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.