Friday, October 30th in Pattiveeranpatti

Today was a nice day in Pattiveeranpatti. We spent time around the school, talking to teachers and coordinating which classes we will be teaching next week. We want to take smaller groups of kids and do a lot of speaking with them, because we think their writing and grammar is already very advanced, but could use practice in talking. The teachers are very excited about us doing this with the students. The Bethania children are so far behind these kids it's quite sad. It's a shame how they don't get this level of education at their public school in Kanivadi.

We spent a lot of time around the house and kitchen, watching the cooks prepare our amazing food. We learnt the proper technique of making the very popular curd rice that's always served at the end of meal. Sometimes it has a spicy red "pickle" sauce too. Otherwise it cools down the mouth after a spicy meal. It's made of rice and milk and different spices.

In the afternoon, we went with the older students to visit another school nearby. This was a bigger school, from kindergarten to 12th grade, and where most of the students from Chandra's elementary school will go when they graduate. This school had a big exhibition on display of historical political cartoons and different artifacts. We took the school bus over. As soon as we got off the bus, we were literally swarmed by hundreds of kids. They all asked "How are you?" "What is your name?" "What is your native place?" "How many siblings do you have?" "You are sisters?" They were very sweet, it was pretty overwhelming though. Even teachers came up to us in the hoards of children to ask us questions. Most were very surprised that we came all the way from America, and asked if we took an airplane. They were even more impressed when we told them we had. They said our names were beautiful, even though after we said "Kelsey" and Paige" they laughed for a while and tried to pronounce them unsuccessfully. The teachers from Chandra's school were trying to get us to follow them into the exhibition building, but we literally couldn't move through the courtyard, we were surrounded by so many kids. They all spoke English quite well, and wanted us to speak Tamil to them. None of our key phrases really seemed to fit at the time.

We finally were able to go inside the exhibition building, full of children all in one line slowly moving past all the tables. There were long tables full of Tamil political cartoons from different eras. We couldn't understand most, but some were pretty interesting. Early ones included Churchill, Stalin and Wilson. There were many of Gandhi- the stereotypical picture of him short, bald, old and with glasses. Many showed Gandhi standing up to Churchill, Stalin and Wilson and the tables turning on the British as India gained its Independence. One showed a British man holding a baby India, that then grew into a man and held a frightened old British man. One showed a tiny Gandhi in front of Churchill, Wilson and Stalin, that grew till he towered over the three leaders. Some dated back over 80 years. The more recent ones were interesting, despite less recognizable political leaders. There were cartoons of the earth crying, and one of a artificially beautiful Miss India being crowned Miss World while Mrs. India was dressed in rags, pregnant and surrounded by starving children. There were a tables of currencies. They had ancient Indian coins and bills, one that was really big, about the size of half of a piece of paper. They had foreign currencies too- from Saudi Arabia, Canada, and American dollar bills. It was a pretty impressive collection, especially at this rural school. There were students at every table eager to tell us facts in articulate English about the pictures or money at every table with pins stating their rank in their class.

After coming back to Chandra's and resting a while, we spent the evening with Chandra, her daughter who has come down from Chennai for the wedding, and other relatives. We sat around and had tea and snacks while we looked at old photo albums. It's funny how the women decades ago still seem to wear the same style shuridas and sarees as they do now. There were old photos, like one of Vijayasarathy and his five siblings about 50 years ago. It was nice to see all of Chandra's family and cute grandkids. There were pictures of people sitting around the table we were sitting at, talking and eating just like us. There's a feeling that this is the way things have always been done, with relatives always stopping by the house in the evenings, sitting around to eat, talk, and joke. The strength of Indian culture is so apparent, and it feels like the important aspects of the lifestyle have always been there and always will be. Indian music, food and style are all so powerful. It's different than a lot of other countries that listen to American music, watch Hollywood films and dubbed American TV shows. Everyone here enjoys Tamil movies with their own movie heroes like Vijay and Lawrence and their own beautiful Tamil and Hindi music. We're really enjoying experiencing this beautiful, powerful culture.

Tomorrow we're dressing up and heading to Madurai for a visit to the huge, famous Temple and for the wedding of Vijayasarathy's sister's grandson!

October 29th

Today we left Bethania today for a day of rest at Chandra's before we go to the wedding in Madurai. It was so sad to say bye to our brothers and sisters at Bethania. We handed out candy while they lined up for school and wished everyone 'Happy Halloween!' They don't know what it is, but we'll read a book about it when we come back. We helped the kitchen ladies a bit in the today chopping cauliflower. The rains came today, which was good. Those dark gray, purple clouds are so beautiful here, wrapping themselves around the mountains. The puppies and dogs rolled themselves in the red mud, that the parched ground became. The puppies were unrecognizable red mud blobs racing towards us, ready to jump with muddy paws and bite at our feet and skirts. The cows were all laying down this morning, so Kelsey cleverly pointed that rain was coming.
We did a bit of work today after waking up early and being with the children. But we're still recovering from the fever, so we also took rest. After having tea with the children and saying our sad goodbyes we waved and headed on the Bethania bus to Chandra's.
The ride was beautiful as usual, but quite different with the rain, the purple clouds and the cool breeze blowing in the coconut trees. The outdoor cooking fires in front of homes, had big metal plates over the top of the pots, that hung over the edges and protected the fire from the rain. Today we burned some trash right as the rain was beginning. Glad we took care of that before the rain started to pour. It's very good for Bethania though because the well desperately needs water. GP was telling us about how difficult it is, with no rain and all the cows, children and plants that need water at Bethania.
We're going to take cooking classes from Chandra and her cooks tomorrow and sit in on some of the classes at Chandra's school. We'll be teaching there all next week after returning from the wedding. We're very much looking forward to the wedding and visiting Madurai. We're going to buy the children all new clothes with money raised by the Atlanta International School, and buy some presents too. These kids still need simple things like pencils to be able to do their school work.

October 28th

Thankfully, we're feeling much better and on the road to recovery from our fevers. About 10 other kids are still sick, lots of fevers and cold, but they all seem to recover quickly. We had enough energy to start field work again this morning. We fed the adorable baby cows and collected stones in the field with GP. Then we did a lot of onion peeling. This was interrupted by everyone sprinting to collect the kids' clothes when rain started to fall. It's very good to see rain, and has been raining on a off for most of the day- we definitely need it here! Everyone was smiling and happy to see it come. After kitchen work we did laundry, and were able to have the clothes dry for a few hours until we had to sprint out to get our own clothes before they got soaked in the rain. With another brilliant dental floss contraption we managed to eventually hang it all up inside after many failed attempts.

When the kids came home it was" ball playing, monkey in the middle playing, chess playing and Uno playing sister!!" After prayer we taught English to the elementary school and 6th grade girls. We went over Snow White vocab words and then had them do a test on it- including words scrambles, labeling pictures and finishing the sentences. Some girls, like Nagehwari, are very bright and remembered most of the word. Some girls, like Sathya, found it difficult to even just read the words on the test paper. We corrected each test individually and had them read it all out loud. At the very least, we're improving on differentiating been P, D, B, G, and T!

October 26th and 27th

So there's been an outbreak of fever here at Bethania. Many of the children had to go to the hospital to get free government distributed medicines today. We, along with some staff and many children have fevers and colds. Everyone is still in good spirits though, and there is much joking and prayer and vitamin taking. We're drinking our tea, have been resting for the past two days and taking cold medicine, as well as doing a lot of medicine sharing.
There's been an outbreak of "pig fever" (swine flu) in the nearest big city, but it has not come to Kannivadi. Muthumari said one of her classmate's brother had died from it. But we've been assured that our fever is not dangerous. It was high yesterday, but today we've been feeling much better. We've been told that we're actually just sick because sometimes people get allergic reactions to the sugar cane we ate on Sunday... Which still doesn't explain why all the other kids are sick too! Divya also told us that people with white skin have less hemoglobin, so get sick more easily. Not sure how much scientific basis there is for that, but our immune systems are definitely still getting accustomed to life here!
Aside from resting a lot, we've been up to our normal everyday chores here- filling and carrying up our water buckets, doing laundry, sweeping... Been too tired for any field work! Tuesday night we did English with the 8th and 9th grade girls. We played the antonym and synonym word matching games. They found it very difficult and didn't know what a lot of the vocabulary meant. Its sad to see how these older girls struggle with this game, while the third graders and Chandra's school found it too simple. As always, it was fun to sit, talk, and make jokes with the older girls for much of the time too :)

October 25th "Tamil Nadu Girl!"

We woke up early for church Sunday morning. All the kids were wearing their nice Sunday outfits, and the girls all had flowers in their hair. Ramya braided Kelsey's hair and told her, "Now you look like real Tamil Nadu girl!" For us, that's the ultimate compliment :)

Church was very nice. I love the chapel, where the chaplain's voice echoes in the domed ceiling and the children sing and pray loudly and happily. The cows and walk by around us, as we gaze towards the mountains and feel the cool morning breeze. The kids were very excited to have the chaplain there. After church, it was a busy Sunday, full of Uno, chess and music playing. The songs "Jogi", "Right Round", "Jai ho" and "Gasolina" were played repeatedly. We did an English lesson with the elementary and 6th grade boys in the afternoon. We had them take turns reading a book, and then drawing and labeling pictures with important vocabulary words. Reading with little MK was pretty difficult, and it took a long time to get through only a few simple words. We're still making progress in sounding out words instead of guessing.
Some of the other boys can read well though, and little 7 year old Karthi can actually read quite a lot. After lunch, we listened to music and drew pictures with the girls. They love for us to cut out paper butterflies and flap them around. Mugambigai acted out a lovely little play with her two purple butterflies. "Hello, I am going to school." "Bye, bye."

