A village is better than a town.

A village is better than a town. A town is better than a city. A city is better than a state. A state is better than a country. You learn a lot more about yourself and about a culture when you're in a smaller environment and as a whole, it's much cooler (literally, colder and figuratively, sweeter).

Well, I am writing about my last week, which was awesome. I know my words can’t do it justice, especially since I’m not particularly enjoying writing about it. I could talk about it for hours, but writing will be so difficult because I have no idea where to start. I’ve decided to break down the week into twelve sections, each with some sort of story or memory behind it. Some are sad, some are exciting, some are just funny. Get ready…

So before we jump in to our baker’s dozen, let me tell you a bit about our village. Named Banavaram, it held a cool breeze in warm comfortable temperatures all day long. There were animals all over the place and little huts and a lot of dirt. People are hard at work, meaning most people are bent over a farm all day long – truly hard work. All men wear the traditional dhoti all day long, while women sport saris most of the time. No jeans for our village. We’d walk the 1.5 km to our kids at 4:30 each night. The tuition center was at a house in Rangavaram, another village, that was even more village-y than Banavaram. We slept on the ground, ate local food, and helped villagers out with whatever their needs. The past week truly was an awesomely immersive experience! Here’s my week in a (rather large) nutshell!

Below is a picture of me playing (trying to play) cricket in a field with some local boys. I was not all that good I don't think, though I did make contact with the ball most attempts. 

 

 

 

1.     Hospitality.

Like nothing we’ve seen before. People were so nice you wouldn’t believe that they cared about anything about us. In the Indian culture, a guest is like God and it seemed to show in Banavaram. Samu, a lady from AID Chennai, who helped start Eureka Superkidz, let us stay in her house for three nights until she had to leave. She fed us and would never let us go without tea or coffee. We were invited over to Vara Akka’s house (she is the Project Manager for the district we were working in) for breakfast and lunch one day and we only found out later that they were inviting us in for a large ceremony! It was great. Vara Akka (and her husband Prem Una) also put us up for a few nights in their house. In true Indian style, they never failed to feed us on time and each day was filled with fun and excitement, as a host is supposed to provide. 

Above is a picture of Jagan's house - his mom and grandma. Jagan is in the white shirt. Narasimman is his best friend and both are project managers for AID. Both are very nice and very funny. You'll hear more about them later, but Jagan's house wasn't huge or anything and he invited us back for tea one afternoon. Just another example of how great people were to us!

When compared to the US, it was amazing how different it was. In the village, we were introduced to everyone, people would travel 20 km just to see us, and we never felt unneeded. Even in Chennai, we often feel useless and with no one to take care of us. The US is similar to Chennai in a sense. It may be difficult to understand unless you’ve seen my past week, but I was shocked by how welcomed in we were!

2.     Caste System.

Two stories – one about Eureka Superkidz schools and one about marriage

On our third night, Samu had us read an email from AID headquarters about a village we were visiting the next day. They ended up cancelling the village visit, so we never actually got to see it. The email was very enlightening though. It addressed the problems AID was encountering while trying to set up a Eureka Superkidz (ESK) school in Pannaja, a nearby village. Primary amongst them was the fact that some of the village citizens refused to be taught by the Eureka Teacher (ET) simply because she was a lower caste than their family. Furthermore, the school was supposed to be placed in a region of the village where all the lowest caste people live and the other villagers of different castes refused to visit this region. So the lowest caste is MBC and second lowest is BC. Essentially, BC’s don’t want to be taught by MBC’s and don’t want to enter their region of town. We don’t know how the problem was solved, but the problem is clearly so deeply ingrained in society that people aren’t willing to overlook it to give their kids a better future.

Oh and to make matters worse, BC stands for Backwards Class and MBC stands for Most Backwards Class…

The second story is about marriage in India. One day at lunch the topic came up. I’m sure most of you have heard of arranged marriages vs. love marriages. What we do in the US is a love marriage and both families, arrange, as you might guess, an arranged marriage. Apparently, 40 guys had seen Vara Akka before her family accepted Prem Una as her husband. Now Prem Una is a really nice, ambitious guy (really nice, really ambitious), but I couldn’t understand what about him was that special, so I asked her. Narashimman (another PM) and Jagan (a new PM) were also eating with us and said that caste plays a large role in who you marry. You might not even approach someone for marriage if you are in a lower caste. Also you choose someone based on family (your family of almost 75+ people meets his side and vice versa prior to the marriage being approved), based on property, based on dowry, and other rather unsubstantial things that have nothing to do with the bride and groom at all. If someone is a landlord, his marriage stock rises. If the wife’s family is large enough to buy the husband’s a car, that’s good news. If you’re the Prime Minister’s son, that’s going to help, but if you have diabetes and you’re the PM’s son, that’s bad news bears. Although I probably already knew most of this, hearing it spoken made it seem so grotesque, so unbelievably ludicrous.

