colours on each other, laugh and chit-chat, then share Holi delicacies, food and drinks.

The school is holding a Holi celebration this Sunday and according to Corey, the vice principal, it’s going to be like The Color Run they do in America without the running. He advised Mariah and I to wear old clothes that we don’t mind getting stained, since everyone will be throwing dyes and colored powders! I seriously can’t wait!!

Here's Hagrid!!

These things are solid muscle... they go where they want and do what they want.

Pajama day for 5th grade

Crazy hair day came next :)

These are some of the wonderful Ganga staff members. From left to right is Radhika, Jessica, Nandini, Mr. Jerald, Me, Pearlin, and Rebecca. We are all wear traditional formal clothes from the Indian city Kerala.

I'm sure I'm forgetting about a million things (serves me right for waiting a month between blog posts) but that'll have to do for now. As usual, I miss you all very much. It's getting to that point where I can't wait to be home, and yet knowing that I'm on the downhill now is making me realize there are things in Kodai that I will really miss... but not as much as the washer and dryer waiting at home for me! :) Until next time...

By Indian standards, this post is completely on time...

Hello All,

so last we chatted I mentioned the trip to Coimbatore that Mariah and I took last Saturday. Coimbatore is a city on the plains about 4 hours away from Kodaikanal that houses over a million people. Because of the rather impressive population, it also houses a four-story shopping mall which includes a movie theater and grocery store. So although I knew a day in Coimbatore would be a great experience, I was more than a bit worried about the drive to and from. Let me remind you all that Kodaikanal is separated from every other plains city by a 2 hour drive along an unfathomably horrible road. I swear that at some point in time this road must have been used as a rite of passage.  Like, boys became men if they made it up and down this road without losing their lunch... something like that. Anyways, on the first ride up to Kodai, my intense excitement helped keep the motion sickness at bay. But after feeling sick just riding on the buses during field trips recently, I had a feeling that this time around the drive would be more than I could stomach... literally. Well, turns out that western medicine can be pretty awesome! I tried a motion sickness patch that I got before leaving Montana and it worked like a charm! Except for waking up really dizzy, I felt totally fine the entire trip (I suppose now is a good time to mention that I also slept for 85% of the drive both ways, but still... hooray for drugs!).

So after about 2 hours, we reached the bottom of the hill. It was still another 2ish hours to Coimbatore, so we decided to take a "bathroom" break. In case you missed it, the word BATHROOM is in quotation marks... this is on purpose. I paid 5 rupees to go behind this roadside snack shack, enter a stall that had no lock, and squat over a hole in the ground. Shout out to Sarah Hendricks at this point if she's reading this, because I owe that lady big time for the travel toilet paper!! I don't even know if I was facing the right direction! ... needless to say, it was an experience that I'm sure I'll have to repeat before getting back to Montana but am perfectly fine postponing for as long as possible. From here on out the drive was fairly uneventful. It was pretty incredible how much denser the traffic was the closer we got to Coimbatore... but besides that there isn't much to report until actually reaching the mall.

Like I said before, this mall was fairly impressive, 4 stories tall with both a grocery store and movie theater. We arrived around 10:30am, and having last eaten at 6:00am, our first stop was the food court. It was a strange feeling being in the mall. I almost had a hard time remembering that I was in southern India still, and not somewhere in America (the complete lack of white people was a not so gentle reminder at times, and Mariah and I were approached and asked for pictures more times than we've ever had in Kodai. But overall it felt very normal). One thing that made it so westernized was the McDonald's, KFC, and Baskin Robbins in the food court. The rest of the shops were all totally Indian, but looking up and seeing the golden arches was kinda weird... not going to lie though, I had a McFlurry and it was wonderful! After the food court we decided to check out the movie theater. We were hoping that the Hobbit was still playing since Mariah and I had both recently finished the book, but alas, there was only one English movie playing and it was the Lego Movie. Things I never envisioned myself doing: seeing the Lego Movie in theaters, seeing the Lego Movie in theaters in India, seeing the Lego Movie in theaters in India with a bunch of high school boys (unbeknownst to our staff member group, a group of high schoolers from KIS arranged for transport down to coimbatore the same day so we ended up seeing them everywhere in the mall... especially McDonald's and KFC :) In the end, the movie wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. The theaters were super nice, just as nice if not nice than any we have in Missoula, and for $2 the movie was quite entertaining.

Fun Fact: there are no previews before movies in India. Instead, there is a 15-minute intermission half-way through the movie where they're shown.

PART of the busy food court in the mall. This was looking to my left (towards KFC). On my right, just as far away, was the McDonalds swarming with high schoolers.

