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Published: March 17th 2007
Hi all
I'll start by saying my flight home is now booked for the 11th June, it's due to arrive at Heathrow at 11.35 am. Mum, I'm sorry it's a Monday, but I can easily make it back to Chelmsford by myself if it's really awkward, I even contemplated with Kim + Gemma how fun it would be to make the journey back entirely by myself, although I think the walk back from Eves Corner would be tough and I left my door key at home, so that's probably not a clever idea.
Anyway, I'm by myself here at the moment. When I've been busy teaching or making a trip into Tiruvannamalai I've felt fine, but when I have marking or planning and I'm left by myself I miss the company of people a lot, I expected my marking pace to pick up but so far it hasn't, and the flat looked seriously weird on Friday when you could see into Kim + Gemma's rooms and they were empty. I do miss people quite a lot, but once Colin gets back I'll be fine and that's only 1 week, I'll do my best to keep myself busy. It was a bit harder on Friday as well because Maria was in Chengam, and I didn't really have many fluent English conversations all day until I got onto the phone, and I had to eat Shakila's food in silence. One slightly tough week out of 5 and a half months over here won't do me any harm though, and I'm still on great terms with Rose, Kim and Gemma so really there's nothing to be too upset about. We've had a cool time together and it'll be fun when we meet up in the summer.
I've also got lots to look forward to. I'm having a great time teaching now, I get on really well with my classes. I've started playing cricket after school with some pupils and teachers. At the hostel we add something to the game, we're good. At the school they enjoy watching me play simply for the entertainment value, they are all brilliant. The bowl so quickly, and Paneer got me out of the first ball on Thursday. Normally when I'm on the batting team I can talk to Ashiq when we're not in. He's from ninth standard, so his English is very good and I'm noticing a few similarities between us. Firstly he has frustrations that the cricket world cup is on at the same time of his exams. I explained my frustrations with my A-Levels and the football world cup. Then we got talking on why everyone hates America and things like that, and it's quite cool to have people who can speak English quite good. I was also able to laugh at one of my 7th standard kids Mohanram when he dropped an easy catch for me, and I told him I'd give him a star if he did it again. As he was hitting a lot of 4s and 6s and he was bowling well it was good to be able to say something back, especially as his is one of the cheeky boys in 7th. (there's quite a few)
I can talk to Vinoth from 9th almost like an Englishman too, and in the next week the class may become more friends than students, if they're not already. Actually on Friday I thought I had them 8th period, as opposed to fifth so I'd planned this poem to go through 8th Standard and I discovered I had, and I like to have something planned. Thankfully as it's spoken English I got them debating, although I think mentioning international affairs was a very stupid thing to do. I asked them if they blamed the British for the Kashmir problems when we divided them, and instantly Vinoth stood up and said some strong words on Pakistan, so I may stay clear of the issue from now on. I've dropped 4b, so I only have 7th, 8th and 9th. You can tell I like 9th a lot. Truth be told 8th lack character. They have some bright sparks, and Srinivasan is an absolute genius, but they are dull to teach I find. 7th on the other hand can sometimes be too lively. A lot of the boys are very boisterous, which leads to all the girls being very quiet. They are great fun on a good day. On Friday I got them to write letters to Rose as they may be asked to write a friendly letter in the exam, so once they're corrected I'm going to ask them all to write it in neat and I'll send them up to Delhi, just because I thought it was a cool idea. Anyway, that's enough on my classes.
The week with Kim and Gemma was very fun, although they were getting quite stressed out about printing certificates and packing, and cleaning the flat (I'm amazed how different Kim's room actually looks now.) But in a lot of classes we got the kids to sing Country Got Soul, a song about love and hate, don't actually know it's title. We got them to fill in blanks on word sheets then got them singing it. We filmed lots of the classes. The video of 8th standard is brilliant, with the students being fairly lifeless but with Kim and Gemma dancing behind them. Vijay started dancing for a couple of seconds, but the contrast between the sensible students and the teachers embarrassing themselves is great. Then with ninth we got them to do Madonna as well, and we got them standing in a line against the wall. Once again Kim and Gemma were doing most of the dancing, but the boys and a couple of girls got into it a bit. The video goes on for about 3 minutes, and it will make you laugh if you see it. I'm normally behind the camera, I'm happy to embarrass myself in front of friends and I was silly with the 10th standard boys, but for some reason I didn't do anything stupid with my classes for some unknown reason.
Saying that, yesterday I wore a vesty for a whole day. It's a sort of cloth thing men wear as a skirt basically. They put me and Colin in with Gemma and Kim's leaving programme because the kids will have exams when we leave, and I was given it as a present. Then I decided to stay at the school for my last night with Kim + Gemma, and as I'd changed into it at the hostel I was forced to teach in it the next day. It nearly came down in front of 7th, but Paneer showed me how to do it properly, we had to clear all the students out of the office for him to do it! Anyway, I joked about that with the students quite a lot of the day. I won't wear it often, but it did surprise people just because it wasn't a tourist type of clothing like I bought in Mamallapuram and Chennai, it's what local farmers actually wear. I'll be going back to trousers from now on though.
Perhaps more fun than the singing lessons was the party we had with the 10th standard boys on Wednesday night. These boys work so hard. They get up at 4am and go to bed at 10pm. They have the lessons, and then they spend most of the time outside of lessons studying, with occasional breaks. They sleep in the school, and I think they stay there at weekends too. As their exams are public they're a little earlier, next week in fact. So they must be quite stressed (The girls would stay in school too, but there's nowhere separate to put them) Firstly we ate with all of them, which was nice. It's the first time I realized how similar English kids and Indian kids can be. They were all so cheeky to each and the ayas, they even called Unnamalai mental. Then they had nicknames for each other such as mirror for the boy with glasses, the elephant for a slightly larger boy, Grandpa for a boy with some grey hairs and it went on and on, each of them was mocked in some way. I found it hilarious. Then we played the likes of wink murder, twister and musical bumps. We'd bought them some Miranda, the most artificial fizzy drink in the world, aswell as crisps and biscuits. Then Kim taught them the Macarena. Unfortunately we didn't have it on CD, so we had to do it to the Basement Jaxx, which was quite fast but in reality is a much better tune. Then we kept playing other Basement Jaxx tunes and we all danced to them, and I even taught some of them lyrics (Where's Your Head At is a fairly easy song to get hold of). It was great fun, and they deserve some welcome relief.
Wow this update's long. Anyway, just 2 weeks till I leave. It'll be tough to leave, but I'll hold it together. I imagine it'll be a quiet bus to Bangalore for me + Colin, and a massive relief to see Nicole and Eileen and get on with our travelling. Our flight to Colombo is booked for the 5th April. Obviously don't try and post me anything when I'm travelling. One more thing, Gemma I'm expecting you to read this. You should check out my previous entry about our trip up the mountain, I think you'll agree with pretty much everything I've written, and that between all of the volunteers at Kanji there is hardly an ounce of common sense.
Bye everyone.
Rob.
p.s. I've updated my photos.
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Mum
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Photos
It's really good to see the placement pictures Rob. It gives a better idea of what it's like. That mountain look quite impressive!