Mysore for the day

Today Cindy and I went to Mysore to take a look at a ministry that her church is considering partnering with. Mysore is about three hours from here, so though we only went for the day, it was well worth the time spent in the car. I have to confess, the prospect of riding for 6-8 hours in the car (time dependent on crazy Bangalore traffic) did not thrill me, and I was originally thinking that it may not be all that interesting..we'd sit in someone's office, they may give us a tour of the facility, but mostly it would be talk about what they're doing, how we can help, that sort of thing. I think it was the sitting and talking about something that I wouldn't be involved in that didn't immediately grab my attention. However, when we arrived, we were greeted by two incredibly welcoming people. The couple we met run the ministries at the Hope Center which consist of two schools, one is in another part of town, both of which are comprised of over 300 students from the slum areas! In addition to the schools, there is a Crisis Center where women who are in crisis, usually pregnant or with children, can come to stay temporarily and be cared for. They aren't officially open, but there is a woman who is staying there with her small baby and her two year old son. This is him in the toy car.

This is where I think it gets even more interesting.. The woman was approached not too long ago about teaching English to a group of Iranian PhD students. She has no formal English training, she studied to be an elementary school teacher, but she is American. Apparently Iranians want to learn American English rather than British English. Also, she is the only American English teacher in Mysore (Did she say the only non-Indian English teacher? I can't remember.). She and her husband, have been praying for someone to come teach the students starting in January so that she will have a bit more time to put into the other ministries, to have more time to dream up ideas for the ministries with her husband, and so that they can accept more students into the ESL classes. Mostly, the need is for a tutor, as private instruction is what these students most strongly desire. She offhandedly, while giving Cindy and I a tour of the facility, asked if I had any English training. ...Totally not expecting the truth that I responded with, I told her I did, in fact, have ESL training. I graduated with my TESL certificate.. I had to do a practicum at the end of my classroom education... she was thrilled! I told them I would pray about it. I do have commitments here that I am enjoying, but this offer greatly intrigues me.

Here are some other pictures of the facility for you:

-All lined up for morning assembly! There are 330 students that attend this school.

-The headlines of the paper are read every morning after the state and country anthems are sung. The school medium is Kannada.

-This is one of the classes at the Hope Center. Here there are about 20-30 students per class and they go through grade 10 standard. That's the normal range of education before pre-college courses.

-This is one of the classes at their other facility. This school has 450 students! They only go through grade 6 standard here, and the class sizes are at minimum 50 students! The kindergarten was around 60. I can't imagine having a class that size for such young kids!

-Here is a mural of Jesus with the children at the smaller building, which, interestingly enough had the larger student population.

-I couldn't resist this picture! I thought the ponytails were adorable....

-This is the room for the women in the Crisis Center

-The playground for the kids

Jupiter and Venus

Last week I was able to witness a beautiful sight just after sunset: Venus, Jupiter and the moon lined up in such a way that they looked like a smiley face! It was beautiful! And, I was so glad that it wasn't cloudy so I could actually see it! I took a couple pictures, not thinking that they would turn out, but I think they came out okay, so I'll post them.

Thanksgiving Dinner

I don't really have any stories from dinner, but I took a few pictures (shocking, I know! It's been awhile) and I wanted to share them with you.

-This beautiful little girl decided to make me her new friend and demanded that I be the one to feed her a bite of pie after dinner.. according to her parents, she allows no one but them to do this. ...Potential for babysitting?

-I taught these guys how to play Sorry. Perhaps Carly (the blond girl) already knew, but the others didn't. That was fun.

-These pictures are of mingling and dinner.. we had quite a few people over.

