20 June 2010

So we were once again paraded around in saris today. The girls gave us hairstyles that were so tight they were painful… it reminded me of color guard competitions in high school.

After lunch, Sister Rani took us around the village to meet some families. It was nice to finally meet some of the people that stare at us awkwardly at Sunday mass. First we met Prajwal’s family—his parents, grandparents, sister, and cousin. I now understand why he is the way he is. He looks exactly like his father (though Christi and I secretly hope that Prajwal doesn’t go for that 70’s style moustache when he grows up). His parents were so talkative, though they didn’t speak English, so Sister Rani had to do some translating. Mostly they just spoke amongst themselves, as if Christi and I could follow allow and catch all their jokes. Prajwal himself was at the convent doing his homework. I feel a little guilty about that, since he’d been begging us to come to his house for weeks now and he wasn’t even there when we did.

An entire hour and lemonade later, we made our way out. The next house we visited was a really nice house. It’s huge in comparison to all the others. Most of the houses here resemble large huts and are small, single story, with about three rooms. This house was two stories tall with lots of rooms and fancy interior decorating. The girl that invited us in couldn’t have been much older than us. She actually knew some English, though I’m not sure how. We met what seemed like her extended family, and she gave us cookies and orange soda (which Christi and I both hate). Her mother told me that I look like the Virgin Mary. This is probably because I’m white and my sari is blue, and Mary wears a blue sari in most Indian images of her (that incident also marked the third time someone told me that today). That was one of the few things her mother actually said, as most of the family preferred to just stare at us as if we were a zoo exhibit. Anyways, this girl, whose name I don’t know, is apparently going to be our village tour guide. She’s going to take Christi and I to a different house every afternoon from now on, so we can meet all the villagers. The added benefit of this is that she gets to practice her English. It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure. I wish we knew Kannada so that we could communicate with these people.

We came back from our village visit to find one of our tutoring students, Ambika, sobbing and inconsolable. We found out that one of the high school girls, Rosaline, asked three of the girls we tutor to write out the alphabet. Shylu and Ashwini succeeded in doing it from memory, though they have no idea what the letters actually are. Ambika couldn’t do it, and so Rosaline instructed Ashwini to beat Ambika with a ruler. I’m sure this was accompanied by plenty of verbal abuse, as well. I know that when you have 70-80 young girls living together under one roof, you’re bound to have drama and some situations straight out of “Mean Girls,” but there seems to be too much acceptance and tolerance of this behavior. Certain girls seem to think they’re better than others and therefore assume they have a duty to make the others feel bad about themselves. I’m sure their ego is a product of their background or some sort of defense mechanism, but it’s so frustrating to watch them tear apart the more innocent girls. Of the three girls we tutor, Ambika is by far the smartest and possesses the most genuine work ethic. I only wish her English was better so we could communicate that to her.

So, the running water also decided to stop working this afternoon. Conveniently, this happened at the very moment when I decided that I was going to take a shower. Christi and I feared the worst in terms of when it would come back on, but miraculous, the power AND the water came back a mere two hours later. So I not only got a full bucket of water, but a heated bucket of water.

Oh, another funny story. Most our meals here are vegetarian, but about once a week, they serve meat at lunch and/or dinner. So far, we’ve only seen chicken, but rumor has it they also commonly consume pigeon and rabbit (though I’m hoping it’s not the girls’ pet rabbits). Christi and I generally consume little to none of this said chicken. However, at tonight’s meal, we went with “little” instead of “none.” This proved to be a mistake. Christi was making faces at me over the lantern light during the meal, but I couldn’t figure out why. In hindsight, this was lucky, because if I knew why she was laughing, I probably would’ve stopped eating. When we went to go wash our dishes, Christi pointed out the piece of chicken on her plate… which contained a clearly identifiable beak. Yes, the beak. In other words, Christi was served a chicken head for dinner. Brains and all. All I have to say on the matter is that I’m glad it wasn’t me.

It’s almost time to go to sleep, which means it’s also time for Christi and I to discuss what we think tomorrow’s breakfast might be. It’s one of our favorite pastimes, since breakfast is by far our favorite meal of the day. Also, this pastime distracts me from thinking about things like Studebagels, Friendly’s, and bad American food that doesn’t contain beaks.

Happy Father’s Day!


21 June 2010

So about those village visits… those are officially on hold for this week. Sister Maria has education exams beginning on the 25th, so yesterday she left for Bangalore to study. God knows she can’t study here, as the decibel level at any given minute could make a person cringe. Obviously we don’t know the details, but it seems she’ll be in Bangalore all week. With another teacher absent from school for some other reason, we’re understaffed (and I’d say we were understaffed to begin with). Christi and I splitting up and alternating 5th and 6th standard in the morning, and teaming back up to handle a combined 3rd and 4th for two straight hours in the afternoon. I had to raise my voice so much this afternoon that my throat started to hurt. I hate having to do that, but I have no idea how else to get these kids to listen. Waiting patiently and asking nicely goes nowhere. Christi asked her mother to send Ritalin—we’re thinking of just dumping a bottle into the curry at lunch. It’d be an interesting experiment… just kidding. I wish.

