first day

It's ten minutes 'til six in the evening here now, and I'm about to head off to tutor some girls before dinner, so I'll make this quick.

Our first day of teaching went remarkably well, considering A.) the novelty of the tasks at hand, B.) the language barrier, and C.) our still-lingering exhaustion. The school is a brief walk down the dirt road from the home; we left with the girls at around 8:45 to get there on time. The school itself is ostensibly nothing remarkable (four rooms, no electricity), but pretty incredible considering what these nuns have to work with. My mom, the two girls from Notre Dame and I were assigned classes to teach for the morning. I taught first and seventh standard ("standard" is the Indian term for "grade," a remnant of the days of British colonization) until lunch... pretty humbling, to say the least. I soon realized that the language barrier would be a tough one to climb over, so I did my best to establish some sort of common ground: i.e. learn the English words they knew, and for those that they didn't, improvise using gestures, etc. The English vocabulary of the students, especially the younger ones in the first and second standards, is essentially limited to basic terms: mother, father, teacher, student, uncle (what they call me), auntie (what they call Mom), book, and, not surprisingly, Jesus. I peppered the stories I read to them - mainly picture books left over from my preschool days - with these terms; it was the easiest way to hold their attention.

After lunch, Mom and I taught the third and fourth standards until the end of the day at 3:30. I've realized that to fill the time, I have to allow them to teach me. They performed for me various songs and games in Kannada, expecting me to do the same for them. I attempted to teach them "I've Just Seen a Face" by the Beatles, which was fun if nothing else.

Tomorrow will be more of the same. I'll devote the rest of the evening to tutoring, eating, and playing with the girls before hopefully crashing early (time is very relative here, and I'm still acclimating to the ten-and-a-half hour leap ahead).

Hopefully, I'll have pictures up soon, but considering the connection here, I might have to wait until I can get wireless on my laptop in Delhi next Thursday.

We're finally in Hassan - or rather, a remote (and perhaps unnamed?) village about an hour north in the hills above the city. I'm typing this on the home's one computer, which still runs on dial-up.

We left the convent in Bangalore yesterday morning at around nine, but waited at the bus station until around noon (transit in India, I've realized, is wholly unpredictable). The bus ride itself was, well, an experience. Fortunately, we had made a reservation, so our seats were guaranteed; others were forced to stand, holding onto the luggage racks overhead for support. We were on the bus for about five and a half hours, arriving in Hassan a bit before six in the evening. Like in Bangalore, a nun from the home picked us up and drove us out of the city.
The home itself seems larger than the one in Bangalore, but perhaps it's just fuller. Unlike the Bangalore convent, this one houses more than seventy girls, ranging in ages from four to sixteen. A good twenty of them were waiting for us in the driveway as we arrived, singing a welcome song in Kannada (the language of the state of Karnataka). After we settled in, we had a chance to meet some of the girls before dinner. There are two American girls volunteering here - they graduated from Notre Dame last month - so we spent the meal talking to them about their time here. They'll definitely be a good frame of reference for the next week and a half.
The home and school are adjacent to one another, both operated by four nuns. It's much cooler here than it was in Bangalore; I used a blanket for the first time last night. We just ate breakfast, and I'm about to go teach my first English class. I'm a bit nervous as to how it'll go... we'll see.

sunday 6.27

(delayed a bit)
Yesterday, we drove an hour into downtown Bangalore to visit three of Home of Hope's inner-city homes and schools. When not distracted by the beautifully entropic mess that is the Indian road network, I couldn't help but notice how Americanized the city is. Amidst markets and bazaars stand Pizza Huts and Sony stores; the city's skyline is dominated by skyscrapers that house calling centers for some of America's leading corporations. Our driver told us that American outsourcing has contributed to the exponential growth of the city in the last few decades, manifested by the ubiquitous presence of brands and labels I've grown up with.
We spent the afternoon driving through the streets of Bangalore from home to home. It was my first chance to interact with the girls, preparing me for the next week and a half. The majority of them speak, at minimum, broken English, translated by the nuns who operate the schools, most of whom are semi-fluent. However, the games we played with them transcended whatever hindrance the language barrier posed.
Around 3, though, my jetlag returned, and I was exhausted. I managed to pull through (thanks to the glasses of lime juice provided by the nuns), but when we left the city at around 8, I crashed. Somehow, I managed to sleep through the symphony of car horns to which the chaos of the streets is orchestrated. Last night was my first night of legitimate, eight-hour, uninterrupted, unfacilitated-by-Tylenol PM sleep thus far. Needless to say, it was great; I'm only hoping I have the same success tonight - we're almost out of Tylenol.