At night, we continued our English lesson with the 10th and 11th standard girls, as they have too much homework during the week to do it then. We continued reading Snow White and writing out our play. Some girls are still uncomfortable with being creative and making up their own lines, but we encouraged them to not copy quotes from the book. These oldest girls also love to just sit around and talk with us, which is fun too :)

A lot of the kids here are sick, with colds and fevers. We're sick too :( It's hard when you're constantly surrounded by 33 kids with fevers! They try to keep the sick kids in separate rooms and have them eat away from the other children. Nevertheless, more people are getting sick everyday, just hope they recover soon! We've been giving out some medicines to help.

Saturday, Octonber 24th

We woke up early again this morning to do yoga with Muthumari. We stretched and meditated and learned from Dhana Packiam that massaging your feet stimulates an important vein. It certainly made our day more "brisk". Ramya and Nandhini braided our hair beautifully, and showed us how to tie it so that apparently it will grow faster. We're trying! We're jealous of all the girls' strong and beautiful hair.

It's fun waking up early, once you get over the original shock. We helped with cooking before breakfast, standing in front of that big kitchen fire in the smokey kitchen with all the older girls. Wow. What a luxury to think back to our stoves. Hahaa. We grinded up coconut ("tanga" in Tamil) chutney, and spent an equal amount of time cleaning out the grinder after. By cleaning, we mean pouring a little water in a scooping all the residue out by hand, then cupping out the murky water.

We had a delicious breakfast of some kind of mix between chapatti and dhosai and some coconut chutney, that Kelsey had helped grind. Paige kicked Kelsey's butt in an intense Chess game while the kids did their sweeping. Then the intense cooking began. The kitchen women come in later on Saturday, so most of the morning it was just us and the girls. We scrubbed okra with a wet cloth and chopped it into small pieces, peeled tons of tiny onions, and chopped up tomatoes ("Takali"). It's crazy to see how much effort and time goes into cooking and preparation. No buying pre-peeled onions, and all vegetables are cooked. Rosie and Paige grinded up tomatoes, lentils, and other ingredients for a sauce in the giant mortar and pestle. 'Quickly Sister! Quick!' Muthumari said as I tried to move that giant stone in rapid circular motions and avoid crushing Rosie's hand as she pushed the food into the center of the mortar as the stone pushed them out. We cooked the okra over the fire, standing as far back as possible, reaching our spoon in the bowl to stir.

After our help was no longer needed in the kitchen, we led English classes for the elementary school girls. Incorporating Kelsey's very popular iPod, we looked at photos and wrote what we saw. We're trying to have kids sound words out, instead of relying on teachers to always spell everything for memorization. Many of the elementary school girls are quite smart, and when they are engaged classes are really productive. Paige sat with Muga and Nandhini and we learned about 'ing,' what noise it makes. The girls listed words with ing endings and I had them spell them. Expressive little Muga got really excited about it, dancing around the sleeping hall, 'the dog is dancing sister! The dog is running, the dog is sleeping, the dog is washing, the dog is going, the dog is king, the dog is beating!!!' 'Earring sister!' Ramya added while she was folding clothes. It was very fun and exciting to see them engaged in learning. Some kids still struggle a lot with English, reading and school, so it's hard to engage them. The iPod helped a bit, with fun pictures and a promise of dancing afterwards. Kelsey made them say a sentence with the word in the picture (apple, dog, clouds, sun, etc) before they could do everyone's favorite, zooming in and out of the photo.

When lessons were finished, it was time to go play the chess master, Antony, and try and redeem the sister's reputation after it was tarnished with Kelsey's infamous loss to the skinny, 5th grade Antony. After an intense game, with Paige sister concentrating very hard, despite being attacked occasionally by a pack of adorable puppies intent on biting her, sister prevailed. But it was quite challenging, with countless close calls. Antony was not deterred and I'm sure we will play again. Some Uno card playing sister, chinese checkers, and monkey in the middle occupied everyone until lunch. Kelsey impressed Sethu, Muruganadam (Snow White) and Karthi by spinning the basketball around on one finger. Muru is determined to learn, and monkey in the middle was paused for a while to practice. For lunch, we sat outside on the ground with the girls, playing (aka losing) the 'out' game. I definitely feel like we're improving, probably because our eating rice with hand technique is improving and we're learning speed eating techniques from our kids.

After lunch we listened to more music with the boys. They are learning the words to 'Right Round' and 'Gasolina.' Hahaa :) Kelsey and M+M played chess. We're still teaching a lot of the girls the basic rules of chess, but it was quite fun. Kelsey somehow won about 3 times in one game, with M+M making miraculous (and illegal) recoveries each time. We took some rest and then woke up for Saturday market at around 4.

The Saturday Market, in the middle of our little village of Kanivadi, is right next to the temple, the Christian school and the big red Communist flags. People go shopping, walking through admiring and purchasing vegetables laid out on burlap sacks and cloths on the ground. There are brightly colored vegetables and women and men measuring out their produce on hand-held scales for their customers, while others sit on the ground calling out to those walking by. We were hardly stared at all today by the townspeople, which was a pleasant surprise. Kelsey claims it's because she was wearing a shurida. One crazy man approached us, grabbing at us and talking about the Bible and money in Tamil. The people in the market screamed at the man, with one man brandishing a sugar cane and ordering him out of the market. We ate some sugar cane today too. Standing on the side of the bus, waiting, we took bites out of our canes and chewed to get the sugar juice out. We think we were the oldest people there eating sugar cane, as its mostly a little kid treat. We had fun having spitting contests with Muniyappan after we'd chewed the sugar out of our bites. An old woman in the market gave us some interesting, different kind of wider and short bananas which were quite delicious. Rani came with us into town as well, because she apparently has a fever. She's been separated from the other kids, taking tea and dinner in a separate room.

We bought chocolate in town as well, for all the children. We passed out our 33 mini Cadbury Dairy Milk bars at tea time. It's so sweet how thankful and sweet the kids are. All the kids were so happy, saying thank you, thank you, nanri, nanri sister, I love you sister over and over again after tea. Sathya shook our hands and everyone was 'very very thank you sister.' Awww. :) I love all our brothers and sisters here. They remember everything people give them. They love to talk about Shanta who came and brought them clothes. 'She's coming and bringing all the students clothes. She is your teacher? Wow! Super. I like Shanta. When is she coming again?'

We began english classes with the 10th and 11th grade girls as soon as tea was over. They read the Snow White book, which everyone loves. I think it would be a good idea to get more of those big colorful Disney books with simple, but not too simple stories that the kids are interested in. We took out maps and talked about the world and the seven continents. 'How many rupees to come visit you in America? How many dollars Sister? 10 dollars? More than 100 dollars?!' We showed them all the cities we flew to, to get here. They love talking about the Amazon and the giant anacondas they have seen. Zoos were a very exciting idea. We looked at a map of India and Tamil Nadu that Chandra had given us for the kids, and found everyone's native place. It was very interesting and fun. After we put away the maps, everyone wrote their own lines to a Snow White play that we'll perform tomorrow. It was fun just talking with the five oldest girls- they told us about their friends and gossip in their girls' school. We talked about how their parents would get very angry if they were friends with boys. "Indian culture is very difficult. I do not like," said Dhana Packiam, about how her family will arrange her marriage for her when she is 21, and how she's not allowed to really spend time with boys before then.

Dinner was good, rice and vegetables, finished with some toast and jam from Kodai. Afterwards we sat in the hall with the girls, laughing, reading, studying and learning Tamil. Dhana Packiam wrote hilarious jokes in our journals and sketch books. I'll share one with you guys here:

"There are four friends living. Somebody is an angry man. One day Brain is going to the toilet. Then somebody killed Nobody. So Mad called inspector. 'Sir, sir! Somebody killed Nobody, sir! Somebody killed Nobody!' 'Are you mad?' 'No, sir. I am Mad.' Called a Mad. Inspector told 'where is your brain?' 'Brain is in the bathroom sir.'"

By Dhana Packiam
You memory for this joke
You don't forget for me.

It was very funny, and we spent time learning to pronounce a lot of important Tamil words and write our names. Learning Tamil is so much fun and the girls love to teach is. Mary asked if it was normal for Americans to learn Tamil.

October 23rd

We woke up before any of the kids, at 5.30 this morning. It still looked as dark as night outside, and for once felt very cool, almost cold, out! At around ten to 6, the girls started to wake up, wash, brush their teeth, etc. I started to help Mary, the 11th grade girl with the huge list of English words she has to memorize. At around 6, we did yoga with Muthumari, what we had woken up early for! It was fun, just us 3. She led us through breathing exercises, stretches, different moves, and even foot massages. It was a good way to wake up!

For the next few hours, the kids did their homework and chores. This is when the big daily Bethania dirt sweep takes place, which we hear from our rooms most mornings. Each child is in charge of a section of land, where they sweep all the leaves and garbage out of their spot of ground. Some kids grind grain to feed chickens, get water for the kitchen, feed the animals, etc.

Kelsey then helped the kitchen ladies grind up coconut chutney. We sat on stools around a huge stone grinder that goes up to my knees. With a big cylindrical stone with a wood handle, we spun the pestle around fast, smashing up lentils, white coconut pieces, peppers, and green leaves, while pouring in water.

It was nice waking up so early, having a lot more time with the kids and to help out, before school. After breakfast the kids left for school and we did some field work with GP. We filled up huge pink and orange jugs with water we pumped from the well and then carried them to fields where we dumped them on the dry hard ground. The well keeps going dry which is frustrating. We jumped up and down, throwing our weight on the pump, while the kitchen ladies looked on laughing. We watered these vegetable vines while GP worked. After thoroughly drenching the plants we went to work removing stones from around the roots and the throughout the field. We took a nice break to pet our three adorable baby cows a while. The youngest likes to lie around and wait for Paige to put its food inside of its mouth. The other one appreciated some good ear scratching by Kelsey. We had some refreshing lime juice during our break. After, we did a bit of wash, trying to conserve as much water as possible, leaving us with slightly dirty clothes. Smacking the laundry on the tiles was still as fun as ever though.

