Hey there Readers,
Monday morning we went through our soon to be daily routine of waking up early (for me, 8 is early) in our room downstairs, eating breakfast together and getting dressed. Once we were ready Dr. Bandhu had a rickshaw ready for us to take us to our first project. In case you didn't know, a rickshaw or tuk tuk is kind of like a scooter with three wheels and a seat for two in the back. Although there is only room for 5 usually, including the driver, if you're determined it's actually possible to fit twice that amount as is displayed every now and then when we drive by. There is a problem with rickshaws though, and that is the fact that there are no seat belts, and no doors, leading you to hold on for your dear life as the driver swings around corners and misses trucks, cars, and bicycles by a hair's breadth. At first I was freaking out and hoping that we wouldn't get crushed by some vehicle, because rickshaws are not the sturdiest machines out there. Eventually becoming accustomed to the feeling of narrowly avoiding a collision, I began to trust the driver because if anyone could get us through Indian traffic, its this guy. We arrived at the site and this is where my jaw actually fell open in disbelief. Imagine a field in the sweltering summer heat, somewhere nice. Now take the grass and trees that you may have imagined and replace it with hard, dry, dirt and lots of garbage. A small river was flowing through the field where women washed their clothes. We walked for a minute to the edge where there were a couple of small, brick buildings. We walked through these led by a guy who's name I can't remember. Eventually we walk into a tiny room with a single light and 14 kids inside. They pulled up two chairs, which is where we sat, and then told us to teach and they walked off. Well, I say that, but there was a young teacher there who did not speak English very well and towards the last twenty minutes another woman arrived, but until then it was Mom and me leading the class. They had 4 or 5 posters up on the wall with vegetables, the alphabet, animals, etc. which we could use. So we're sitting there, in a little brick hut with and a bunch of kids the age of Kindergartners sitting at our feet. The first thing that popped into my mind was, "Well this is gonna be interesting," and it was. First the teacher showed us what the kids could do. One of them stood up, took a stick, and in a very loud voice began reciting: A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat and so on so forth with the rest of the class repeating it at the top of their lungs. They said it with the cutest accents I've ever heard. This brings me to the point that the kids sitting in front of me were adorable. So after this and some songs, I found out that the easiest way to do this was by repetition. So we tried to teach them, What is your name? My name is _____. Mom and I did it first and of course my mother, being the clever woman that she is (I hope she's reading this) brought candy as a reward for those who said it correctly. Eventually we achieved just that so I decided to take the reigns and I went over the alphabet with them screaming every letter after me. After this Mom and I brainstormed what we could do since we were there for three hours so we decided to teach them a dance and get them moving a bit. This of course had to be the easiest one we knew because remember that the only words they understood were letters and a few objects. The first one that popped in my head was the macarena, so first we taught them the movements and at the end I shouted HEY MACARENA. There were a couple seconds of awkward silence and the people passing outside stared at us for about a minute. Then what surprised me the most was the entire class screamed at the top of their lungs HEY MACARENA!!! Although it was something small it gave me such an incredible sense of accomplishment, the kind you get when you win a race or stand in front of an applauding audience. It was pretty awesome. After that, we went over the animals and their noises and managed to find some crayons to talk about colors. Once again we had an hour and a half left and we were out of ideas. By now a group of people had gathered outside our tiny 'classroom' and were avidly watching us with curiosity. So I whisper over, "What do we do now?" In response I am told to, "think of something, you're the actor!" So I did, well, I tried. I ran through every single warm up and game that I could remember. We shook it out, repeated after me, mirrored eachother and at the end we had about 15 minutes left and I was half dead from exhaustion. Of course the kids were sitting on the floor giving me toothy grins not being tired at all so in the end I decided that I would just review everything we did. I was amazed at how fast they picked it up and remembered what we did and from that I could see that these kids wanted to learn, they just couldn't, and I was finally giving them a chance. I'm going to be honest with you but I expected the kids to be kind of stupid seeing as they had received no education at all but I was completely blown a way by their brightness. When we left and said our goodbyes I realized that I had just influenced the lives of a dozen children for the better. That's what, I decided, the goal of this trip was. To make the lives of as many people as possible better, even in the smallest of ways. It's still sad to see that people bathed, drank, and washed their clothes in the water and lived in those conditions. The return journey was about as uneventful as it gets in India and we returned back to the house safely. Some of the volunteers had left earlier that day so we moved our things into the room they had stayed in, two floors above. There are 8 beds, two of which are still occupied by B and Maddie, both volunteers, who are also pretty cool people. Later that evening the American family, my Mom, and I walked to the orphanage near the house. There I recognized some of my buddies from the park the day before and they showed me around the place. It was pretty small, consisting of a few rooms with bunk beds for the seven orphans that lived there. They had a kitchen and the owner who was a nice guy, introduced us to the other helpers. When we got back home we had dinner and retired to our rooms for the night. The next day we were going to visit another and bigger slum school and see what we could do there. But first, we went to sleep.
