Wednesday and Thursday with the children went extremely well. Unfortunately, even though we’re both being careful, the water here has finally got the best of Michelle and I, and we’re both too sick to go into SOUP today. On the other hand, it’s giving me a chance to update this blog!!
The children are loving the English words we’re teaching them and the different games we are using with them. They even seem to love being drilled with notecards, which is awesome! We’re finding that between the two of us, we can manage to cater throughout the games to children like Kajal, who is blind, and Tanu, who is much younger than the other children. Pictionary was a huge hit and got pretty competitive! I think the best part was the difference between how many words they knew when we drilled them Wednesday morning and how many they knew when we drilled them Thursday morning. I was so impressed by how much they were able to remember. Giving each child his or her own notebook was also a really satisfying feeling. We loved seeing the results when we asked each child to draw a picture of his or her future dreams. We learned that Gautam, who is 13, loves math and wants to be a computer engineer, but also really looks up to Joy and would like to be a pastor one day. Kajal wants to be a principal of a school. Nilam (she was new on Thursday – she’s 17 and is the older sister of one of the younger children, and comes each day because she’d like to learn more English) wants to become a teacher.
Our extracurricular activities are also going really well. Yoga was a good laugh for everyone, because there isn’t much space and nobody has any idea how to do what Michelle are doing – but it was such a nice break that we’re going to try and do it every other day (Michelle and I also don’t really know exactly what we’re doing because we’ve never taken a formal yoga class, but we’ve done routines on our own before). Michelle and I are also going to try and come up with some American dance moves to teach them, because all of the children learn Indian dance in school and they are actually amazingly talented dancers. Friendship bracelets are definitely the most popular activity. My wrists, fingers, ankles, toes, and my neck are covered in yarn, because all the children want to tie their bracelets on Michelle and I when we finish. We can’t wait to bring some of them home with us!
11 JUN 2009