After our delicious lunch, we collapsed for a well deserved nap after cooking, field work and washing since 5.30 in the sun. Muthumari came home from school and asked if our day was more 'brisk' because of yoga this morning. She says that if we keep practicing every day, in no time we'll touch our feet to our head like she can. Hahaa. We'll see.

When the kids came home, after tea and snack, games began. We played ball and tag with the boys. Taught Chess and of course there was some 'Uno card playing sister.' There is some definite improvement in the Chess skills at Bethania. We sewed up the ball where it ripped yesterday. Today Peanut (a dog who is very afraid of fireworks. During Deepavali he hid under our bed and in our bathroom and shook for the next three days) attacked one of the geese. This goose is white and looks like the typical goose with orange feet and orange bill. Today I saw Pandi wrestling with this goose by the kitchen, and I sprinted over, ready to enforce the 'no beating goose brother rule.' But Pandi and Mani showed us where Peanut had bit the goose's wing. Pandi held down the goose's body, MK held his head down and his beak closed while Mani applied medicine to the duck's wounds. Muga petted the goose's head too. 'I very like is goose. Very super' Nandhini told us. It's very sweet how all the kids care for the animals here.

The kids had Christmas practice and we prepared our lesson for the 7th and 8th standard boys. We had all the boys read a page of a section of snow white, then we cast characters for a play. It was very sweet and hilarious. Smart Satish, after refusing to write down his lines impressed and surprised us with his narrating skills. 'Snow White is running in the forest. What happens next? Watch and see!' Muruganadam (Joker) got himself a new nickname, Snow White. And Mani announced, "I am a squirrel. I am helping Snow White to clean!" Meanwhile Muruganadam, Mani and Chella pretended to sweep the ground. It was a bit challenging to get everyone to write their own lines and pay attention while other boys were reading, but they enjoyed acting it out a lot, and of course watching themselves back on Kelsey's camera is the best part.

After dinner, of delicious chapatis and two sauces and rice and papadam, we hung out with the girls on the hall. Ramya and Paige did their hair funny tied in mirroring knots on the side of their heads, and sat side by side for a photo. Saraswathi and Muthumari taught Paige some more Tamil, to write in her journal. I'm learning how to write my name in Tamil. It's super Sister! Kelsey played Chess with M+M and Veni before everyone said 'Iravu Vanakam' and went to sleep. Waking up early tomorrow too, for yoga. Wow. Waking up at 6 on a weekend. Only in India!

October 22nd

After field work this morning, we went for a hike up the mountain. Followed by Zues and Heylia, we walked up the gorgeous mountain side in the sun, taking in the beauty and capturing it in many pictures. The plains are covered with squares of tall palm trees, and speckled with houses here and there. The flat land is interrupted in a few places where randomly there are stone hills sticking up into the blue sky, with temples at their peaks. Butterflies flutter around the flowers, and the cows graze in the adjacent pastures. The dogs waited for us in the shade of cactus plants, acting as our snake watch-outs.

Our Tamil has been improving greatly. We know counting from 1 to 10 well, and Kelsey can count up to 20 with a little bit of help :) some of our daily phrases are:
"Sotiram"- Praise the Lord (after prayer each child says this to us)
"Calle vanakam"- Good morning
"Malay vanakam"- Good evening
"Iravu vanakam" - Good night
"Naanre"- Thank you
"Nan unay nesecarain"- I love you
"Cherri"- Okay

We get a lot of practice speaking here, and have picked up a lot of other vocabulary. We're a far way from forming real sentences, but are making progress! Next step is learning Tamil letters which will be more difficult! There are a lot of sounds which we don't even have in our alphabet and in the English language that we have to learn to make. Naming is also very different, and the girls were confused why our full names don't start with the first letter of our father's name. I explained how we have first, middle, and family name to Rani, and now she recites my entire name to me. "Kelsey Sanborn, family name!" Rani is very smart and wants to become a doctor when she is older. She studies English and Math diligently.

When the kids came home, we played handball and monkey in the middle with the boys. Playing handball was quite fun, racing up and down the playground and enforcing the 'no beating brother' rule. We also taught chess to some girls who had never played before. Little Antony actually beat Kelsey in chess! At first he just copied every move I made, and before I knew it, I had no pieces left! He's a smart boy. Skinny little Antony, who slouches like an old man and was coughing with a fever just a few days ago, is a Chess Master.

At night, we did English with the 8th and 9th grade girls. We read a section from Snow White, with each girl reading a page. We then had them all choose characters- Snow White, dwarfs, the prince, the Queen, the animal friends- and they wrote their own lines. It was nice to let them be creative for a change rather than just memorizing things! At the end, we filmed it on the camera, and all the girls loved to watch themselves. It was really funny. We changed the story a bit, because the picture of Snow White baking a pie is actually Snow White making chapatis here.
Snow White says, "I am cooking chapatis. I love chapatis."
Her animal friend, the deer, says, "All the animals are helping cook chapatis. But I am eating chapatis!"

At night we helped girls with homework and looked through pictures from Deepavali. They told us to mail them some from America when we print them out! We probably have taken over 2000 pictures here, so we have a lot to choose from.

October 20th and 21st

On Tuesday after breakfast we did more field work, removing stones from another plot of land. It was really hot out, and changed to kitchen work after about an hour. We peeled the small onions for a while with two women. Our hands still smell of them as a souvenir of our work. Its difficult, especially considering the massive quantity of onions we consume here. Those, tomatoes, and peppers are the primary staples here, along with rice of course.

We had our lunch at 1, after a shower (exciting new development- we recently realized that the guest cottage has running water from an actual shower head! So we got to take a real shower not involving a cup and bucket. It was strange actually having two hands to use, instead of one pouring a cup. Oh, how easily we get excited here... It was great!) We read and rested for a while until tea when the kids came home a little before 5. We then played some chess and Uno with the boys, the younger girls came up with an inexplicable version of Chinese checkers. Yet to figure out how anyone actually wins in that game. We gave Muniyappan the song lyrics he'd requested, and he proceeded to diligently study them while listening to the song on repeat. What a good student. The boys taught me proper technique for how to throw a spinning top off a string. Next step is learning their game, where they all stand in a circle, throw the tops in and try to hit each others, or get it in a circle drawn in the dirt. Still don't really understand that one... I love these kids.

Much of the evening was spent on English studying. Each night is dedicated to one subject, the same for students of every grade level, and Tuesday is English homework night. We had the girls read their poems and stories to us, helping them with pronunciation. They did well, and it's easy to tell how much time they spend in class repeating and memorizing the same sentences over and over again. They memorize questions as well as pre-formulated answers from their text books about prose or poems too. They probably have limited understanding of these poems they have memorized, but can recite them well. I had some problems with Nandhini though, and tried unsuccessfully to get her to say the word "artist" about 20 times. We compromised with her sticking with "Arshchess"... close enough!

With the grade 9 girls we learned about the internet and computers. They were really excited about the idea of email. 'When I go to Dindigul sister. When you are in America. I will write you an email letter Sister!' 'Super Sister!' We read passages about the internet in their text books and drew and labeled parts of the computer.

Through most of the night and starting again early Wednesday morning, we could hear music from a wedding. Muthimari told us that it is her friend's sister's wedding, going on in Kanivadi. The bride is 18, right out of high school. The wedding probably will go on for three days, typical for Hindu weddings. It's crazy to think that it's normal for girls our age to be getting married and starting a family, so young!

Wednesday morning started with our normal getting water challenge. We carry down our two big shower buckets, over to the big rain water tanks. We fill them up and lug them back up the stairs, dodging dogs and trying to spill as little as possible. We got to witness a particularly amusing dog and cow chase this morning as well. The dogs all start barking and those cows start running, the little puppies, following behind their parents, barking and yowling. Literally an entire family of dogs chased this one young cow, its nose rope dragging in the dirt behind it. This is a daily occurrence.

We spent the morning doing our normal stone-moving out in the sun. It's still really warm here. At 4 we went to pick up the kids in the Bethania bus! It was really fun. We had to sit in the bus for a while with all of the elementary school kids while we waited for high school to finish at 4.30. We played thumb wars, rock paper scissors and other hand games in the hot bus. Other students coming out of school all came to surround the bus to see us and bang on the windows. "Very bad, sister. Beating , sister." They helped protect us by shutting all the windows and doors on the sweltering bus, to show their love :) it took a while to convince them that 8 year old children harassing us wasn't as bad as suffocating! We sang songs and watched Zues, Bethania's big Labrador, chase the bus the way home.

When we came home, we played some ball games like monkey in the middle and our version of handball, while the older boys played cricket. The kids were doing their wash, but the well has dried up. We've been in a drought the whole time here- the soil is dry and cracked, and the plants aren't growing well. There are some large tanks of rainwater here, but with 40 people here, we need a sustainable, steady water supply! The kids jumped up and down, pumping and pumping the water pump, but no water is coming out. Little Muga came over, 'sister! No water! I am very very angry Sister!'

This evening after Christmas practice, we did English lessons with the 10 boys. We read parts of Snow White to them, and had them draw pictures and label important objects. Then we tested them. They all got tests with the pictures (houses, brooms) that they had to name. We also gave them some word jumbles to help them with their spelling. It was a good exercise, but difficult as always because of the different levels in the group. The boys all help each other too. In the end, we always go through and correct them with each kid and have him read the correct answers. It was really a fun learning exercise and they all love the bright colors and the drawings of the big snow white book. We read aloud and then discussed the story, pointing out vocabulary, and learning new words.

After dinner we sat with the older girls in the hall to help them with homework, our nightly ritual. I helped Saraswathi pronounce a list of 200 words and their abbreviations. Most of the words seem really strange and not useful in everyday life at all. Not sure why 10th grade students need to memorize what "UNESCO", "FBI", "CIA", "BBC" and "UNICEF" stand for, when they don't even know what these things are! Paige worked with Mary on a list of similarly not useful words, such as "adieu" and "barbarous", that they need to memorize the pronunciation but not know the meanings of. They have to memorize more than 200 words like this, 'Baroness, adjunct, awkward, abscess..' We have many issues that we want to discuss with whoever is writing these Tamil Nadu state English books!

