Discovering the life of a teacher...

It’s week two and we have decided that we have to go backwards in our teaching material… I gave them their first homework assignment and the next day I was met with blank stares and empty answer sheets. So we are going back to basic English words and phrases! Hopefully we are more successful this way. Sometimes we can use their English textbook (usually taught by our neighbor Chandu) but it’s difficult to teach English when their text books are full of grammatical and spelling errors… I always cringe when we do reading comprehension and half of the sentences aren’t capitalized and it switches from present to past tense randomly!

The other struggle we have with the kids is their focus. Now that they are getting used to white people being around, they are letting their true colors show and like to be disrespectful. It’s even harder when you can’t tell if they understand you when you tell them to be quiet! The teachers here have sticks that they use to keep the kids in line, and we recently got our own to use when the kids start to get rowdy. One of Trevor’s third graders actually gave us this stick and told him to hit the trouble makers… haha! India definitely has a different standard for corporal punishment.

This weekend we are speaking for vespers (they said only about a 30-40 minute talk of course), doing music for church, and leading out Bible study on Sabbath afternoon. They asked us to do the sermon for church as well, but we politely declined and said we would work up to it. We have also acquired a few other jobs during the week such as supervising a study hall period after school and opening the computer lab for students to practice their typing. We have been playing volleyball with teachers and the older students, which are pretty fun (and gets a little intense!) and have learning to play cricket a little bit too.

Right now the dengue fever from the morning mosquitoes is raging in this area and kids are going home or to the hospital for shots every day. There is also a viral flu going around that we are trying not to catch… I may have already gotten it but I’m hoping it’s just a little cold. (sometimes people give us really sugary Indian sweets and tell us to “eat! eat!”) So with all of that and the sugar we drink in our tea, my body isn’t handling it so well! Praying that it will go away soon…

In the morning I get to watch a pretty cool sunrise sometimes (while Sid and Trevor are sleeping away). Although we are in one of the more hot, dusty, and smoggy places in India, it’s still really pretty when the smog burns off every once in a while! Sunsets are pretty cool too. We are still waiting on the rain to come and cool us off and Chandu was telling us it will also kill off the virus that’s going around, so pray for rain!

Both Sid and I got packages this week from home (thanks moms!). I’ve never been so excited to eat Nutella or to open a package of splenda haha… Let’s just say that the jar of Nutella will be licked clean before we are done with it. Same with our peanut butter jars. We try really hard to savor these things, but it’s difficult. Hopefully it helps us appreciate all the peanut butter and other things we get at home! With the supplies we have we are trying to be creative with the cheaper things that grow in this area. So far we have turned our white rice into fried rice with veggies and eggs. Peanuts are popular here (I don’t understand why peanut butter isn’t) so we made candied peanuts out of those. Papaya and coconut are also a big thing, and I just happened to find a recipe online for papaya coconut muffins that we can make into a cake! Also since bananas are abundant and ripen super fast, I am going to try making some banana cake too. So our food situation isn’t as bad as I’ve made it sound, although there is nothing more comforting then eating something from America!

Well I think that about covers it for this week. Trying to keep from being homesick as much as possible…  J

-B