3.     Gender Divide.

You know how there is the Feminist’s movement and LGBT rights in America? Well, those are great, but if they’re needed anywhere, it’s in India. Females and males literally don’t interact unless they are man and wife. No guys have girl friends and no girls have guy friends, at least, in the more conservative villages. As a male teacher, I had a difficult time getting to know any of the girl students. When we mentioned the word gay, not only did they not understand the word, but when they did understand, they were appalled by the concept.

One night, Satya, Lavanya, and Kalai (three teachers at the ESK tuition center) were explaining the words “vada” and “vadi” to me. Apparently, “vada” in Tamil means a good girl friend and “vadi” means a good guy friend. They explained it by saying that Rad was a “vada” to them and I tried to show my understanding of the word by saying they were all “vada” to me – they were good girl friends to me. They started laughing and explained that only girls can have “vada” and only guys can have “vadi,” but I protested. I talked about all my good girl friends in America and then, Vara Akka hushed me, saying that I have to be quiet. People in the streets of the village would fight me on this issue. I was definitely shocked. 

 

Above: Rad with Jhoti Akka and Poo. Jo Akka, as we called her, was a few years older, but Poo was exactly our age. Rad got extremely close with them, but it was another example of the gender divide (though on a much smaller scale - and more so with Poo than with Jo Akka)... there was no way for me to be as close to them as Rad was. Vice versa is also true. There is no way for Rad to be as close to Jagan and Narasimman as I am. Really unfortunate part of Indian society. 

Also, we went to a different ESK school one day and talked to the parents about how their kids were doing and such. It was a great talk, but something we noticed immediately was that the fathers and mothers sat separately, with the fathers front and center and the mothers scattered around the periphery. Second, it was clear that only the fathers were going to be talking. We encouraged the mothers to talk too, but few did. Even the ESK employees started talking directly to the dads. The gender divide was so apparent and shocking.

4.     Talking with parents

We had an awesome talk with parents of ESK children. It was all translated to us from Tamil, but it’s apparent that the parents have big hopes for their kids (dreams that likely, unfortunately, don’t seem like they will be fulfilled). It’s very nice to hear them dream big though. Every parent agreed that they want their kids to not be farmers; to have a better life than they have led.

Another interesting point was the money they had to pay for the school. It’s 50 rupees up front and 125 R (approx.) over three months. All farmers earn approx. 500 rupees per day, which makes this extremely difficult. Translated in dollars, the school costs $1 up front and $2.50 over three months. Farmers earn $10 per day. Most parents said it is too expensive for them given everything else they have to pay, but also agreed that they are happy the price is high because then it ensures that the school doesn’t become overpopulated. 

The school where we talked to the parents. You'll also notice the gender divide here, with fathers on the left side bench and mothers only on the close bench.

5.     Tuition with kids

The kids were great. Very different from our first visit in a real school, this tuition was run out of someone’s rooftop terrace from 5 to 730 every night except Sunday. By 630, it would get dark, and everyone would be using one bulb that got dimmer as the night wore on.

Intellectually, these kids were slightly more “average” than our Kalpakkam kids (last village). Some of the kids seemed great while others continuously struggled. It was also difficult to know whether the kids were good generally or simply better than others because they were older and in a higher grade level.

One kid, Balaji, gets made fun (even by the teachers) of because he’s not as intelligent as other kids. He’s in 4^th Standard but gets paired with kids in 1^st and 2^nd standard. I’m fairly sure Balaji is dyslexic but the villagers have no clue what that means. He wrote 10 as 01 and has trouble saying most words other than his name (and even that he struggles with).