October 19

Today was full of work and washing. It was quite enjoyable. After morning prayers, a delicious breakfast of Kelsey's favorite dhosai and coconut chutney, and waving goodbye to everyone as they headed off to school, we went to the fields with GP. We were put to work again, removing rocks from the field and throwing them over the edge of the ravine. After carefully digging and removing and chucking all the rocks out of our field plot, along with the occasional piece of trash, it was time for the real work to begin. Today we designated as sheet washing day, and we went to the water pump with our buckets, our clothes, our saris and our giant sheets, ready for the daunting task before us. We pumped our buckets full of well water soaked our dirty sheets and laid them out on the tile by the washing house. On our knees with a bar of soap, we went to work scrubbing and rubbing all the dirt off, even as we laid the sheet down on the dirty ground. We scrubbed and flipped and rubbed those sheets, covering our clothes and hands and arms and feet in soapy, well water. The best part was when we decided it was time to wash our sheets the real Bethania style by smacking the sheets on the tile ground to... I'm not sure..remove dirt? Remove soap? Who knows what the exact objective is of slamming our sheets onto the ground and splattering ourselves and the nearby noisy geese with soapy sheet water, but it was quite a lot of fun and a nice relief from the hot sun we're working in. It took us quite a while, with some highlights including Kelsey pouring an entire bucked of water on me in an effort to wash soap out of her sheet I was holding. It clearly was not a well thought out plan, that took in the laws of physics or the nature of the sheet. I guess the idea that the water that she threw from the bucket onto the sheet, may go through the sheet and hit me, didn't really register. But it was quite funny and was useful, as now I don't really need to wash that skirt for a while. Thanks Kelsey! It was quite the adventure washing, and I'm pretty sure I'm unable to adequately describe the enjoyment of this activity. It took many hours of scrubbing and drying and hanging. In our room we have established an ingenious system of dental floss clothes lines for drying clothes we can't hang outside in public. So our room is a maze of dental floss and drying clothes.
After a late lunch, because we finished washing so late, more cleaning ensued. Kelsey decided to sweep the whole room, which was greatly needed and appreciated. She trimmed and culled the massive peacock feather collection we had accumulated in our room and brushed out many of the bugs that had taken residence there. Paige took a much needed nap after all the laundry smacking on the tile. (That was her job.)
We were so happy when the kids finally arrived home. Little Antony had come home early because he has a fever. He has been coughing a lot for the past week, and India's great concern about swine flu meant he was rushed home at the first sign of fever. I hope no one else gets sick. He's a little trooper though, very sweet kid. When the kids got home we had tea with leftover sweets from Deepavali mixed with puffed rice. Game playing ensued immediately, with the boys playing chess along with Uno cards. Everyone was washing their Deepavali outfits too. Today was a special school day, because the kids didn't have to wear their uniforms, rather they could wear their new Deepavali clothes.
After a few good chess games and some 'uno card playing sister' the kids had Christmas song practice and prayer. After dinner we taught the elementary school girls English. We read a Curious George book, formed sentences with cut out words and talked about the book. At the end we gave a writing test. They love 'exams sister!' It's crazy at what different levels they are. Some girls in 5 standard are reading, spelling and understanding well, while girls in 6 standard can't recognize simple words. Naghewari, in 5 standard is quite strong in English, while Sathya, 6 standard, struggles. It's difficult to know how to teach for some children who probably have a learning disability and for whom reading is a struggle. One very sweet little boy, Sethu, with the cutest smile, has a speech impediment, that you an also hear when he speaks Tamil. He can't say S's. It's difficult to know how to help him overcome this. We love working with all the children, though. All the time, their sweet smiles and crazy stories brighten up the day, and we hope to be the best teachers we can be.
After dinner Kelsey sat with the girls and helped with English homework for Rani. Rani is very smart and top in her math class. She wants to be a doctor when she's older. Its hard though, because there are a lot of spelling and grammatical errors in their English books. We don't know if its a bad idea to tell students that their English teacher is wrong, but we want them to learn properly. The stories they read are really strange. A lot of them deal with really sad topics like the death of a mother or child, or the life of a "faithful servant and his master." Very strange. Homework time with the girls always involves some good stories and fun laughs which make it worth it!

Sunday, October 18th

This morning we woke up early, even after our late night Deepavali partying, and headed to Chapel. Bethania's beautiful chapel has no walls, just columns holding up the round dome ceiling. There are 13 columns each with the names of the apostles and we kneel on straw mats laid out on the concrete floor. At the front of the round building is an altar with a white stone cross and a painting of an Indian Jesus in flip flops holding a lamb with the Bethania mountains behind him. Today there was no pastor, rather a woman who works near Bethania stood at the front of the chapel, with her young child grabbing her beautiful yellow sari and playing around her bare feet. She read a Bible verse and talked about prayer and when she finished all the kids clapped and she said Thank You. We sang songs in Tamil and prayed and then headed to a late breakfast.

After breakfast, the library was opened and we spent time reading with some of the young girls while the boys did chores (taking care of the animals, breaking up fire wood) and the older girls cleaned out the dining hall. A lot of the girls really need reading practice and just guess words, saying a word they know that starts with the same letter. We're working on it! Paige played some chess with the boys, and the Uno cards came out once again. The boys have been enjoying the toy cars a lot so Paige took out maps and we played games, 'driving' from Kannivadi to Atlanta. India to America. We learned about different continents, oceans and countries while having fun with the cars. After a while we just lined up all our atlas' on the stairs and made ramps for all our new cars.

After a fun lunch outside we spent time with the older girls. Muthumari braided our hair and gave us jasmine strings to wear. I took out my music and danced with the girls before their resting time. They love to dance so much! We've been learning some good Tamil dance moves. Little Muthumari has been showing me "Vijay dance moves!" She's shy about showing them, but once she gets going its great and fun to learn! The favorite songs are still "Right Round" and "Jogi". They also love the "movie"- my one music video on there ("good life" by Kanye). Muniyappan, the oldest boy, has already requested the lyrics to Right Round and Smack That...

Muthumari and Ramya showed me some yoga moves also. They were impressed that I knew some yoga, and invited me to do yoga and meditate with them when they wake up in the morning at 5.30... A bit too early for me! Big Muthumari, Nandhini and Satya also gave me more Tamil lessons. Its difficult, especially trying to guess how to spell words so I can remember them later. I learnt numbers up to 100, and phrases like "I am 17 years old." I learnt how to write my name in Tamil letters. I'm pretty sure that it actually sounds out "Kay- see", but close enough to Kelsey! The girls really seem to love how eager we are to learn Tamil, and love quizzing us.

After tea and biscuits, we went up the mountain with all of the girls. At their request, we brought the music with us, and they danced the whole way up while fighting over who got to hold it. It seemed surreal to be dancing Indian dance moves on a mountain overlooking Bethania as the sun began to set. Gorgeous scenery and the best company.

After, it was the boys turn to listen to music, dance and take a ridiculous amount of pictures. They loved to look at all the photos on my i Pod, zooming in and out of each one. Satish was very impressed with the calculator application. They boys had the best dance moves- the classic Indian hip thrust, jumping up and down, holding hands and swinging in and out. They love the song Gasolina, and other Spanish songs a lot. Little Karthi and Akash were breaking it down. Muniyappan spun Akash around by his arms. Sethu jumped in every single picture that he could, always flashing some hand signs and his adorable smile. MK and other boys wrapped themselves up in the man skirts that all men wear here, making full body robes. The older boys made a big human pyramid that was successful for a short time. We ended of the night with slightly calmer Uno and Chess to cool down from music and dancing excitement. We love that we can do something simple like playing music and it can have such an amazing effect, making these kids so happy.

Deepavali!!