So other than the movie, and the eating, the day was spent shopping! For Mariah and I, our main purpose of Coimbatore was to find some more Indian-looking clothing. You know, because once we don the kurthas, we blend right in with everyone else in India.... that was sarcasm, but it does make you feel more incognito even if it's just a little bit. Anyways, we were both able to find a couple of things in Kodai over the past month, but the shops here just can't compare to the selection in the mall. There were department stores everywhere! All with mannequins in the windows sporting the latest saris or kurthas. In all the stores we went to, there was always a western section, but the majority of stuff was kurthas, leggings, and (what I call) Aladdin-pants. The store employees were also very interesting... in my time at the mall I identified 3 personalities. There was the one who stood right next to you to make sure you didn't steal anything. There was the one who was more than willing to help with anything and everything you were doing, regardless if you wanted the help or not. And finally, there was the employee who either didn't speak English, or didn't know why the heck I was in the store. These last ones just look at you like, "Are you lost?" ... in retrospect, I really can't decide which demeanor I found least uncomfortable...

By the end of the day, Mariah and I had made a haul! Multiple kurthas, several leggins, and at least one new pair of Aladdin-pants each (which, by the way, are the most comfortable things I've ever worn. If I see them again, I'm shamelessly buying at least 3 more pairs. They're wonderful.... it's like wearing socially-accepted pajamas. The waist band is drawstring and could probably accommodate the waist of jabba the hut. So they're just the most flowy, breezy things I've ever had.) After sleeping the entire way home, I got back to Kodai around midnight and it was straight to bed!

 This red one is my favorite kurtha! Isn't the design just gorgeous?!

Mariah, Sally (a volunteer high schooler from New Hampshire), and I all sporting our nice Indian clothes.

Now, I was going to take this time to tell you all about my day of teaching last Thursday, but I feel an experience from tonight is more deserving of this post space (don't worry, the post about me teaching is on its way...). So tonight after dinner, Mariah and I return home, bracing ourselves for a night full of grading and lesson planning. We have a window in our living room (the one with the incredible view in the morning) that we usually leave open during the day for the sunlight, but at night it creeps me out if it's not closed. So, as I've done countless times since arriving in Kodaikanal, I walk over, take hold of the curtains, and yank them closed. Normal. But the soft thump I hear as I'm closing the curtains is new. Also new is the object I see falling from the curtain rod, out of the corner of my eye. I bend down to see what it was that had fallen onto the seat cushion below, and IT MOVES!! Thank the lord it wasn't a snake or I probably would have peed my pants AND screamed. As it was, I kept it mostly in check, only letting a decent screech escape as I realized there was a lizard scurrying across our living room bench.

Luckily this was not a big lizard, only 6" or so, but it was quick! Naturally my screech had alerted Mariah, so she came running in (to save the day... seriously big shout out to this girl for deservedly earning the title "Lizard Wrangler" because if it had been up to me, I would have been over sleeping in the neighbors' house tonight). She overcomes brief self-doubt, stares that lizard right in the face, and promptly scoops him up in our pineapple container and delivers him outside. Check that one off the list of things to do in India! In retrospect, of all the animals that could have snuck into the house and dropped unexpectedly from the curtains, I'm quite glad it was just Screech (it didn't feel right not naming him, so before taking him outside and washing the heck out of our pineapple container, we named him "Screech" and took a picture). I'll take a little lizard over a lot of other creatures I've heard live in these parts any day! It just makes me laugh because only in India would you hear daily stories of animals inviting themselves inside (monkeys stealing chocolate out of teachers' desks, squirrels dropping from holes in the ceiling onto the dining room table, etc.) and then come home to house that's raining lizards... life here is definitely not dull!

Well folks, it's officially late. I'm off to bed. Sweet dreams to you all, when you get there. Check back sooner than normal for my next post where I tell you all about the wonders of my day of solo teaching, and the horrors of passion fruit. Miss you!

I'm pretty sure I still have paint on my hands...

Monday January 27th

        One Down, Five to Go... After observing my language arts lesson on prefixes and suffixes this morning, Ms Jessica (my "university supervisor" here in Kodai) graciously said I'm a natural teacher :) As part of the University of Montana curriculum, Ms. Jessica will come in and watch me teach a total of 6 lessons, and facilitate a sit-down meeting for my mid-term and final. Her comments and observations come back with me to Montana in May, and will be considered into my final grade for this semester. All that being said, I really didn't feel nervous until about 8:15am, 15 minutes before I was supposed to teach. At this point in my schooling, teaching feels pretty second nature to me. I don't really get nervous for lessons because I know it will work out, and if I need to, I can BS just fine. But not knowing what Ms. Jessica would be looking for exactly, and teaching a subject that the students have never worked with before, I definitely felt the pressure. In the end, everything went wonderfully. The kids (bless them) were like angels! Maybe they knew it was a big lesson for me and they were taking pity, maybe it was just because it was the first period of the day and they all actually just slept through the lesson... I don't know and I don't care! It went well, and now the first one is out of the way! My second is sometime next week, and by the time the 3rd observation rolls around I will (hopefully) be teaching the majority of an entire unit (which lasts 6 weeks and encompasses all subjects).