6.     7 month Pregnant Ceremony

Another example of the hospitality – on Wednesday or Thursday, we were invited over to Vara Akka’s house for breakfast and lunch. Breakfast was great and normal, but then all these family members started to show up and we had no clue what was going on. Someone told us it’s the famous 5-rice ceremony… as if we know what this is, but at least it gave us a clue as to what lunch was going to be. Apparently, because Vara Akka is 7 months pregnant, they have a ceremony to celebrate her and the baby. (As a side note, in India, the doctor doesn’t tell the parents the baby’s gender because oftentimes, female babies are aborted or killed shortly after birth). The ceremony was amazing! 

 

Side: 5 rice ceremony!

We also noticed that no one smiles in pictures so we asked why not. Apparently, they have so much stress in marriage pics that they don’t smile. But the 7 month prego ceremony didn’t seem all that stressful, so I’m still not sure why they don’t smile. Needless to say, we started encouraging everyone to smile as much as possible. 

 

Rad sprinkling water on Vara Akka and Prem Una.

7.     Two temples

We went to two temples with Jagan, Narasimman (two PMs who are only 4 years older than us), HareKrishna (Narasimman’s brother), and Sandeep. The two temples were a bit of climb – 1500 steps for one and 500 for the other. It was a great trip with many funny stories and great tales.

Sandeep was a little slower than the rest of us, so Narasimman called him “Sandeep Slowmotion,” which was hilarious because they (two Indian guys) were making fun of him and he probably deserved it in this case.

Also when we were climbing, there was a stage of the climb which you had to be escorted up because of all the monkeys there. Apparently if you weren’t escorted up, they’d try to steal something from you – it was hilarious. One actually tried to steal Rad’s jasmine in her hair, which terrified her, but Jagan, Narasimman and I encouraged it. The priest had also given me a large garland of tulsi leaves, which tasted great. But a monkey actually did successfully steal that.

8.     My motorcycle rides

First ride – with Arun, a 20 year old kid with long hair, who works with AID. Nice kid. He was afraid to say hi to Rad cause she was a girl and he probably thought she was pretty and such. It was my first long ride, so that in itself made it thrilling.

Second ride – later the same day with Jagan. He taught me how to ride his bike! Literally amazing! He showed me the clutch (cause everything is stick) and the brakes. I was doing great, up-clutching perfectly, shifting smoothly, and driving fantastically until… a goat decides to cross the street. I first looked for the horn, but couldn’t find it and slammed on the brakes. But, I had totally forgotten (or rather didn’t know) to down-clutch so I quickly lost control of the bike. We almost ended up in a ditch and probably would have if Jagan hadn’t saved us.

Third ride – two days later with Prem Una, Vara Akka’s husband. Nice guy. The most interesting part with Prem Una was the conversation on the bike and the events when we got to the village town of Kaveripakkam. Prem Una was sent to get flowers for the 7 month prego ceremony…. The flower shop took literally 45 minutes on bike to reach. Prem Una has a dream of coming to America to start an NGO about mental illnesses in children and helping them recoup from it. He asked multiple times for my help and I said I would do what I can. While we were at Kaveripakkam, we had to wait literally 2 hours for the flowers to be made. While waiting, we went to a temple, saw the school where Prem Una teaches, had a coke and went to someone’s house. We left at 9 and returned at 1 pm… for some flowers.

9.     Farms and fields and fruits.

The last day we were in Banavaram we visited a farm/field. It was great. We tried Mango straight from a tree. A friend we met climbed a tree and got this cool fruit down too. The fruit is called pananga and you cut a coconut-like object in half and then stick your thumb into three pools of translucent white stuff that tastes awesome. Odd but great. 

Pananga!

 

10. Walking.

Another thing, not just about Banavaram, but about India as a whole is that there is a lot more walking. People walk anywhere and everywhere. Though things in the US are more spaced out, we’ve walked at least a few kilometers per day since we’ve been here – quite a bit! One night in Banavaram, we walked across a highway overpass with our luggage – kind of scary!

11. Community.

Everyone in the village knew everyone else. It was an amazing sense of community that you rarely see anywhere, but that I sense is common in villages in India. You see some of it in bigger cities like Chennai, but the villages were amazing. Samu’s neighbors give her jasmine and other flowers every morning and they will talk outside their house for an hour sometimes, just to catch up. Vara Akka’s family all came over (on a weekday) just because she was 7 months pregnant. And they all helped cook and it felt like home. Nice community aspect. Some of it you see in the states, some of it you don’t, but it’s something that would be nice everywhere. 

 

Notice no smiles, but all such a community together. This was taken at Vara Akka's house. 