Today was Deepavali! We woke up early, at 6. The first adventure of the day was getting dressed. We wore our sarees that we'd bought in Chennai and got fitted with Chandra in Patti. They are very sparkly- Paige's is blue and black, and Kelsey's is green and teal.
Little Karthi's mom and Anushia, Joseph's wife, helped us get dressed and laughed as we had put everything on backwards. Oh so typical us. It was great though. We walked outside to a chorus of 'super sister!' from our sisters. Dhana Packiam braided our hair beautifully, and we put jasmine flower strings in it which smell amazing. Everyone was wearing their nicest clothes. Relatives arrived throughout the day bringing new outfits for Deepavali and plenty of special Deepavali sweets, which the kids loved to share with us. The boys were also dressed up nice and everyone was 'super excited happy for Deepavali!' At breakfast we were showered with Happy Deepavali gifts and cards. Carefully colored drawings and sweet gifts rained down on us and it was better than Christmas. One particular one from Nandhini wished us a happy Deepavali as well as new years, Christmas, "Ramazan".. Very economical to have such a multipurposed card. All of their messages (usually involving Jesus, sisters' names, and Deepavali) and pictues of houses, churches, people, peacocks, etc were so sweet.
Everyone ate their idly and tomato chutney for breakfast quickly, eager to begin the festivities. Starting last night fireworks began to go off and had continued into the morning. We played music in the dining hall and everyone danced while we handed out candy, toy cars for the boys and bracelets for the girls. Muniyappan was the DJ for the morning as the hall filled with dancing children and games of Uno and Chess sprang up in the corners. 'Gasolina' and 'Right Round' were two big hits. Muniapan also really liked 'Smack That' by Akon, so we listened to that a good 10 times, but no one seemed to mind. Kelsey's little digital camera was passed around and we got hundreds of beautiful, hilarious and all around awesome photos of the children. Everyone loves to take pictures, even if their pictures generally are missing someone's head. Ramya, an older girl, comes us with good poses and arranges everyone. We went around to take pictures with our favorite baby cows too, of course. Several hundred pictures and one full memory card went by fast!
After lunch at 1, we passed out the personalized cards we'd made for everyone with lollipops. This was a lot easier than passing out the cars, bracelets and candy, as each kid clearly had one card, with their name on it. We should work on having everyone line up and not yell or fight when we give presents out, but everyone was way too excited for that today, understandably. We took a lot of nice pictures outside with all the smiling faces and their lollipops. We gave some out to a lot of the siblings and cousins who were there too visiting. We took pictures of the kids with their visiting family. Its so heartwarming to see how happy they are to see their parents, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles grandparents.. We hopefully can print these pictures out when we get home and send them to the kids for Christmas. They were so proud to show us their family members, and it made them so happy.
After a short rest, we played the "hopping game" outside for a while (now dressed in a more practical shurida- we were having some technical difficulties with the sarees!) After tea at 5.30, it was movie time! We watched a movie called "Villu" staring our favorite "movie hero" Vijay! Yaay Vijay! He was quite dreamy, parachuting into boats, karate chopping bad guys, singing and dancing with beautiful women and of course never showing them kissing! Thanks to some occasional English lines and over the top dramatic effects, we were able to follow along in the story.
When it became dark, the real fireworks began at Bethania. Bethania where the kids all have matches, labeled 'kid matches.' Yep. Matches designed for children to play with. Everyone was lighting firecrackers, even little 5 year old Akash was running around barefoot lighting the firecrackers. All around us were sparks, fire, boom boom, boom. The sounds are still ringing in our ears. Children screamed happily and their dancing silhouettes stood out in the night against the bright firecrackers spraying sparks in fountains of fire from the ground. It was hard to know where to stand, boy tossing firecrackers into the air all around, landing and exploding in every direction and girls running everywhere with sparklers. These are Indian sparklers, different from those American sparklers that aren't designed to burn your hand. Needless to say, Paige was stressing a bit in all the excitement. It was so fun, but also scary around fire. Kelsey caught her shurida scarf on fire. A rogue firecracker shot off, hit her neck, and burned a nice souvenir in her scarf. It was pretty exciting. Luckily a few good whacks put that out and stop drop and roll didn't have to be enforced. Paige was ready though. Its amazing no serious injury occurred with flames flying in all directions. Firecrackers were literally aimed at the trees and shot. Half a bucket of water was standing by, which wasn't used. Sparklers that spiraled around in circles were lit on the front porches of the buildings, spraying sparks everywhere. Most kids loved the loud, dangerous excitement (though I doubt they found it dangerous). Peanut, the dog, did not find it so much fun and we later realized has spent the entire night hiding in our bathroom, scared of the sounds. After the crackers and sparklers were finished, we had a late dinner, completely exhausted!

Holiday! Day before Deepavali

Today is the day before Deepavalia! The kids didn't have school so it's been a non-stop day. No lazing around reading or scrubbing laundry. We woke up early and had the early morning snack of ragu (a sweet, brown, liquidy meal) and tea with the kids at 7. We then headed out with the kids to supervise the massive sweeping of all the dirt in Bethania. All the kids had duties and many of the girls had plots designated as their area to sweep with their brooms made from bundles of straw. Kelsey did some vegetable cutting with 3 girls and the kitchen ladies, cutting takil (tomatoes). Paige helped Antony feed the new baby cows, basically just wave Spinach that we'd just pulled up from the fields in their faces until they decide to eat some. They are ridiculously cute, two copper colored baby cows, one with a white star and both are so soft. Alagarsamy, the head coconut chopper (he loves that machete) got us some tender coconut water as well.
After breakfast, we made even more Happy Diwali cards and played more Chess with the boys. I want to teach them better strategy, because right now they move out a whole wall of pawns and then don't know what else to do. There is one boy, Satish, with a pretty good understanding of the game and then little Antony with a good understanding of taking the opponents pieces and the sound effects required when doing so. Hahaa. Today Karthi, Alagarsamy and Mani decided to wash the dogs with the new shampoo everyone got today. The little puppies were scrubbed, much to their dismay, and stuck into laundry buckets. The little boys wrestling the puppies with buckets of sudsy water was pretty funny. Sethu helped me pull ticks off the bigger dogs and smash them with rocks. The bugs here are everywhere, so the kids don't make a big deal about it. When washing Zeus, the big golden lab, the puppies' dad and Heylia, the puppies' mom, Karthi stood on top of the rainwater drum and dumped water from above while Mani and Alagar scrubbed the very dirty dogs with shampoo. It was quite sweet, although Zeus and Heylia weren't too excited about it.
After lunch, eating outside and talking and playing with the older girls, we didn't take our usual nap. During lunch we played the 'out' game, where if the person who is out sees you eating, you are 'out' and then must call the next person you see eating as 'out.' We are pretty easy targets, with our lack of eating with hand skills, and therefore are almost perpetually out. Today Kelsey Sister lost the whole game...awww. It was either loosing or not eating, and we needed our energy! After our defeat, we went up stairs to do Henna for Deepavali. Ramya, a beautiful artist in 9th grade, painted our hands with flowers, patterns, leaves and stars. We then painted nails and showed pictures. The girls decided they wanted to keep the pictures 'of sisters, to look upon daily.' Some of the people who are also in the pictures we gave away include, Josh, Gaelle, Ana B., Lindsey, Jenna, Peter and Suzanne. So that was pretty funny. They also kept some of the pictures that Jenna Sister and Ella sister took with them last year with a bunch of the kids in them. They love to see pictures of America, our school, family and friends.
We then made bracelets with the girls. We had brought green, orange and pink (rose color!) string, colored beads and letter beads. This was a huge hit. We had some difficulty with trying to not have all the kids take all the beads at once, and stop any fighting. Despite having several hundred letter beads, we seemed to run out very quickly. Too many names have m, a, s, i and e in them apparently. By the time we made bracelets with the boys at night (there's basically no gender segregation when it comes to activities- the boys want to do everything the girls want to do and proudly display their "rose and violet" jewelry on their painted finger nails) there were very few beads left. Little Karthi didn't seem to mind, and took all of the left over letter beads and ended up with a much loved mix of x's, q's, z's. We braided the colors together too with 3 strings which was popular.
After the kids had finished their Christmas practice and prayer, we planned on doing an English lesson with the 8th and 9th standard girls. The excitement for Deepavali was too much to concentrate for long though, so we took out our music and danced instead :) we played a lot of hip-hop, the limited Indian music (everyone loves Jogi and Jai Ho!) I have, Spanish music (which everyone really likes even though they don't understand the words at all) and other fast songs. We learnt some Tamil dance moves too, and took pictures in various amusing poses. Muthumari and Ramya taught us fun moves and hand twirls. It was very fun, we were laughing the whole time. After, we cooled down with some Uno playing, chess and chinese checkers until 8.00 dinner.

'Deepavali tomorrow Sister!!! Iravu Vanakam Aka' (Good Night Sister) we can already hear the fireworks beginning outside the window.

Life at Bethania

We've been quite busy here back at Bethania! Our daily schedule has usually been waking up at 7, and spending time with kids while they do their morning chores. Then there's prayer at around 8.15, breakfast at around 8.30, and then the kids leave for school on the Bethania school bus. After that, we head to the fields to help GP. On Wednesday we spent a few hours digging rocks out of a plot of land. We filled up our metal bowl with all of the rocks we could dig up with our hands. Most mornings we also spend some time helping the kitchen ladies. We sit on the ground with them and peel onions, separate cauliflower, and dice other vegetables. It was raining all Thursday morning, so we didn't do any field work. We're very happy rain is finally coming! Once the rain stopped, we did all of our laundry in our buckets, and pumped water and carried it to our room.
After finishing our work and resting a bit, we have lunch everyday at 1.00. This meal seems so lonely compared to the others, us two sitting alone in the dining hall usually filled with all of our other kids! Sometimes we eat outside too.
In the afternoon we have time to rest, read, relax. We've made personalized cards for every child to give to them this Saturday for Deepavali. Everyone is very excited for it!
The kids get home a little before 5. Then we have our sweet, milky tea and a snack, and spend time with them as they wash their school uniforms. Then we have some fun time; drawing, making cards, playing with spinning tops, trying to teach chess... On Thursday only the two oldest boys, Muniyappan and Chinnaiya, came home early on their bikes, so we listened to music with them. They were not impressed with our lack of Tamil/Hindi music, but liked some of our American music. T.I. was a big hit but they weren't feeling Bob Marley. They said they're going to tell us some Tamil rap songs to get.
At night, the kids usually have practice for their Christmas performance (they're going to be very, very prepared after about 3 months of rehearsing!) After that and prayer, we teach or play games with different age groups. On Wednesday we played Uno, drew, and read ISpy books with the 7 girls up to 6th grade. Stickers were involved too, naturally. This is always a very fun, active time. On Thursday, we worked with the 10 boys up to grade 8 after prayer. We learnt about shapes, had every boy draw, spell and say out loud the names of shapes- square, circle, rectangle, etc. Then we tested them; their favorite part! By the time we have dinner at 8, we're usually exhausted! After dinner we spend a few hours sitting in the hall with the older girls. We talk, draw sometimes, help them with English homework. The older girls are very fun, love to talk and gossip with us. We get to learn a lot from them. The language barrier doesn't stop the stories at all, and its good for them to be practicing their English. We also were given Tamil lessons! We're making progress, but have a lot to learn still. We have numbers up to ten down, and some important phrases.

