The last week has been a lot of fun! We've had trainee teachers at the school all this week so we've only had our morning classes while the trainees took our older children. This was fine by me because our older classes are the most challenging ones- basically because they know how to argue back! 'No Madam!, No Madam!' Having a disability doesn't stop these kids being unbelievably cheeky but that's kind of what I love here- none of the children here would ever even consider letting their lack of sight hold them back. But they do tire us out! So I was sitting on my bed on Tuesday night- all ready for bed when I felt something on my leg...
I dont know why blogger has stuck this here but this is the view of fireworks from Bharavi's balcony on Divali (see further down the post)
Meet my little friend! He scared the life out of me! I started screaming- I've never been any good with bugs! Luckily Fidra grabbed a jar off the table and caught the wee beastie before I could freak out completely. I wanted to go and show Padma, my Indian mother, but we decided we'd better let him go but I'm keeping a closer watch for bugs now although there's no getting rid of the mosquitoes sadly!
On Thursday it was Halloween! The children here had never heard of the festival and so I asked a girl from my fourth class, Pravalika to read a few sentences at the Thursday assembly about Halloween, 'Yes acka!' (Acka is older sister in Telegu) She was very excited but when I spoke to her the next day she said that her and Lakshmi also from fourth would be doing the reading, 'Suray...' (Okay...') by the next day three girls were going to do the reading and I was getting slightly confused as to what was going on- this was to be my first demonstration of what I've been teaching the kids in front of all the teachers and the rest of the school! On Thursday, Halloween, I came down to assembly feeling more than a little bit nervous to find Pravalika stood at the front of the school ready to present with none of the three girls she had chosen before but a completely new one- Monica from ninth class! As I suspected Monica didn't know the speech as well as Pravalika, as she had so little time to practice and so they stumbled over their words a little but Lily Madam, the headmistress of the school seemed pleased so it wasn't a complete disaster.
First class (aged 5-8) was spent playing my 'Trick or Treat!'game which I had spent hours the night before preparing. It basically involved each child picking a black card bat at random from the deck of about 20 I made. Each bat had the word Trick! or Treat! on it in large letters and then on the reverse side an instruction to test their English: 'Point to the door' 'Count 1-20 in English' 'What noise does a tiger make?' Etc.
All the children were very excited to play the game and all cried for me to ask them the next question- a useful way to get their focus, I'm definatley using that one again! This week I have been trying to teach the younger ones about different emotions, when you ask them 'How are you?' They all respond without fail, 'I am fine'. After this weeks lessons this has now developed into, 'I am fine, thank you. How are you Madam?' and one little girl called Ashvinea can even tell you what she's doing, 'I am speaking English with Anna Mam!'.
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| Me and Ashvinea! |
The rest of the class have been learning to respond to various phrases with actions to reinforce the meaning of the emotion. Akil will demonstrate:
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| 'I am happy Madam!' |
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| 'I am sad Madam!' |
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| 'I am scared Madam!' |
They can also chant at me: 'Breakfast- Good Morning! Lunch- Good Afternoon! Snacks- Good Evening! Bed & Sleep- Good Night!' I feel pretty proud this week. This is me and my first class celebrating our success!
They're so lovely! In LKG we got out some Halloween masks and had a bit of a fun session playing with them! The masks were terrifying! I thought some of the children might not want to wear them as they can't see what was being put over their faces and I don't have enough Telegu to explain to them but they loved it! Everyone was fighting over the creepiest mask of all- the terrifying pineapple!
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| The strawberry one was properly terrifying as well actually... |
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| RUN Shrivani! |
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| I can never resist joining in! |
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| The owl is so scary... |
At the evening meal we gave sweets to all the children- lots of them misunderstood and thought it was my birthday but by the end of the day I have masses of children running up to me calling 'Happy Halloween Madam!' Sweets are the best way to get children to learn!
On Saturday we packed our bags and got the bus to the Papmy Center to meet our Indian Representatives, Bharavi and Sugati to travel to their apartment for Diwali! The other volunteers in Hyderabad came with us as well- they work at a huge eye hospital in the city teaching nurses English. We watched a Telegu film together in the afternoon and then went out to a local temple in the evening. The streets were all lit up and firecrackers were going off everywhere making the four of us scream quite a lot much to the amusement of large groups of small children. We stopped on the way to talk to Bharavi's neighbors and helped them to paint Rangoli on their front drive: it's meant to protect the house from bad spirits.
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| Rangoli! |
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| The temple! |
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| The temple looked so beautiful covered in fairy lights! |
The next evening the celebrations really started! We climbed up onto the roof of Bharavi's apartment to watch the fireworks that were going off all over the city! It was so beautiful! The noise was amazing and it looked as if the whole sky was on fire. It's so different from Bonfire night at home (Happy Bonfire night by the way!) where a few families set ff fireworks, the whole city was celebrating and setting off fireworks!
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| My Diwali sari! |
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Fireworks!
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