One of the funnier moments of the trip was when we came to Vara Akka’s and Prem Una’s house from Samu’s house, we had to cross the aforementioned highway overpass. When we reached the other side, a man started calling at us in Tamil. While Sandeep (our third member from Phoenix) should’ve understood him, there are so many beggars and such that we immediately ignored him. But he kept following us and now we were kind of freaking out. Ironically enough, it was Prem Una’s father who Prem Una told to wait for us at the other side of the overpass. Once we found out, it was really funny.

12. Sandeep.

So I think I’ve mentioned him a few times now, but Sandeep is a 16-year old kid from Phoenix, AZ, who loves nothing more than Tamil Nadu. I’m all about pride in one’s origins, but he takes that to a new level. He has good intentions for sure, and seems to care about helping the kids, but it’s sometimes difficult to be around him because he’ll just go on and on about Tamil Nadu. Also some of the stuff he says is just so blatantly wrong that it becomes difficult to believe anything he says. 

This is an older picture of Sandeep, Athidi, and Rad from Mahaballipuram a few weeks ago. He really is a nice guy.

The most annoying thing though is that he can understand and speak Tamil (though obviously it's not his fault and it helps sometimes). He came three days after Rad and I arrived, so we had gotten used to both groups working hard to understand each other. It was a great bonding experience between us, but once Sandeep arrived they’d all just speak to him and he’d translate whenever he felt like it (and also sometimes his own way). We often felt like we were losing our connection with the community because of him.

13. MR kids and health lady.

One day, we met a doctor (not sure if she’s a doctor or just a lady who knows about health) who determines whether kids are simply hearing impaired or mentally retarded (MR kids). What was interesting is how she does it. We saw her sit with the kids for maybe 5 minutes each and test them by interacting with them. Some were blatantly hearing impaired, while others were obviously MR kids, but the toss-ups seemed randomly distributed unfortunately.

Also, hearing impaired kids go into normal school with some help and prodding from parents and the doctor. What’s very sad with MR kids is that society doesn’t even attempt to teach them or educate them, but just pushes them straight into vocational training so that they can be somehow useful to society. It’s quite hard to hear (and quite different from America where we still try to teach them English and such), but the doctor lady said it’s probably better than any alternatives for the MR kids.

Sorry that was soooooo long. Hope you enjoyed. I just went to Bangalore on a relatively uneventful trip. We had all fallen sick so we ended up just staying in most of the time. Heading to a new village within a few hours. Talk to you soon!

Just a cool picture I took one night. This is where the kids studied every night.

Tirupati Pics

iPhoto is being dumb, so I had to post my pictures from Tirupati late.

Here they are!

This is from the first day we arrived to Tirupati. Unfortunately, my picture-taking skills were limited, because this pic is taken from the back of Madhu Uncle's motorcycle! (I missed Madhu Uncle though...)

Below, you see Madhu Uncle with his son, Pushkar, a really cute kid who took a little while to warm up to us, but once he did was loads of fun! Also, you see Madhu Uncle's wife, Bhagya Aunty. The picture is taken at Madhu Uncle's house.

Here is Pushkar with a toy he made out of newspaper. It's essentially 10 or 15 cone-shaped papers that are hard enough to throw. Sort of reflects the fact that kids in India enjoy the simpler things in life. In America, kids would get bored of a toy like that.

Here is a picture at Sai Aunty's house (Madhu Uncle's older sister). The kids on the left are Pushkar being held by Anudeep (Sai Aunty's son). The grandma is my grandfather's younger sister, who I had never met before (I don't think...). It was a great first night!

This is the start of the ~3600 steps from Tirupati (downstairs) to Tirumala (upstairs), where the God actually is. You can see it says "Way to Footpath" in English.









The way up! It was mostly stairs, but parts of the walk were on the road. We did the walk without shoes because it is supposed to be more holy that way. Also you might be able to tell that there were a ton of people climbing on the weekend!

The climb up is essentially through a thick forest, so TTD (Tirupati-Tirumala Devastanams; the group that organizes everything in the two cities for the temple) decided to make the climb a national forest and you can walk up to a bunch of animals. We saw people feeding small deer, but this was the coolest animal we saw. We were actually wondering - do reindeer exist? If not, I think this thing is what they were modeled after!

I guess the views were okay too...

So, when I got to the top, I got all my hair shaved off. It's a very religious thing to do (and it would cool me down in India's thick heat!) This priest came to our room and did it. This is the before picture.

This is the during the event picture.