Teaching in Pattiveeranpatti, and back to Bethania! October 13th

Today we had quite an exciting day. This evening we returned to Bethania and it is so good to be back. We missed all these children so much. I was so happy to see each and every one, will all their smiles and stories. It's great to be back with my brothers and sisters.
This morning we taught classes at Chandra's school. Someone (Kelsey or maybe Ms. Umi) had decided that Chandra and the teachers at school should be informed that I, Paige, am an art teacher. So here I went, class to class, teaching proper proportional face drawing to crowded, loud, attentive, full classes of little students in their red plaid and khaki uniforms. It was loud and fun and challenging. We taught some 3rd grade classes. One particularly exciting class was the 1st grade. 40 first graders, crammed 4 students to a two person desk and we drew faces. There were some crazy faces drawn and the assignment to 'draw yourself' was not really well understood in any of the classes. We looked through some of the drawing notebooks and everyone's drawings were exactly this same, same colors, everything. They wanted to be told what to color everything, to copy exactly from the board. So we walked around and asked kids to draw themselves after we drew the proper faces. There were some little boys who drew girls with pigtails, but mostly, maybe some of them got it and decided to be a bit creative. Either way it was quite a learning experience and a fun interesting challenge. Its fun being teachers in Pattiveeranpatti, but we feel like that school is already very well staffed and equipped. The kids seem to like our lessons, and it's so sweet when they call us all "madam". The school already has many qualified teachers and helpers, and the classes we taught always had teaching assistants. We are happy to be back at Bethania where these kids definitely have less and need our time more.

Our weekend at the coffee estate

Saturday, October 10th (Happy Birthday Mom!)

We woke up early Saturday morning to play tennis. Even at 7am, it was already really hot. We had fun even though we were definitely lacking in the tennis skill department, and the two guys collecting balls for us probably found us quite amusing. It was a nice workout and a break from the games of Peacock vs. Dolphin and Uno we've been playing at Bethania. But still miss them!

After breakfast, we set off for the coffee estate with Vijayasarathi. It was a gorgeous drive, through the plains and up the mountains. Driving through all the smokey villages with homes made of woven dried coconut leaves filled with people, colors and of course, a number of happy looking cows. On our ascent we could see the planned, cultivated land of coconut trees and various crops. The mountain landscape turned quickly to steep rocky slopes covered in trees and bushes. We drove through a few isolated mountain towns, a lot different from bustling mountain Kodai. Little children ran along side our crowded Jeep waving and laughing at the foreigners. Little girls carrying bundles of firewood on their heads stopped to wave as they walked beside our Jeep.

We stopped off at Chandra's nephew's family's coffee estate on the way up, the Saint Mary Estate. It was very pretty, up the rocky, bumpy road, and we saw their new construction being built. All of the workers were building thick walls and mixing concrete by hand for a beautiful new home. Her nephew complained about the slow rate of construction in India saying it had taken 'nearly a month' to build this home from the ground up, in this isolated mountain plantation. We told him it seemed pretty fast to us, and he assured us it would be ready to live in in 10 days. Old women in saris mixed cement by hand in metal bowls (the kind we carry compost with at Bethania.) And we enjoyed a milk dessert and some water before jumping back into the bumpy jeep.

After the long drive filled with lots of honking, we arrived at the estate. We drove up the road surrounded on all sides by short coffee plants with small red or green fruit. We reached the small, two bedroom cottage where we're staying. Its very nice and quaint, with electricity only at night. Good thing we don't have to charge our phones since there's no reception up here anyway!

We walked for about an hour through the fields. We asked questions and learnt a lot about growing and harvesting the coffee fruit, and how it turns into the brown coffee beans that everyone knows. Vijayasarathi has been doing this for 45 years and is quite an expert in the coffee growing business. It was nice to be outside in the cool mountain air, soaking up the scenery and watching people hand pick the coffee fruit. Its very nice and peaceful up here, with a lot of time to read and play a few intense chess games.


October 11th and 12th

We've spent this weekend mostly walking and driving around the estate, and relaxing. We've learnt a lot about the history of the estate and about the coffee being grown. Vijayasarathy's grandfather bought the first plot, 7 acres of land, in 1940, when he was young right out of college. We saw some of the very old plots, some with trees up to 60 years old. The trees can yield the fruit for many decades, but produce less after 40 years. 75 percent of the estate is for growing Arabica beans. These are the more popular, better tasting, and more expensive variety. They need only one third of a day of sunlight, so tall trees are grown in the area to provide shade. The rest of the land grows Robusta beans, which are cheaper and used for instant coffee. They also don't need to be sprayed because they are not affected by rust. If left to their own, the coffee plants grow to full trees, so must be cut to keep a manageable size. We saw some large Robusta trees that were up to 60 years old. There used to be only horses to take people and goods up here and back to towns for selling, before cars. We're thinking that horses are much better suited to these rocky slopes than our Jeep is, as we bump along in the car.

Three main crops are grown on most estates up here: peppers, coffee, and mandarin oranges (which are all currently green). All grow well at this elevation. Guava and Jack fruit grow here, but aren't as good quality ("not good taste!") at this elevation (4000 ft). All of these other crops grow alongside the coffee plants. The mandarin orange trees and tall trees which pepper vines are put on provide the needed shade for the coffee. Different varieties of crops that ripen at different times are beneficial, as it would be impossible to harvest all of the coffee at one time. Robusta and Arabica plants need to be picked at different times, and all the fruit is hand-picked exactly when they are ripe.

They also grow cardamom on the estate. Vijayasarathy had us taste some of the seeds from the fresh fruit. It was very flavorful, but some were bitter inside. We watched the orange trees be sprayed to protect against certain leaf diseases too. "Shade lopping" was going on all over the estate. Without any kind of safety harness/ protection men climbed the tall trees surrounding the coffee beans and using machetes chopped off branches by hand. We were told stories of the "expert loppers" who jump through the air from one tree to the next without having to climb down to the ground in between. We also saw the building of machines where the coffee fruit are funneled through and pulped.

Later, we walked all the way up to the highest point of the estate. Looking around us, we could see much of the one hundred acre estate, and in the distance where Bethania lies beneath the foothills. It was quite beautiful, all the different colored trees and the layers of mountains against the blue sky.

We saw the detailed records and rain logs kept here. As the monsoons have failed this year, rain is desperately needed before the coffee to ripen next month. Most years, rain comes everyday in October and November.

Hope our new found coffee knowledge is useful for everyone :) or at least not insanely boring. It was fun and interesting being there at least, even with no electricity. Tomorrow evening we're back at Bethania.

School day in Pattiveeranpatti!

Today was a very nice day in Pattiveeranpatti. As we were having our breakfast (Chandra knows we like sweet food so makes us sweet French toast and kaseri along with our sambals and burri) we heard the kids arriving. They have their whole school assembly at 9 in the morning. All the kids stood in perfect lines on the concrete in front of the main school building, with the sign "Lakshmi Nursery and Primary School." Because it is Friday, they wore their "sports uniforms"- a red, green or blue colored collared shirt with the school logo, along with white shorts or skirt. The kids looked so cute and neat in their perfect lines and bright uniforms. They start the day with their "school prayer" in English and Tamil, some announcements, and morning exercises. The kids knew the exercises by heart, as the head teacher counted "One, two, three..." the kids put their hands above their heads, out to the sides, down, in front of them. It reminded me of taichi. Good way to wake up the kids in the morning! Then the girls that everyone had been staring at the whole time anyway (guess who?) were introduced. We were handed the microphone and introduced ourselves. It seemed like we probably should have talked a bit, but couldn't think of much else besides "My name is Kelsey. We are from America... It's nice to be here with all of you!" Hoping the language barrier hid some of the awkwardness of our unprepared speech to 200 nursery and primary school students, plus staff. I fought the urge to start off with "You're probably wondering why I called all of you here today..." when I was at a loss for words and first handed the microphone with a few hundred little eyes glued to my face. Paige appreciated the comment at least. Good times. Good times.
Kelsey held the microphone too close to her face and basically screamed her name, while I held it too far and no one will ever know my name...it's Paige by the way.

After our assembly speech with ended with an awkward round of clapping, after the teachers told the students to welcome us, we took a tour of the school. Starting with the nursery school, we stopped in to every one of the 11 class rooms. We introduced ourselves in a similarly awkward manner each time. At the nursery school we were greeted mainly with perplexed stares. Some of the older kids sang rhymes for us that they knew. Itsy bitsy spider was quite fun. After, we prepared a game and went to teach the fourth and fifth graders. Not knowing their level of English, we had prepared a pretty simple game. We made cards with a word for each kid. The words were in pairs of either antonyms or synonyms. We had the kids get up and try to find the other student that had their card's corresponding synonym, then repeated it with the antonym set. The kids had fun running around and making sentences from the words, but found this activity pretty simple. They knew what every word meant, and had no problem forming basic sentences. It was such a difference from the kids at Bethania. At Bethania, most of even the high school kids wouldn't know all of the vocabulary, and can't form grammatically correct sentences at all. Its a drastic difference. This is a good, private school that has the kids even learning other subjects in English from a very young age. The Kanivadi public schools that the Bethania kids go to have no where near this level of education.
The teachers here are very well educated as well. The vast majority are women. For the most part, they are very well educated with masters degrees and such, but stopped working once they became married. Teaching is a popular and socially acceptable professions for well-off married women here. We met one nice, young teacher who had just started working here three days ago. She had just gotten married and moved with her husband here from Bombay (Tamil is her mother tongue though), where she had a good corporate job in a large Indian paint company. This quite village must be such a change from a huge, modern, North Indian city. She was very nice and friendly, and we enjoyed tea with her and the other teachers.

The rest of the day was relaxing, we spent fun time with the kids as well. Its a bit overwhelming to try to talk and play with such a large number of kids after just getting used to being with our 33 Bethania kids! Awww. We miss them.

October 8th (Bethania's 22nd birthday!)

This morning, because it was our last day at Bethania for a week, we dropped the kids off at school. They were all very excited on the bus, and proud to show off their schools. The girls from 6th Standard up were dropped off first. "Look sister! Super school, sister." They love going to school so much. Its such a difference from most American students who hate on going to school and take their education for granted. After the older girls, all of the younger kids (up to 5th Standard), and then the older boys were dropped off. It was sad to say bye to all of our kids! We got some beautiful goodbye pictures and letters though! They waved goodbye to us as we left their schools on the bus, along side all of their classmates and curious onlookers. Two American girls on a bus filled with Indian school children (not to mention the only people our age not wearing identical blue school uniforms) must have been quite the sight. We get stared at pretty much every time we venture into town. Hahaa. Getting used to it.