the week in review

It has been an interesting week in India. On Monday Cindy and I took the kids from the orphanage to the park again. This time, we took all of them, not just the ones that live there, but also those who are in foster care. We had ten children with us. I find it rather impressive we were able to keep track of all of them. And! There were no serious injuries.. just one scrape, I believe. That was also a relief. I enjoyed watching the kids play and pushing some of them on the swing. They really wanted me to play on the teeter-totter again, so I obliged for a little while, until the screams of one of the girls became too much for me to handle with being less than a foot from her. But it was quite enjoyable. Tuesday and Wednesday passed without incident, although during each 30-40 minute walk from Light House to the orphanage my list of things that I miss from home seems to increase. The most prominent of late is fresh air. I am eagerly awaiting the day that I can fully breathe in, while outside, and not smell burning garbage, urine, animal feces, or any other foul scent that I refuse to adjust to. Others include the absence of demanding beggars that refuse to take no for an answer. Those children can be incredibly persistent. Although they are cute, they will not get what little money I have. I would much rather give them food, but that's not what most of them want. Also, the honking of horns. I'm trying not to let it drive me crazy. It's so rude.. and the noise pollution that results really makes me glad that this neighborhood prohibits the use of horns and we are far enough off the main road that we can't hear it. I did read in the paper yesterday that December 1 is no-honking day. I'm pretty excited about that. I'll make it a point to pay attention on Monday to the noise levels while I'm on the road.

So... in addition to all of this trivial news, Mumbai was hit yesterday with Islamic terrorist activity. I don't know how anyone would have missed that news. I have heard it's all CNN and other major news broadcasters are covering. Cindy and I watched one of the online CNN broadcasts yesterday morning which had Hindi subtitles and as with many major news networks, the other news captions at the bottom of the screen were running. I was surprised to be reading, while hearing about the fire at the Taj Mahal Hotel and the gunmen who had taken Westerners hostage, about how a famous cricket player was upset about some game with Australia. I thought to myself, isn't that interesting. We have a *huge* news story going on where many people are being killed, and hundreds have been injured, and the small news ticker is making mention of a sports figure who's upset about a game. My brain was having a hard time making sense of that and when I mentioned it to Cindy later she said that would be pretty embarrassing. However, it may be a big deal to some people, even in light of the events of yesterday. How unfortunate and sad that is. In addition to that news, a former PM died yesterday, though I'm not sure if that was in connection with the hotel hostage situation, but as a result, schools and government offices have been closed for the day so that the people have time to mourn. I have no place to go today, which I kind of like despite the reason for the day off.

It is currently Thanksgiving in the land that I love, and tonight (though it's now Friday here) we are having about 50 people over for turkey dinner.. and whatever Indian dish the caterer is preparing as an alternative for those who are vegetarians or not fond of turkey. I'm really looking forward to the company! It is a lot of people, but I've met most of them. The majority of the people coming are the families of the ladies that Cindy has Bible study with. So, I have met the moms. I have also met the families of those that go to the church we attend, which actually is quite a few. There are around 5 high schoolers that I've met from this group that are coming and I'm really looking forward to spending time with them. Two have recently taken the SATs and are applying to schools in the US, Canada and Europe.. Oh the days of planning for college. Those were great :) ..and perhaps soon to be in my future again with how I have been enjoying helping out in Miss Aruna's math classes.

shopping and colds

I realized I haven't updated in a long while and thought that it would be high time I did. The last couple weeks have been interesting. I tripped walking from Light House to Vathsalya last week and ended up with a bloody knee and a nice sized lump on my leg. Thank God for shots! I was worried I might get something from that, but it's healing nicely and it's merely sore this week. I have come down with a bit of a cold.. and plan to spend a good portion of today sleeping. The weather is changing. It's getting cooler and perhaps that is the reason. Although, I would be more inclined to think it's due to the 20 runny-nosed kids I spend 3 days a week with and my lack of sleep over the past couple weeks. Besides, could I really get a cold when the temperature is going down from 90 to 79? I doubt it. I could not have adjusted that quickly. It's certainly cooler at night, sometimes getting down to the low 60s, but I consider myself blessed because if I were in the US right now it would be in the 30s. I'm grateful for the warmth.

I went shopping on Commercial Street downtown last week! That was exciting. I think I'm getting the hang of talking vendors down. I only did it once. I probably should have for my other purchases, but it didn't end up being a big deal. I bought some beautiful Indian suit material and eventually I'll take it to a tailor to make me the outfit, but I haven't done so yet. That's on my list for next week. (The image is not mine, it's from another blog.. I forgot my camera :( )

Light House is going really well. I love spending time with those kids! I never thought I would ever say something like that, but they truly are a joy. We don't really have verbal conversations since their vocabulary is limited but smiling does wonders. After lunch we have the kids watch tv while we wait for parents to come and this week I've had at least 4 kids try to claim my lap for that half hour. It's amazing how much little kids love touch. It almost seems like they don't really get that kind of attention at home, but I'm sure most of them do.