And... I'm bald. As I write, though, it's been about a week and my hair is already growing back. I couldn't take my camera with me to the actual temple, so there aren't any pics of that. I guess you'll just have to go and see for yourself!

The day we came back from Tirupati happened to be Srinivasan uncle's birthday, so, naturally, we had... MEAT! it was great, and we all sat in a circle and ate together, which was cool.

A cool picture of my name on a mat. In India, at restaurants, and even when you're a guest in a home, you get served on a banana leaf. I engraved my name in this one.

Till next time (should be soon), see ya

Tirupati

The past few days have been great! I'm actually up on the Terrace at 10 pm writing this blog. The wind has picked up a bit and I'm actually sitting in a light drizzle, but it's not nearly as hot as it has been in the past few weeks. I also woke up this morning, just knowing it was going to be a great day and it has! But my story today begins a few days ago and will culminate in today.

On Friday morning, Rad and I left to go to Tirupati, which is a very sacred place about 3 hours away from Chennai. Tirupati is home to a temple dedicated to Sri Venkateshwara Swamy, a Hindu God. Well, actually, Tirupati is 3000 feet below the temple. The actual deity is in Tirumala, which is located 7 hills above Tirupati in a set of mountains. Lord Venkateshwara is a form of the Hindu God, Vishnu. One thing that people often don't know about Hinduism is that it is actually monotheistic, but has many reincarnations of the one God. I actually discovered that Tirupati is the most visited cultural pilgrimage sites in the world. On a weekend, like the one we visited, there are over 100,000 people there! Amazing!

The bus we took to Tirupati was relatively empty in the middle of the day. Other than losing my contacts on the trip, it was a smooth ride. My uncle, Madhu Uncle, met us at the bus stop. He is my grandfather's sister's son and was extremely hospitable the entire trip!

When we arrived, we met his family. His son, Pushkar, was awesome and very funny. He was only 5 years old, but he was already very smart and quite nice! We also met my grandfather's sister - Bharti Amama (means grandmother in Telugu) and I had never met her before. It was unfortunate that I couldn't understand her (so essentially I just smiled politely), but I could tell she was thrilled to see me. She was talking very fast and showing me a lot of old pictures. She was extremely nice and reminded me a lot of my grandfather (who we call Thatha).

The next morning, we climbed to Tirumala. Tirumala, remember, is at the top of the 7 hills and climbing to the top (as opposed to taking the bus) is supposed to be very spiritual (and difficult). It is over 3500 steps to the top and it takes some people more than six hours to complete, if they finish. It was amazing and felt really great to climb. I expected the rumors about its difficulty to be false, made up by old Indian folks who haven't really done any exercise... I was wrong. The first 1000 steps, in particular, are extremely challenging. After two breaks, I was still sweating up a storm!

On the way up, there are spots where animals will come up to you (you're essentially walking through a forest) and where you can stop to get food or water. We didn't try to go too fast and enjoyed all the people and camaraderie. We ended up getting up in 3 hours exactly, surprisingly fast, and then waiting for my uncle to come meet us at the top. I don't think he was expecting us to finish so fast!

Another thing that is very spiritual in Tirupati is giving up your hair and shaving your head. I decided I would do it because my dad did it when he was younger and because I figured it would be very spiritual thing to do, something I really liked about it. We got in this line to get your hair cut, but the line was way too long (apparently the wait was over five hours!).

Luckily, Madhu Uncle knew how to get a priest to come to you and I was able to get my hair cut that way. It was very nice, but rather scary. The priest does a little prayer and then puts a single blade into a cutter. Terrifying. Then he sprinkles some water on your head and goes at it. Surprisingly, it felt very relaxing.

So, yes, for now, I am bald and it feels great. Honestly, there are only two big changes. One is all the stares. I forget that I'm bald so when people stare, I keep wondering why. The second change is more odd. Normally, I just throw on my shirt, but now, the shirt rubs against my prickly short hair and hurts and won't go on. So, I have to gather the shirt, slip it carefully over my head, then let the rest go. It's not going to kill me, it's just odd.

After shaving my head, we napped for a bit, then got dinner and saw the temple at night, which was very pretty. We also saw the free Darshan (prayer) line... apparently, it's a more than 24 hour wait on the weekends. People essentially wait in small steal cages for that long. "Darshan" means going in front of the God and seeing the idol itself. People wait 24 hours or more for that.