Jan 30^th

            Tonight Mariah and I went out to dinner with Benji, the drama teacher at KIS, and two volunteers from America who are working at a local orphanage and various other projects to better Kodaikanal. Kate and Sally are both from the east coast (New Hampshire I believe) and very excited to be in India. Sally goes back to the states in a couple of weeks, but Kate will be here until about the time that Mariah and I leave… turns out that she will be moving shortly, and will be our neighbor :) So in addition to having a nice meal outside of the school cafeteria, it was great to meet people from the United States who not only understand what it’s like to be the minority, but also the results of being a woman here…. I think we’ve convinced them to come to dance class this Wednesday too!

Feb 2

            So, I was able to have a pretty cool opportunity today. A couple of days ago, Mariah and I were approached about possibly chaperoning an NHS event (National Honors Society, just like in the US) the upcoming Saturday. The original chaperones had something come up, but since it would only take a few hours Saturday morning we had no problem saying “yes”. We weren’t given many details, just the time and date, and that the students were going to paint the walls of a local orphanage…. How cool right?! Well despite the fact that it was with a bunch of self-centered high schoolers it was an incredible day. (I’ve realized since being in Kodai that I could NEVER teach high school! They are so oblivious to everything around them, and  they apparently get on my nerves very quickly. Of course, just like in the states, this is a generalization. I know not ALL high schoolers are like this. But it seems to be even more prevalent at KIS because the majority of the students come from wealthy backgrounds… like grown-up-with-servants wealthy. This means that their sense of entitlement and superiority is flabbergasting at times… ugh, high schoolers. Point of the story, the only thing that would have made this experience better for me, is working with the younger rather than the older students.) Our group got to the orphanage around 9:30am and half of them started looking for the dirty paint buckets that had been used the weekend prior, while the remaining half started playing with the kids. These kids… sigh…. I was able to speak with the director for a little bit (although I had a difficult time understanding him) and found out that there are currently 79 kids ages 1-12 that live at the orphanage. He described the kids as “full-orphans” and “semi-orphans” explaining that full orphans are the usual definition of the term meaning no living parents, while semi orphans are left at the orphanage by parents who either don’t want them, or can’t afford to keep them.  To see 4 year olds hand washing clothes in buckets, 6 year olds scrubbing pots and pans, and knowing that these are the lucky kids, was pretty rough. Although we were only there a few hours, it was the most humbling, heart wrenching, rewarding experiences I’ve had so far in India.All I can say is, Mom told me I couldn’t bring home a monkey….she said NOTHING about little orphan kids :)

This was one of the highschoolers trying to teach the kids how to count in English. They in exchange, were trying to teach her numbers in Tamil.

This little guy made a game for himself of seeing how high he could climb up the pole before he fell. Every time I looked at him, he'd flash a great big smile and climb a little higher.

These two were my favorites... I must have asked their names 15 times between the two of them, but still couldn't pronounce/remember it for the life of me. They were both very shy, but never strayed too far away from our volunteers.

Mariah and Lacey working hard.

Group picture of Mariah and I with some of the highschoolers and their dubbed "minions" after a long morning of painting.

This group was apprehensive of me taking pictures at first, but were soon more than willing as long as I showed them the pictures after I took them. I ended up having to pry my iPod out of their hands so I could leave :)

From the outside, looking in on the orphanage.

Feb 6^th

            Peter Baker from the UofM arrived today! He works in the International Programs Department, so Mariah and I have never met him (much to the dismay of everyone here. They assume that since we’re all from Montana, we not only know each other but are best friends) but he brought us chocolate so I was super excited for his arrival! It was also really nice just to be able to talk with someone face to face about what’s going on in Missoula. We lamented over the lack of Indian food back home, discussed the recent budget cuts at UM, and were able to tell him all about life in Kodai. Supposedly he is going to write up a little something on Mariah and I and put it on the UM website… that’d be kinda cool. He also took a video of us helping teach swing dance club, and said he’ll be sending it to our parents (he really was an awesome guy).  It’s too bad that he only stayed for a couple of days, because it would have been nice to take him on a more thorough Kodai tour. But unfortunately he was just checking in and dropping off some information for graduating seniors about the University of Montana, then he was off to Vietnam on more international business for the University…. Did you know that students who graduate with an International Baccalaureate (like they offer here in KIS) and choose UM for college enter with at least 30 transferred credits?! That’s a year of school that they don’t pay for….pretty sweet deal!

Alright, so I'm officially caught up to this last weekend. Mariah and I took our first trip off the mountain since we arrived here over a month ago. We went to a city called Coimbatore that is big enough to have a 4-story mall, and built in movie theater. I want to be able to tell you all about it in detail, so for now I'm signing off but promising a new post about it very soon. In the meantime, here are a few more post-worthy pictures...

The view from our house in the morning NEVER gets old.

My mom loves me!!! She sent me all sorts of Valentines goodies, and of course an extra toothpaste and toothbrush like a good mom should :) This is the state of the box when it arrived. This doesn't even show the side that had started to rip, or some of the squished contents inside. It was VERY appreciated all the same though. She even sent some Valentine M&M's that I can give to the students.