Tutoring Lakshmi has been going well. I made her flash cards and timed math sheets, and she enjoys both. We started reading Matilda and she seems to enjoy that as well. Last Saturday the orphanage put on an adoptive parents meet, where the kids performed a song and dance to "I can be your friend" from VeggieTales. That was really cute. The rest of the meeting was about adoption, so after the kids' performance we slipped out. On Wednesday I got to the orphanage early and one of the boys was asking me to help him with his Italian (He's going to Italy soon to be with his adoptive parents.) He had language sheets and was asking me how to pronounce the words. The extent of my knowledge of Italian is what I've heard in "Life is Beautiful", and I had a little bit of an idea of pronunciation from French and Spanish. I thought it was funny that he thought I knew the language when I told him a few times that I didn't. But it was fun to hear him practicing.

Obamamania!

If I didn't already know who won the election a couple days ago, this morning's paper would leave me with no doubts. The Times of India wrote of nothing else on the front page and, in fact, dedicated eight pages of its 24 page paper to the news and information of Obama. There are a couple of smaller articles about him on other pages as well, and though I shouldn't have been surprised at how much coverage there was of him, I was. The Financial Express which we also get along with the Times, a small paper of only 10 pages, filled four pages with the news and what could be expected in the financial world.

We have a list of what India expects from the president-elect.

Obama is the "Dark Knight in [the] White House".

Bangalore is ecstatic.

"It's the beginning of the end of racism...will they change the name of the President's house to Black House?"

What role will young people have in the future elections in India?

Will India be hurt by Obama's win, considering his stance on outsourcing and how heavily it is used in IT companies?

Will the next US president be Hispanic?

Also, I have to laugh at the US map of the swing states. I didn't realize that Mississippi had been renamed. Apparently, it is now called Missouri. A lot has changed since I've been gone, and I'm sure there's more to come.

Vathsalya

Monday was a beautiful day! It rained for the majority of the weekend, and when the sun peeked through the clouds Monday morning and revealed the glorious day it would be, Cindy and I were pretty excited about it. We decided to take the kids from the orphanage to the park. The office was closed Monday, so only the five children that live at the orphanage were there. The others are in foster care and because of the holiday and office closure they stayed home. We walked to the park which took about ten minutes with all the children wanting to walk holding our hands in a long line.. this did not please the cars and two-wheelers that wanted to get around us, but we managed. Now, the "park" consisted of a tall double slide. There were stairs and a slide on each side that formed a triangle with a small platform at the top. Also there were two see-saws. This was the park. I played on the see-saw with the kids for a bit.. they thoroughly enjoyed my panicked expressions every time they had me up in the air and suddenly let me drop. On more than one occasion I had a vision of myself falling backwards or getting knocked off and seriously injuring myself as the seats were inadequate and I felt far from safe, but I'm still alive in one piece. After I had enough of that, I decided to go on the slide. The kids were having fun on that so joining in seemed like it could be a good idea. The slide was steep. Really steep. It was only about ten-twelve feet long, but it looked like one could pick up a lot of sleep if he/she wasn't careful. Also, at the bottom of the slide, unlike the gradual stop that the slides come to, the stop was abrupt. The harsh angle of the slide met a piece of metal parallel to the ground with no curve. It was a solid angle. When I sat down at the top, I needed a few seconds to prepare myself and figure out how I was going to arrive at the bottom uninjured. Unfortunately, I had not been watching the kids closely enough to see how they did it when they got to the bottom. Well, in the middle of my contemplation, one of the kids decided he wanted to go with me, so he sat down behind me and gave us a bit of a shove, because obviously I was taking too long! We went sailing down the slide, my hands gripped to the edges to try to slow us down, and came to an abrupt stop at the bottom. Ouch. I can still feel where I hit. I'm not doing that anymore. I later learned that I should have stopped myself with my feet.. that information would have been incredibly helpful before I started down the slide... It was a fun day and it was very enjoyable to watch the kids laughing and playing. They are such joys.

-Anappa and Lakshmi, Lakshmi is the girl I have been tutoring

-Anappa and Naveen.. and in the lower corner is Ashwath

-Anappa and me