The next morning, my uncle arranged for a VIP Darshan. We only had to wait two hours and then we saw the God, which was very powerful and very pleasant and relaxing all at the same time. No pictures were allowed unfortunately. They frisk you like six or seven times before you get to see the God. It was unbelievable how tight security was.

We came back to Chennai by 2pm in the afternoon and just relaxed for the rest of the day.

Today, as I was saying, was a great day. We got into work at 10:30 and worked until around 1, when people started eating lunch. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, most people eat in a circle in the office space, and today was Srinivasan Uncle's birthday! He brought in chicken pieces and asked us all to join. We had a great feast of a lunch and it was awesome to feel like one of the locals. Afterwards, there was the power cut, so we talked to Selva about going to another village. He was so efficient! He set it up so that we're actually leaving tmrw!! Unbelievably fast!

He also took a few of us out to ice cream and then I came back and played a few games of chess with a young nice guy named Laxmi. He kept calling us "Sir" or "Madam," which made us uncomfortable. It was interesting that even when we told him to stop, he had a difficult time stopping, because he was so used to it. The first two games were over in literally no more than 5 minutes. He was killing me and it was embarrassing. The last game was the only good one and it lasted a good 45 minutes. I ended up winning!

Great few days!

The Prestige

Part two of the two part saga. The Prestige. What made last week such a great week? One word - kids.

To remind my millions of viewers, my project has two goals - to teach English to kids in villages and to educate these same kids on health issues in India. It appears, however, that more and more, our project is veering towards acknowledging the former and ignoring the latter.


So, we left early in the morning to Kalpakkam and arrived at around 11:30. Once we arrived, a teacher at the school help us get settled into our hotel. We grabbed a bite to eat and eagerly went over to the Eureka School. Look at me - I don't even care about lunch...

The school was literally amazing. We were teaching 3rd, 4th, and 5th Standards (read: 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades).

The first day, we just sat in a circle and went around each classroom and said, "My name is ______. What is your name?"  We also had the teacher control most of this class just so we could objectively gauge what the students' levels were.


We made a few quick observations.

First of all, 3rd standard was a little slower than 4th and 5th standards, but nothing we didn't think we could deal with. We had created week-long curriculum's to match what we though would be their level. We found out 3rd standard created problems for us all week.

Also, we realized that there was huge variations within each grade between the smartest and least proficient students. Oftentimes, some students would understand things in just one explanation, whereas others would take the entire class.

Some pictures from Day 1:

The School from afar. 

 Close up.





3rd Standard - That's Ashwinth on the left, Vignesh in the middle, and I think, Mouli on the right.

4th Standard girls (3 of 4 of the girls). From left to right, it's Priya (she was pretty bossy), Aarthi, and Saranya (probably my favorite girl in all the Standards).

5th Standard doing a Science experiment. Ravi on the left, teacher, and Nishanth.

Karthik - one of the most helpful kids at our school. He also has an extremely magnetic smile which just made everyone happy! One of my favorite 4th Standard kids.

Nishanth, again. Also, Nishanth is Ashwinth's (from Standard 3) older brother. Once we found out, we literally couldn't tell the difference between either of them.









Day 2:

Today, we decided to move forward with animals for all the standards.


Taught who, what, when, where, and why to 5th Standard.

Again, amazing. We found that 3rd standard struggled, and was mostly memorizing, instead of actually learning.

Day 3, 4: All great. Taught new stuff, like directions (left versus right) and colors, and reinforced old stuff (like animals).

Day 5: Tried to play Jeopardy, but they didn't understand it. So we switched to a team game (two teams). Then they got bored, so we switched to a fun game of duck, duck, goose. it was really funny cause they called it "dock, dock, poosh." haha, again, a great day though - prolly the best day.


Pictures!

Vinod was one of the best 5th Standard kids and one of the best behaved kids. He wanted to be an IPS police officer, which is a really high, well respected position for people in India. He was extremely intelligent and really competitive.

 Above is Jeeva, the smartest person in Standard 5, along with Vinod. She was also similarly competitive and very nice. She would get visibly upset when her team was down. She also hated when she lost a board race to Vinod on Day 5.

This is Standard 5, just enjoying the day. In the foreground, you see Nishanth jumpin up. 










