Competition Contact

It’s funny how you make the most mundane things into a competition, I have spent the last couple of hours, after dinner, helping Anita and Sarah to double side contact onto alphabet letters, multi-sized dolls and chairs. The contact is the most horrendous, cheap stuff and trying to get the edge to peel back the "non sticky side" is an art and hence who can separate the contact from its backing the quickest requires a scoring process.

School has been back almost two weeks and I am sooo happy to see them all, I have been working with Rajini, my teacher, over this time and looking at assessments that cover everything from stating name to interview skills to behaviors with opposite sex and privacy. Being India, this of course has my teeth on perpetual edge as the process has been not been executed well, lacking simple language for the teachers, the  documents are in English that even I find challenging to translate their meanings, let alone the poor ESL teachers. Then there’s missing pages, teachers not truly understanding the assessment methods and report writing without proper templates esp when even plain paper here is hard to find. I just want to get in there and “fix” it all, but one must be very, very careful, so many toes and so much hierarchy. Needless to say was has taken 2.5 weeks I could have rolled out and had everyone on board and complete within 4 days.

Running several of the classes whilst the teacher is completing evaluations has been challenging with no Hindi but I successfully covered; sex education, personal hygiene, first aid, prevocational training, calendar activities, sport and more – yay me! It actually feels really good to be able to do this and know I am helping, my comm skills are diversifying and getting better, though I have warned Daniel I will be even more dramatic in my hand actions when I get home.

Went to Rajani's house for chai the other night and whilst I have been to other teachers some gut instinct made me wary. After cutting through small alleys, crossing a dirty river by sand bag stepping stones, shimmying along a 30cm wide precipice we arrived. After not long did the conversation turn to how lonely and bored Rajini was, I knew it was coming, respect and smiles can be taken the wrong way, having a boyfriend seems to mean nothing here, they expect you to have a wife or girlfriend as well. As I was fed chai and much food the stilted conversation turned to family, would I live in India etc. I made it clear that Daniel was my only one but then received a lecture on how this was not good. So I gave a lecture back, lol. I spoke about living a complete life in which joy is found within yourself and not a partner or children, in which some people must work harder (those without kids etc) to find the soul and joy and that all aspects of your life must be attended to with goals and determination, mum would know the 5 horses I speak of or Molly the complete wheel. Health, home, relationship, soul and future/finance. She told me she would never forget this moment. So I successfully got out of another proposition without causing offense, I am seriously going to write a book on how to say no and turn it into a positive experience.

Well that’s been about it, just been cruising along with school, shopping and getting fat on chapatti and all the other carbs. I have been making the girls drool with recipes and cooking options on a daily basis and weirdly enough can’t wait to get home and make dhal, because of course, in my usual arrogance, I can do it better : )

Took some shots of music class the other day so I have popped a couple below. The gay has completely come out in me, all those hand gestures and bouncing totally works to Bollywood music, I am natural here. Foolishly I shimmied whilst dancing with a girl in a wheel chair and then had to get up, on my own, and dance for a full class :/

 * Rapt attention, Manu commands the class so well and its brilliant to be a part of it!

 * Time for the new kid to join in some dancing, This is a no shoes class room and the sock stink with teenage boys can get pretty bad, so my stinky feet blend right in :)

 * The buggers spotted the camera - Madhav at the back, Jaijay on the left and Akhil to the right

Even looking at these photos makes me miss them, I have no idea how I will be when I actually have to leave...