Rogue, Dish Soap and Sea Monsters... and boiled retainers...

So, I've acquired a nick name... Rogue. Apparently I look like Rogue from XMen... according to the kids. Which is fine by me.

Early Saturday morning Stephen, another volunteer who will be here almost as long as I will, arrived. He is teaching English to the older grades. We had a special assembly because of an Italian benefactor visiting. The kindergardeners danced a native dance and the older kids did a presentation on Pongal. It was really cute. Then some past volunteers stopped in for a visit and gave a speech. It was so amazing to watch. These guys were like rockstars to the the kids. After assembly Molly, Joe, Sheryl, Stephen, Jacques and I were driven to Hosur by Anish. That was interesting. When you've been shut off from the civilization for even a short amount of time cultural refernences, even stupid ones become funny. Sheryl and I lost it when we saw two chickens run across the road on our way. We both said "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other SIIIDE-ah-hahahaha." Yeah. We're cool. So the ride was interesting because we got to see what life is like in rural India, just by driving through it. Literally through it. If people seemed to be on the street at five in the morning when we drove in, it was a hundred times more so at noon. After about forty five minutes in the car we arrived.

Hosur is a small city of about 200,000. It's kind of this winding amalgam of shop on top of shop. Auto-rickshaws which are look like they should seat two plus a driver, but apparently you can get the driver to allow many more (we had four). There are more or less no traffic laws, except don't drive where the police are barricading. We went to lunch which took about two hours and constant reminders to the waiter. ("our drinks?" "our drinks? we had lime sodas?") Then we went to the internet cafe, which was exhilarating. It's sad how addicted I was to the internet. I'm really missing word challenge right now. We tried to book flights to Delhi and plan our trip to see the Taj Mahal, but the website we were using was a little difficult and we ended up deciding on Mysore for the weekend. A driver will pick us up early Saturday morning and we'll stay over night Saturday and Sunday. We plan to see a huge stone statue on Monday on our way home. It's about a four hour drive to Mysore, it should be interesting. I'm excited because I think our hotel will have wireless and it will be our first real experience out and about in India. Five Americans and their Indian driver set off for Mysore sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

Any way... I had to run downstairs after using the internet cafe to buy some dish soap and candy for the kids. Sheryl came with me. So we squeezed into the tiny shop and started looking for dish soap. We found laundry detergent and dishes, but no dish soap. I asked an employee if they had any dish soap and she looked at me like I was from Mars. So I pointed to the body soap behind her and the laundry detergent behind me and then to my nalgene. Dish soap? I said again. She looked perplexed and tried to offer me some Dial. I shook my head and smiled. I mimed cleaning my water bottle while Sheryl pretended to scrub a dish. She shook her head and Sheryl and I started laughing. Sheryl walked over picked up a bar of soap and a bowl and started to pretend to wash it. Meanwhile several employees continued to arrive. After the baffled woman helping us tried to offer us a soap dish, which caused even more hilarity, an old woman came up and actually grabbed onto Sheryl and I, and laughed with us. It was so fun. Then another employee thought we might want tissues or a pipe cleaner. Sheryl and I gave up and bought some candy. Later Sheryl came back to the store with Anitha and they found the dish soap behind a box of laundry detergent. When she bought it people apparently laughed and shook their heads. Sheryl and I also ventured out for construction paper, striking out when 'do you have colored paper?' only produced various forms of tissue and wrapping paper. Later one of the volunteers who's been here a while went in search of it for us and told us upon handing it to us that it is called chart paper. Good to know.

On our way back from Hosur we stopped at a place to buy phone cards. Then we watched the older boys play soccer. Actually, I sat with several of the younger children on my lap and played with them. Then I talked to some of the older girls who asked me to sing and dance for them. It was a really festive and fun atmosphere.

Sunday we decided to see if we could get the kids to draw fish onto our chart paper to make puppets for a dance for the kindergarten and first grade. So we asked a few people at lunch who could draw well, and we ended up with about 30 kids and adults working together on drawing 62 under sea animals. It was really exciting to have everyone's excitement and energy working toward a common goal. Most of the fish got drawn and a few of the fish got painted in the hour we were working. It was awesome.

Sheryl and I brought the fish back to the volunteer lounge to dry and to be completed. We had some serious work to do. We painted most of the sixty before dinner, it was fun. But we still had a lot of work to do when we got back. We painted during the whole movie we watched that night and everyone else went to bed. By the time Sheryl and I were approaching the end we were pretty punchy. I'd been putting off painting this beautiful lobster because I was pretty sure I'd ruin it. After I started painting it I started laughing and Sheryl looked and then we were both laughing about it. We got pretty silly and I was crying because it was so funny. Yeah.