Below is one of my favorite pictures of our kids. From left to right, their names are Vignesh, Hemathkumar, Surya, and Karthik. They were all fourth standard and so much fun! Vignesh was probably the best behaved kid in the school, but still enjoyed playing around. Hemathkumar was a lot of fun as well, and would always joke with me that I understood Tamil and he understood English. Surya was a little mischievous guy. He always wanted to take pictures with the camera and probably had the smallest attention span of anyone in the class. Karthik, as you can see, has such a magnetic smile that he instantly became one of our favorites. He was extremely helpful if we ever needed chalk or a duster or anything really.

This is all of the 4th standard boys. This is where they eat lunch. It's a circular concrete block with a metal umbrella above. You'll see Vignesh, Shakti, Kishore, Hemath, Karthik, and surya from left to right.












Below is another great picture of some of the 4th standard boys. It's Vignesh, Shakti and Surya.

Here, you'll see Danashree (I think I'm misspelling her name!).  She was the Surya of 5th standard, in the sense that she was extremely mischievous. She would randomly leave the classroom and when asked about it, she would say "bathroom, miss." Also, all the students would politely ask before coming back into the classroom, and she would walk in as if she owned the place. It was hilarious, especially, because she had no idea how funny she was!




Below if my favorite girl, Saranya. She is in 4th Standard and is literally awesome. The smartest girl in the class, and probably one of the smartest people we taught, she was very funny and very cute! Many of the girls wouldn't get too close with me (me being a guy), but she wasn't too shy and we became really good friends!

Hope you enjoyed!! Sorry this is so late!

The Pledge and The Turn

This past week and a half has been the best week ever. There's a LOT that has happened, so I'm going to get right to it.

Starting last Sunday, Alex, Rad, Athidi and I indulged in a much-too-fancy lunch at the Hilton hotel. It cost US $30, which is much too expensive for a meal anywhere in India (though probably still much cheaper than if we were actually state-side). Here's a picture of us at lunch.

After lunch, we went to the rooftop and just hung out for a bit. You can see Alex is enjoying himself (and relaxed) for sure!

The next day we rode the bus home again. I ended up taking a bunch of pictures, but here's one I took once we got off the bus. I like it because it not only has the cow, but also the shadows of all three of us.

Later that night, the McGill interns invited us out to dinner on the town. It was Malavika's birthday (back left - across from me). We went to this pretty hip restaurant at Zara's. I forgot to mention, but both places (Hilton and Zara's) had an abundance of white people. Here's a pic of our group!

The next day was supposed to be just another day at the office, but turned out to be quite an immersive experience. It started out relatively normal, with us finishing up our answer guides for standard 7. I got bored at around noon, though, and went outside to hang out with a guy named Raju. He was cleaning his bike and we just sort of chatted. I get the feeling that most of them (especially the young guys, like him) silently make fun of us (in jest) because they will randomly look at us, say something in Tamil, and burst out in laughter. And they never tell us why when we ask. But they're all very nice to us. I ended up being invited to join in their lunch circle, which felt great! Unfortunately, Athidi is pretty poor at taking pictures (seriously, Athidi?), but that's me hidden on the right side of the picture, drinking a bottle of water in white shorts.

After the impromptu lunch (the only food I had was offered to me by others in the circle!), Athidi, Radhika, Sandeep (who is a 16 year old Tamilian soon-to-be senior in hs from Arizona) went to this super-cool restaurant called Sanjeevanam. The reason it was so cool is that it only serves Ayurvedic food!! It was a great experience. It was a ton of food, though, but most of it was pretty good. Here's a few pics!

The last picture is the menu. 

 

One of the last portions of our meal was honey. They poured it on your hand and you licked it off - see above.






Unfortunately, the forced us to use our hands. I'm not all that skilled in that technique yet. 




After we got back to the office, there were more surprises in waiting. We were about to leave for the day, when Srinivasan Uncle stopped me and showed me all these hats he could make with just one newspaper. It was amazing! And it felt great because I was being included in something that the locals were doing. Here's a few pics.

After our bus ride home, we decided to grab some coconut water, which tasted great as always. Rad doesn't love it, though so only Athidi and I got one. Unfortunately, there was no scraps inside of our coconut, only water. It tasted great though!





















In a magician's act, there are always three parts. The Pledge and the Turn are the lead-up to the best part of the show, the reason you go to the show. These three or four days described above are simply the lead up to what I will describe next, The Prestige. You shouldn't have started clapping yet - I've only made the pigeon disappear. Soon, I will bring it back and then you will clap. The Prestige is soon to come.