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 30th
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 6th
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.
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