Monday I went to aerobics for the other girls I was shocked by how weak the girls were. They couldn't do crunches or the plank... they had no stamina, no flexibility and absolutely no desire to change it. People in India in general don't get the point of physical exercise. Classes went much better on Monday, partially because the kids got in trouble from the vice principal and partially because I got so much advice and instituted a new incentive program with candy. We taught the kindergardeners their dance, which is to "Under the Sea". (I constantly am asked if I know Titus and if I was in the Little Mermaid on Broadway.) They are sooo cute. They were so good with the sticks. We were so afraid that they would hit each other, but instead they are wonderful. They are so so so so cute. That evening we watched Children of Men. Anitha went to boil water for her tea and found retainers in it. We were all pretty confused. I went to check on my teeth whitening trays. They were missing. It turns out that Sheryl took our tooth brushes out of the cup and filled it with water to fill the hot pot, not noticing that they were in there. So people had been drinking boiled teeth whitening tray water for about 24 hours from that hot pot. That was really funny too.

On Tuesday, I taught aerobics to the sixth and seventh grades. That was fun. We played a game called Keys and at the end we did the human knot. I taught them a little of You Can't Stop the Beat to get a head start on their dance classes. My morning classes with the fourth grade were great. We taught the first grade their Under The Sea dance. They are sooo cute! They weren't as good about the sticks, but they learned their entire dance in the forty five minute dance class. We watched the inauguration coverage on the TV in the teacher's lounge with the older grades and I blurted out "I BABYSIT FOR HIS KIDS!!!!" when Jim Acosta showed up on TV. All the kids were interested in that. Then I went for a walk with Joe. We tried to teach the choir Under the Sea, but we weren't very successful. I hope next week goes better. There are so many words in that song. After dinner Sheryl and I had the sixth grade for dance class. We taught them the entire Tracy section of the dance. So they only have to learn the ending, which they already know in bits and pieces. Then we went back to the teacher's lounge to watch the inauguration. It was neat to see the reactions of so many adults to the ceremony. I really enjoyed it. During all of it I kept thinking about Michael and if he was getting enough rehearsals in for his Opera. I wonder what it was like to be in D.C. that day.

Wednesday wasn't the best day. I started to lose my voice and I wasn't feeling too hot. I had to read the riot act after class to the fourth grade because they weren't trying to complete their work and they missed half their movie time. When we were finally on our way to movie time the kids saw a huge (probably poisonous) snake and ran towards it. I was trying to get them into a dorm and away from it, but it took a while. Needless to say I wasn't too happy with them. It sucks to have to be mean teacher sometimes, but when it comes to things like running towards dangerous animals my job is pretty clear. We had the second and third grades back to back in dance. They were pretty good, but neither class got very much choreography learned. They're just adorable though. Second grade is doing "I feel Good" and third grade is doing "ABC".

It's amazing how basically every child in the school WANTS to dance. It's actually kind of awesome. Being a volunteer is a little bit like being a rock star at Shanti Bhavan. The volunteers have brought all of the music the kids think is cool. The first day I showed the kids how to make an ocarina with your hands and they all still come up asking for guidance and correction on it. I do a pretty decent chicken impression (if I do say so myself) and did it for the kids. They constantly ask me to do it for them. Kids are always asking me to do a dance step or sing something. It's pretty cool. It's also a big responsibility. Because we have so much influence over the kids it's pretty important that we uphold the ideals the school is trying to promote. Decorum and the like are of the utmost importance in India. These children can't date because it isn't proper, but it's hard because they've heard about dating from so many westerners and seen it in the videos we bring for them. I actually get nervous about my own behavior and what example it sets. I hope it's a good one, but it's difficult to say if something I do is a bad example and I'm not even aware of it.

Thursday fourth grade was much better. The point system was really starting to work and I could tell that I'd be breaking out that candy soon. The kids are pretty advanced in Math, but some of them are still thinking in a different language when they write in English. Their prepositions and verbs leave a lot to be desired. We had a big lesson on all of the mistakes made in their creative writing stories and it seemed to be a hit. After grading two more since, I can say that it definitely helped. We taught the second graders about spiders for their learning activity and taught the fourth grade most of their part of We Go Together. They learned quickly and were well behaved... I think it was fun for them to have me in a different context as a teacher after having me constantly telling them to sit down, raise their hands, stop drawing a game board, etc. We had some good review and I really found a lot of strengths and weaknesses. I designed next week's lesson plans to address the weaknesses so we can really move forward the following week. It's kind of fun to be in charge of a class. It's a like a huge, never ending logic problem trying to help each child learn the things he's missing. We had the eighth grade for dance and we taught them all of Penny's part of You Can't Stop the Beat. I cut down the song using Garage Band so It's only 3:27.

