I've begun volunteering here teaching math to 7th graders in a local slum. It's mostly algebra but at least I'm doing something. The slums are demoralizing. Children play in the mud on the side of the street, wild dogs run freely often times bleeding from one wound or another, dinner is cooked on small fires outside of the front doors to houses that are barely large enough to count as closets in America. All the students got health checkups today, more than one had TB it was found. Yet despite that they all seem happy, shaking our hands with vigor ad glee as we walk down the street. The call us "uncle" and "aunty" as they follow us as a pack. My students are great, they speak little English, mostly Tamil and Kannada, but math is
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