I taught the 6th standard kids the word “crazy” today. This was obviously in reference to Prajwal, who was prancing around the classroom, muttering and singing to himself in a made-up language. They kept referring to him as “loose,” very unaware of the connotation this word has in the English-speaking world. I’m hoping the word “crazy” sticks. In the meantime, as long as Prajwal refrains from climbing windows and trying to kill frogs with his feet, he’s free to be as “crazy” as his heart desires.

Also, today seemed to be the day of foot injuries. Two different girls today had pieces of glass and stones embedded in the soles of their feet. Had they been wearing shoes, this could have been prevented, but not many students bother to wear them while at school (if ever). When presented with the first incident, I sent the girl away to Sister Rani, assuming she’d pluck the stone out of Shilpa’s foot with tweezers and put a bandage on it. False. Shilpa limped back to class, handed me a safety pin, and stuck her foot out. Uhhh, I don’t think so. Margaret took over for me, and she and her friend performed minor surgery in the back of the classroom. Coincidentally, in the following class, a girl named Pavitra complained to me about glass in her foot. As class continued on, she seemed to be in more and more pain, so I went over to check on her. Of course, she immediately handed me a safety pin. Seriously? Luckily the bell rang, and she leaned on my arm to limp home for lunch.

By the time tutoring rolled around, Christi and I were both pretty tired. We’ve added more girls to our group, so now we split up and alternate each evening. We kept the original three together, and the second group includes another Ashwini from 6th standard (this must have been a popular name in 1998) and Sunita, Pujpa, and Nagu from 4th standard. I’m not picking favorites, but I really like Sunita because she’s always smiley and excited to learn. Anyways, I was working with the original three tonight, and Ambika is still really down in the dumps from the alphabet incident yesterday. She seems absolutely miserable, and she wouldn’t even give high-fives during the memory game (which she of course won regardless). She just sort of sits there, stares off into space, and doesn’t respond. We tried to cheer her up with candy, but I don’t think it worked. Sister Mary is going to talk to her, since she’s clearly in need of a pep talk. Hopefully she gets better soon.

Now that we’re almost done to a month left, the girls are starting to get upset over the idea of us leaving. Jyothi has told me multiple times that she’s going to find an Indian boy for me to marry—“you marry Indian boy, then you stay.” Unless she runs into Dev Patel wandering the streets, I don’t think there’s any reason to worry about this coming to fruition. Even if she did, I think I’d be a little concerned as to why a movie star is meandering around Josephnagar… but whatever.



23 June 2010

So, just for the record, our tutoring group has expanded to include ten girls now. Sister Rani keeps sending us new girls, and I’m afraid eventually she’s going to send us the entire 4th standard class. We separated the group into two, splitting up the original trio of Shylu, Ambika, and Ashwini. This seems to have helped with the drama issues… for now.

In the meantime, Sister Mary left for Bangalore on Tuesday, so now we’re down another person of authority. Of course, Christi and I have no idea when Sister Mary or Sister Maria is coming back. Typical.

I think all the 5th and 6th standard kids are getting sick of having English class for four periods in a row. Focusing for one period is usually enough of a struggle for them. Today we had a spelling bee in 6th standard, with their list of words they’ve been studying for a good week now. Only two kids knew how to spell anything, Savitha and Prajwal. Not suprising, since I think Savitha has a really good memory and Prajwal probably studies for hours every night. Prajwal won the spelling bee, so he gets a prize. When I told him this, he looked like someone had just announced that he won the Nobel Peace Prize. In this case, the Nobel Peace Prize happens to be a lollipop.


24 June 2010

So Christi and I walked into class with the high school girls this morning, thinking we were going to go over some grammar. We collected the girls’ homework assignment, to once again see that the majority of them had copied one another. We decided it was time to law down the law, so we made all the copiers sit in the back of the classroom and rewrite the whole assignment. AND told them they have to write the word list 25 times. Only six girls in the whole class were exempt from this punishment. I’m curious as to whether they’ll start taking us seriously now. As Christi (and Machiavelli) said, it’s better to be feared than loved? This is going to be our approach for the next few days… until they start passing spelling tests.

On a lighter note, I gave Prajwal his lollipop today. He has since showed it me at least ten times. I know he’s saving it so he can show it to his family at home. He also finished his classwork early, so he came up to talk to me at my desk. He spent the next twenty minutes examining the differences between our mechanical pencils. He asked me if I wanted to trade. I told him he could just take mine. I think this is officially one of the best weeks of his life. He was so excited. He ended up giving me a normal Indian pencil as a “gift” to show his gratitude.

Anyways, unfortunately I don't have too much time to write since Christ and I are busy dealing with these con-artists. The amount of cheating, bleeding, and crying that has been going on in our classrooms has outdone the amount of genuine work being done, I think. A single period doesn't go by without AT LEAST two of those three things happening. If not worse.