Friday my voice was still not working well. Yay. We had fun though. Fourth grade is really starting to come together as a well behaved class. They know what to expect and how to behave. One of the rows got enough points, so on Tuesday I'm bringing the candy. That really ought to give them some incentive to behave. It's great to watch them work together to achieve a goal. It's pretty overwhelming how much harder everything is here. Teaching takes a ton of leg work because there's no internet. It's great though, because by the end of the day I'm so tired that I fall asleep at 11:00 and sleep right through the night until about 6:15, when I've been waking up just before my alarm. Since I'm generally an insomniac and average about four hours a night at home, this is a massive improvement. We taught the fifth graders a lot more of We Go Together. It'll be interesting to see how much they retain, since we had to spend the first half of class re-teaching what they'd already learned. After class was over I went back to my dorm, watched friends and generally chilled out until dinner. After dinner we watched Juno. Which reminded me of Matt. (Hi!) I graded creative writing papers until I was sleepy and then I went to bed.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to ready ourselves for our trip to Mysore. The car was leaving (in theory) at 6:30. We figured that meant the car would be there by 7:00. We filled our water bottles and packed our backpacks for our weekend adventure as a group of five white people in a country where we don't speak the language with a driver who does. Well, the car finally arrived at 7:30. This is what people like to call "India Standard Time." There is no sense of urgency in people's work. It's really weird coming here from a place where people are defined by what they do. In any case we were all pretty easy going about it. We piled in the car with Manu (or something like that) and off we went. Not five minutes into our trip the winding back roads were completely obscured by fog. We couldn't see five feet in front of us. It was a harrowing experience. We would see headlights appear seconds before we were actually next to the car. Since the road is only one car wide, that is really interesting in fog. In addition to contending with the fog, the driver had to worry about pedestrians, brightly painted cows, tractors and carts. We almost caused a tractor to overturn because our driver was going, in my estimation, much too fast for the conditions (I think going at all was dangerous, but he was going at least fifteen mph). It was like the not-so-fun real-life version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

Once we came out of the fog we still had hours and hours of racing forward to slam on our brakes at a speed bump, swerving in and out of traffic, constant near-collisions and pulling over on some back road to ask for directions. I was sitting in the back middle and about three hours in I got pretty car sick. I had to switch places to get next to a window. As soon as I did I perked up though. Five minutes of air in my face and I felt like a new person. We stopped at a temple on our way into Mysore. It was really interesting. We did followed the line of people through the temple and stopped at various shrines along the way. I got a red dot on my forehead. There are some amazing pictures. We had to buy back our shoes from some men who decided to protect them. That was fun because it was so very Indian. We were a little overwhelmed by the crush of people trying to sell things. Especially Sheryl, who was persistently pursued by one man in particular. He must have thought she was rich. So... even though we didn't ask him to stop at the temple it turned out to be a fun experience.

We got back in the car and we were only about 20 km from Mysore. Finding our hotel was a struggle. But we eventually arrived (sometime after 1 pm). We ate lunch in our hotel and went to see St. Philomena's Cathedral. It's the largest Catholic church in India and it's beautiful. We went to Chamundi Hill and went in the many temples there. There were tons of monkeys! They were kind of scary. I don't like them. It was a nice afternoon. Then we came back into Mysore proper and went to the bazaar. It was fun. Behind a bunch of regular sari, cd and plastic chair shops is an open air market full of flowers, vegetables, spices and beauty products. It was overwhelming, beautiful and intriguing. We bought Sheryl a salwar kamiz set and went on a rather long and frustrating search for internet. We ended up finding one computer right across the street from our hotel. Three of us went to pick up Sheryl's altered clothes and tell the driver we didn't need him any more for the night. He couldn't figure out how to get back to the hotel and it took us an hour to get him there. Ugh. He is seriously more hassle than he's worth. Next time I'm voting for sleeper train. Two of us got to use the internet yesterday and the rest of us are hoping to use it today. We're planning to see the palace today and do whatever else there is to do here before leaving in the morning. :-)

There have been so many moments that I wished I could call my mom, Emily, Eric or Michael. Overall, I'm happy healthy and having fun. Exploring a foreign country in a group of five is definitely a learning experience, but one that I'm enjoying.