After lunch, we drove to Pattyveeranpatty to Chandra's house. We spent the evening visiting her family. We met her nephew's family again, and will see them this weekend at the coffee estate. We also walked a bit further down the road, towards the mountains as the sun started to set, to Vijayasarathy's brother's house. Its so sweet how so many of both of their relatives live on their same road! We met Vijayasarathy's brother, his wife, his son and his daughter-in-law. Rouhini, their son's wife, is a teacher at Chandra's school who we'd spent time with on the school field trip to Thekkary. We enjoyed some spiced crackers and a custard apple, and had nice conversation. We went through our story of our gap year and how we'd ended up in India, what our homes in America were like, the differences between fruit in India and America. They found it funny how in America, it's all about the appearance of food instead of the taste. Though Indian bananas are smaller, browner, often more bruised and don't last as long as the large, artificially yellow bananas common in America, they taste much better. As agriculturalists, they liked to hear what kind of fruit we ate in America, and where it came from. They were interested in what it would take to get more tourists to this region, and want our feedback on that. We impressed them with our limited Tamil knowledge that we've been picking up from the kids as well. Nose, eye, ears, bhindi, hair, sister, mother, thank you, welcome, come, let's go...
We're getting there.
Tomorrow we're teaching lessons at the elementary school, but I miss all our children at Bethania. The youngest boy is 7, love him, and then there are a few 8 year old girls who are very cute and some 9 and 10 year old boys. Most of the boys are 11 to 13 though. So much fun. And then a lot of girls between 11 and all the way up to 18. There are two 18 year old boys as well. 33 kids in total. We can't wait to see them again! We did appreciate our first hot water bucket shower in a while here though!

October 6th and 7th

We had a very calm Tuesday morning after morning prayer and breakfast with the kids before school. We did a lot of wash outside in our buckets and hung it up on a line outside. One good thing about the heat is that everything dries quickly!
At night, we did an English lesson with the six boys in 7th and 8th grade. We read a Curious George book together, each boy reading one page. Then, we asked some questions about the story. We gave them pieces of paper, each with one word written on it. They had to correctly arrange to words to formulate a grammatically correct sentence that answered the question. It was a fun, active learning exercise that most kids found challenging but seemed to enjoy. They generally could get the right answer with little or no help and all enjoyed the story about the bad monkey who saved the day.
We also spent time talking and bonding with the older girls. We braided hair together (Nandhini loves to tell us about our hair, "I very, very LIKE sister!") and talked about school, their friends, Bethania... I also helped the four 10th grade girls with their English homework. They seem to learn English in a really ineffective way at school. The teacher will have them memorize entire essays, word for word, and have them rewrite it as a test. Most kids don't even understand the content of the essay, and can't formulate a grammatically correct sentence on their own, but they have whole essays memorized! It's frustrating trying to help with homework, when this is their homework.


We woke up this morning and drank our morning tea, read The Hindu and talked with the children. We played our countless thumb wars before sitting down to a breakfast of Idly and some spicy tomato sauce. After waving goodbye to all our friends we changed into our field work clothes and headed out into the fields with GP. He climbed trees and hacked off branches with a machete while we dragged the huge branches back to Bethania to use the leaves to feed the cows and the wood for firewood in the kitchen. It was good work in the heat and a lot of walking, carrying and of course, singing. :) You're welcome Kelsey and Bethania staff. Sorry to the geese. (They don't seem into it.) By the end we had accumulated a massive pile of tree by the cow shed and were quite proud, and dirty. There were tons of spiders crawling all over, but they seemed friendly so we just brushed em off. No screaming. After washing our hands we enjoyed a delicious glass of 'lime juice' which is kind of like very sweet lemonade made from a small greenish yellow fruit they call lime, but it's different than the lime we're used to. Very delicious and had been refrigerated which was awesome! After taking a much needed shower and a short collapse, I mean nap, we enjoyed lunch followed by a real nice long nap till the kids got home. Those naps are so important, because once the kids get home it's non -stop. We decided to do art tonight, after tea. We passed out cookies from our large stock from Vijayasarathy to each kid during tea time, as there was no other snack provided today like usual. After, we brought out tons of paper, colored pencils and crayons and sat down in the sea of artists. The kids drew after they had finished doing their wash and bathing, and more after Christmas song practice/ prayer.

October 4th and 5th

We woke up on Sunday morning and ran to Chapel, our feet on the bare dirt, passing the guava trees and the empty dorms. We sat down behind the girls, their hands in the sky as the chaplain spoke. The boys and girls clapped, calling out as his Tamil words filled the chapel's stone dome. The breeze blew through, no walls, with nature all around. He sang in Tamil, his voice strong through all the little voices of the children in their nice sunday clothes, which still have too many safety pins and missing buttons. We read passages about contentment and not wanting for wealth, and appreciating simpleness. The pastor then rode away on his motorbike as we walked back to Bethania with the children for breakfast. There we were met with our friend from Kodai, Reshma and enjoyed some hot tea and coconut chutney with idly..
After breakfast I decided it was time to go to work in the library. The Kodai school had dumped a lot of books in there, making locating books nearly impossible. So with the help of the children, while Kelsey read with some of the kids struggling most with reading, I went to work. The dust and dirt, swirling around as we organized the books, and removed the non-book items. While Satiya was removing the books from the bottom shelf I screamed as bugs came swarming out, and the kids laughed. No one is afraid of bugs here. I fell off the seesaw when a big brown spider started heading my way, which everyone found very comical, as Pandi picked up the spider and laughed as it spun webs from his fingers. We pulled out books at the kids reading level and put map books and books about countries in one pile. As Satiya handed me books from the very bottom corner something began moving. She pulled out a book and this time I wasn't the only one screaming. (Ok, I was the only one running out of the library.) It was a nest of huge brown frogs. 'Frog sister! Frog sister!' Everyone was laughing as I stood outside the library. Chella Pandi came in and laying on his stomach, carefully grabbing the frogs with newspaper and tossing them in the garden outside. He caught three, as they hopped into the corners of the library. I guess no one had looked at those books in a while. Little Anand (Karthik) hopped around pretending to be a frog screaming 'Paige Sister! Paige Sister!' for a while, which was funny and sweet. He was a spider for a while after I fell off the seesaw too. That kid is hilarious, and Satiya held my hand so I wouldn't be scared if anymore wildlife appeared during our library cleaning. It generally didn't, if you don't count the kids going wild over who got to read the Dora the Explorer book. Everyone loves Dora here, almost as much as Barbie Girl (everyone's favorite song.) It was sad to see how few books the kids have in Tamil. That's definitely something they need more of. There are maybe 10 small books in Tamil and the rest are pamphlets or Christian comic books sent by missionaries, so there are no books for the older kids, whose English is perhaps not that advanced but should be reading advanced literature in Tamil. All the kids read these comic books about Jesus over and over, because there is nothing else to read in Tamil.
Meanwhile, Kelsey read with some kids. I especially wanted to work on reading in English with MK, who is 10 years old in 5th grade but still can hardly read in English. He knows some words well, but doesn't know what to do words he doesn't recognize besides for guess. I wrote out the whole alphabet, and we went through the sounds that each letter makes several times. We also went through letter combinations like "sh", "ch", and "th". This is hard, as they aren't used to making a lot of these sounds and find a lot difficult. After working on sounds, we built basic words like "cat", "dog", "run", and then slowly applied it to read books. It took a lot of time and hard concentration from both of us. It made me so happy when instead of guessing words he actually sounded it out and got it right occasionally. It's so hard to tell if what I was explaining really got through to him and will help him, but I feel like some progress was definitely made.
After spending all morning reading and cleaning the library, with everyone sneezing and laughing about the frogs, we headed to lunch. After our post-lunch nap and hanging with Reshma for a bit, we went for a beautiful mountain hike with the girls and watched the sky change color over Kanivadi, Dindigal and little Bethania. We talked with the girls about their families and the much awaited Deepavali. Muthumari and Veni told us about their parents and siblings, and where they're from. They were eager to share stories, but had a very sad undertone; its apparent how much they love and miss home and the family they have. Parents and relatives are coming to visit soon to bring gifts for the holiday. After returning to Bethania we played cricket with the boys while the girls sang and danced, practicing for Christmas. (Early right??)
It was a very full day, but beautiful and full. Our last day with all the kids here, before they headed back to school. Last day of holiday! (Don't worry there are many more holidays a coming.) We ended it off with some fun bowling with the girls. We set up 5 empty water bottles down the hall and used a small ball that they rolled to knock it down. Despite a look that may have been interpreted as displeased from the manager's wife, we had tons of fun and laughed the whole time with the girls.


We woke up this morning to spend some time with the kids while they did their morning chores. Girls brought water to the kitchen, boys fed the animals, everyone got themselves ready in their school uniforms and older girls braided the younger girls' hair. After breakfast, at 8.30 all the kids piled into the school bus and left. It was so strange, the very first time that we've been at Bethania without a single child here! It seemed very quiet, even with the multiple animals and staff still there. We spent some time looking at the 2 day old newborn calf. It was very cute, just learning how to walk and make sounds. It amused itself by scaring away dogs that came too close. It was funniest when the field worker, GP, wanted the cow to move so just picked it up, with its four legs kicking, to carry it to its stall.
We did some of our own chores this morning, like burning our garbage. This proved to be way more difficult than we imagined, and went through quite a few matches before we got a flame substantial enough to burn.
We spent several hours sitting outside on the ground with the kitchen ladies, peeling the skin off of hundreds of small onions. As a token of our hard work, our hands still reek of onions! Our friend from the Kodai School, Reshma, left today. We will miss the company and someone else who actually understands everything we say when we speak in English! She was very sweet and the kids enjoyed her company as well.
The kids came home again around 4.30. We had tea with them, then they had chores like washing their school uniforms and had homework to do. It was a much less excited mood than normal though, partially because the kids were tired from their first day back at school. They had all gotten their exam scores back today too, which had been stressful for some.
After their song and bible reading practice and prayer, we did English lessons with the 8th and 9th grade girls. They had told us that they wanted to study grammar. So this afternoon we had hand written all 8 of them a test on contractions. After studying it with them, we had them connect each contraction to its full two words and also fill in some themselves. Most girls found this quite easy, and all did well. We copied some exercises for a English workbook, and came up with some speaking exercises ourselves. After, we had time to hang out with the girls, and they braided our hair and had us draw for them and write our addresses out for them. Muthumari also gave us each 2 of her own bangles- beautiful sky blue and gold ones. It was so sweet. We can't wait for Deepavali festival on October 17th and to give out some of our gifts! It already seems as if time is going by way too fast here!

