The One with Bulli

Sunrise Boatride

My last few days have been good and I am finally starting to get into a good routine here.  On Friday I went back to Little Star's school to try teaching again.  This time I got 3rd graders, who understood a bit more English.  I was given the syllabi, and I taught some math, English grammar, and "General Knowledge".  The math was fine, but the other two subjects were so ridiculous.  The English grammar lesson was on Gender, which is kind of a useless concept in English.  I guess the distinction between brother and sister is good, but the difference between peacock and peahen will never be used.  I couldn't even answer some of the questions they were supposed to do, because I didn't know that the male version of a maid-servant is a man-servant.  I decided to switch gears into General Knowledge, after I decided I was less qualified than the non-English speaking teacher to teach this English Lesson.  Of course the General Knowledge was on Indian cultural knowledge, so I would have to constantly reference the book to figure out which folk dance was matched with which Indian State.  I finally taught a lesson on inventors and inventions and created a game where I would ask the kids simple questions about the lesson (e.g. what did Galileo invent?).  I realized that the kids don't understand how to differentiate between different question words such as when, where, and why, so I planned a lesson for this afternoon on just that.

Some of the ghats

People bathing in the Ganga

After Little Stars we had our first Bollywood dance lesson.  On the way there we had the best rickshaw ride yet! The driver, Bulli, was just crazy and singing and dancing as he drove us.  He declared that Lillian was his daughter and would like sing things to her and make her sing them back.  We were also moving at like half the speed of everyone else around us, and he didn't even notice everyone honking as they passed. I realized how much I miss just being silly and laughing.  Once we got to our lesson we had a few technical difficulties, but we had a great time dancing to Bole Chudiyan.  I am pretty sure that the dance moves are as outdated as the 40 year old who is teaching the class, but it was nice to do something active and purely fun.  We are going to finish the dance on Tuesday night so I am really excited for that.

Vedika and me (her eyes are closed but I still like
the picture)

This weekend was nice and I enjoyed having time to spend with my homestay family and friends.  On Saturday morning we went for a sunrise boatride on the Ganga (5:30am!), which was super cold but nice.  It was super relaxing and beautiful as the sky got more light, but when we got to the end of the ghats and began to turn around the sun rose.  Of course at that moment they turned on the (super loud) motor and sped away from the gorgeous sunrise.  In a weird way I felt like this was a metaphor of many of my experiences in India.  Often when things seem so obvious (like stopping to watch the sun rise on a sun rise boatride) they will do just the opposite.

Vedika in the garden :)

We had two lectures this weekend on Ayurvedic medicine and meditation this week which were alright.  I also got to help Sweety celebrate her 18th birthday which was nice! The day before we decorated her room but cutting up tissue paper and gluing it to the walls.  The only thing I could think about was how much my parents would have killed me if I super-glued tissue paper to the walls.