"Sister!!!"

Today was jam packed with loud kids and fun adventures, like usual.
After a lovely breakfast with our new friend from the Kodai school, who is a senior there, we opened up the library for some reading time.
It's quite fun in an overwhelming, always moving and loud kind of way. I sat inside the library, finding good books for kids at their different levels, reading with them and making sure everyone understood putting away books properly. (We're still working on that one.) The kids are really sweet though, and want to do the right thing, (especially if you're watching.) We went through removing coloring books and American college advertising packets from the 80's that really don't belong in the library.
It's been really fun working with the kids about geography. They are very excited about learning about the world and love looking at the pictures in books and connecting them to the map. I'm kind of wishing we thought to laminate the map before leaving with all the dirt, little finger prints and aggressive pointing, it's seen better days for sure. Today while cleaning the library with our new friend from Kodai International, we found a bunch of World Book Encyclopedias. It was a bit disappointing to discover they were from 1978, but I still think we'll have some lessons on how to use them, even if they are exceptionally outdated. The kids really do enjoy learning about the world. Today after locating the World Books, our first order of business was continuing our dialogue about Pakistan and Kashmir and how not everyone in Pakistan is a terrorist. I looked up Pakistan in the P book with some of the boys, while they fed the geese and dogs. We sat on the dirt and looked at pictures of Pakistani men working in the fields, a beautiful smiling woman and little boys around their same age studying in school. There were photographs of beautiful mountains and old men. One of the boys asked me 'Where are the soldiers? Where is the fighting?' It's hard really to know what to say. What's the right thing to say?
We learned about the different continents today with the 3rd through 6th grade girls. There was a lot of confusion and for a bit of time, Africa and Australia were getting confused and Europe was only referred to as 'London!' Or sometimes 'native place of Sister Ella!' (another volunteer that has been here from Europe. Shout out to Ellinor!) We'll have to go over it more tomorrow but it's definitely something important to know. Talking about countries and continents was a lot easier with the older boys, but the little girls were all very excited to learn. We're having to watch out for some of the girls bullying other little girls though. Today Satiya told us, 'Priya is angry, sad.' Because apparently Nandini has scribbled all over her paper where we were writing the names of continents. It's good that they are learning the different emotions in English that we hung up on the wall, but some people still need to learn about manners and being nice. It's hard for these kids because there is very little supervision or direction with their personal interactions among each other. They all just want that attention and love so bad. They are all really sweet kids with their own special personalities, and like all little kids, they could use some direction and love.
This evening we went to Saturday market with the two oldest boys, (Muniapan and Cheniya) older Karthi and baby Akash and of course the bus driver. We went to the center of Kannivadi, which has a Hindu temple, a church and a collection of grass huts. In the center there was the Saturday vegetable market full of beautiful, colorful vegetables laid out on the ground and shoppers walking around with the salespeople sitting on the ground weighing and yelling and of course, everyone staring at Kelsey and I. Muniapan laughed, 'everyone looking you!' Yes. At least it appeared no one had remembered their camera to document our ridiculousness. All the salespeople seemed to love baby Akash, who is the 5 year old son of the manager of Bethania. The tomato woman picked him up, kissed him repeatedly and then gave him a tomato and ten rupees. He is pretty cute. Karthi who is about 11, Akash, Kelsey and I ventured out on our own for a bit while the others bargained over huge bags of onions, tomatoes, potatoes and other unknown vegetables. We were swept up in the crowd, almost loosing sight of our little guides a couple times, with the smells and noise, food and music and people surrounding us. But luckily Karthi's little voice called out, 'sister!' And we crossed the busy street with him to buy chocolate. Akash of course, already had chocolate, so we bought some for Karthi and our own secret stash and headed back. It was quite an enjoyable trip to the sweet town center and we hopped back on the bus with our giant bags of potatoes and onions and headed home, I mean Bethania.

Holiday for the Anniversary of Ghandi's 60th Birthday

Everyone was celebrating all day, October 2nd, here for the 60th anniversary of Gandhi's (or Grandfather as Indian children like to call him) birthday. We had a very relaxing day watching two Tamil movies on TV- a major change of pace from our normal busy days! The kids all loved it, all sitting on the ground in front of one of the houses with a TV set-up outside. We passed out some Starburst candies too which were enjoyed. One of the Tamil actors was Arjun- a famous movie "hero" as the kids call it, who everyone loves. The plot was hard to follow, as we could only understand some occasional English phrases stuck in Tamil dialogue. For example, one character exclaimed in English, "I admire your style of dress!" and "Law and order!" was repeated a few times. Our favorite part of course were the dancing scenes that happen every time after something romantic happens. The kids loved it and were laughing the whole time.
Later we thought it would be fun to blow up a soccer beach ball and play a sort of version of handball with it. This was greatly successful for all of about 20 minutes, when ball met the pile of sticks full of thorns and was no more. Trying to play with a deflated ball wasn't quite the same, though we tried of course.
Later this evening, we did English lessons with the boys. We took a map of the world, which the kids love, and had them search for countries starting with a particular letter. Kelsey then worked on spelling and pronouncing each name with the younger boys, while Paige told the older boys facts about each country. We discussed every country they found. But also Sri Lanka and the fighting there, along with the fighting in Kashmir with Pakistan. The little kids were quite passionate about Kashmir belonging to India and their dislike for Pakistan. We spent a lot of time trying to foster some positive feelings for our Pakistani neighbors, but this will definitely need to be something we work on. Maybe we can find a book in the Bethania library with pictures of friendly, cute Pakistani children, or if anyone wants to mail us some we can use in our next lessons.

September 30th and October 1st

We've been helping the kids with a lot of chores. With the young boys we carried metal bowls of dirt from the garbage compost to the field. At the field we gave the bowls to GP, one of the men working here, who flung the dirt around the small plots where plants were growing. They would then fertilize the coconut trees and other vegetables that should be growing if the land wasn't so dry. Even though there's been a bit of rain here, much more is needed and we're still in a drought. Its important how self-sustainable Bethania is, recycling waste as it decomposed into the soil and growing much of its own food.
While we helped the boys with this we sang songs. MK told Kelsey about how he wants to be a lorry driver like his dad when he grows up, and what he's going to drive in his truck. After it was emptied, Antony used his bowl as a steering wheel and honked its horn as he drove up and down the field's mounds and dodged the cows and geese while Paige honked loudly beside him, like how she does in Atlanta. It's so nice being outside with the kids, with the nice breeze and hot sun, but we were very dirty and hot afterwards. We joined the girls and carried jugs of rain water on our hips up to our room for bathing. Everyone works together here in a beautiful way. Now if only we could get the children to share the markers as well. Today we also learned a bit about sharing, not hitting our friends when we want something and putting the cap back on the marker when we finish. Yesterday we learned about putting the books back properly on the bookshelf and not throwing them in a pile on top of the other books. Paige does some good demonstrations, acting out the 'good!' (sharing, cap on pen, book on shelf, saying please) along with the bad, and it's very clear which one is right. 'Please!' is already becoming almost as common as 'give me sister!' Great success!
English lessons were very fun and challenging with the younger boys. After reading aloud, we assigned parts and acted out the book again. Then we chose vocab words, had the little boys draw, and then label them. Then everyone was tested on the vocab, verbally. It was nice when the boys could remember the story. Today while we were coloring, some of the girls drew scenes from the book we read last night. It can be quite challenging to know what kids are comprehending, as the older kids can read aloud well, but not explain what they have just read or write or spell the words that they read. It's nice to see when people remember the English stories we read and want to talk about them. This genuine excitement about learning on the part of many of the children is very sweet and encouraging.
The kids taught us how to wash our clothes like they do in buckets- we pump water into our metal pails and hand wash our clothes in there with soap, then rinse a second time in water, which turned a good shade of brown from the dirt layer on everything. The kids were very amused by our blue liquid detergent that we'd brought with us. We decided to skip out on the step where the kids beat their clothes violently against the stone ground, and just wrung ours out and hung them to dry in the sun.
Our two visitors from Kodai left today and another girl came who is here for 4 days as well. We've been busy with the kids non-stop. Playing capture the flag, nundrie ("hopping game, sister!"), Uno, having them read to us.. We did English lessons with the 6 oldest girls in 10th, 11th and 12th grade today. We worked on their listening comprehension skills. It's still difficult to get them to answer in their own words, as they want to answer questions we ask them by just repeating what they had heard.
We had a successful English lesson with a lot of the kids today in the morning. Someone had taught everyone to respond to 'How are you?' With 'Fine, thank you.' Even though most of the younger kids didn't really understand what they were saying. We drew different faces with different emotions written underneath them and played a bunch of acting out games. It was quite fun and it's a pleasant break from the chorus of fine thank yous. Today during a particularly contested capture the flag point, Nandhini informed me, 'I am angry!' And my heart swelled with happiness that she had learned something from our lessons. We taped up all the different emotions along with the giant 'how are you?' sign in the dining hall next to the labeled person, two giant drawings, one by the boys and one by the girls and the map of the world Kelsey brought. It's really fun to look at the wall and see all the stuff we've been working on and hear the kids practicing naming the body parts and talking about their feelings. It's fun teaching and learning from the kids as well.