Monday morning we went through our soon to be daily routine of waking up early (for me, 8 is early) in our room downstairs, eating breakfast together and getting dressed. Once we were ready Dr. Bandhu had a rickshaw ready for us to take us to our first project. In case you didn't know, a rickshaw or tuk tuk is kind of like a scooter with three wheels and a seat for two in the back. Although there is only room for 5 usually, including the driver, if you're determined it's actually possible to fit twice that amount as is displayed every now and then when we drive by. There is a problem with rickshaws though, and that is the fact that there are no seat belts, and no doors, leading you to hold on for your dear life as the driver swings around corners and misses trucks, cars, and bicycles by a hair's breadth. At first I was freaking out and hoping that we wouldn't get crushed by some vehicle, because rickshaws are not the sturdiest machines out there. Eventually becoming accustomed to the feeling of narrowly avoiding a collision, I began to trust the driver because if anyone could get us through Indian traffic, its this guy. We arrived at the site and this is where my jaw actually fell open in disbelief. Imagine a field in the sweltering summer heat, somewhere nice. Now take the grass and trees that you may have imagined and replace it with hard, dry, dirt and lots of garbage. A small river was flowing through the field where women washed their clothes. We walked for a minute to the edge where there were a couple of small, brick buildings. We walked through these led by a guy who's name I can't remember. Eventually we walk into a tiny room with a single light and 14 kids inside. They pulled up two chairs, which is where we sat, and then told us to teach and they walked off. Well, I say that, but there was a young teacher there who did not speak English very well and towards the last twenty minutes another woman arrived, but until then it was Mom and me leading the class. They had 4 or 5 posters up on the wall with vegetables, the alphabet, animals, etc. which we could use. So we're sitting there, in a little brick hut with and a bunch of kids the age of Kindergartners sitting at our feet. The first thing that popped into my mind was, "Well this is gonna be interesting," and it was. First the teacher showed us what the kids could do. One of them stood up, took a stick, and in a very loud voice began reciting: A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat and so on so forth with the rest of the class repeating it at the top of their lungs. They said it with the cutest accents I've ever heard. This brings me to the point that the kids sitting in front of me were adorable. So after this and some songs, I found out that the easiest way to do this was by repetition. So we tried to teach them, What is your name? My name is _____. Mom and I did it first and of course my mother, being the clever woman that she is (I hope she's reading this) brought candy as a reward for those who said it correctly. Eventually we achieved just that so I decided to take the reigns and I went over the alphabet with them screaming every letter after me. After this Mom and I brainstormed what we could do since we were there for three hours so we decided to teach them a dance and get them moving a bit. This of course had to be the easiest one we knew because remember that the only words they understood were letters and a few objects. The first one that popped in my head was the macarena, so first we taught them the movements and at the end I shouted HEY MACARENA. There were a couple seconds of awkward silence and the people passing outside stared at us for about a minute. Then what surprised me the most was the entire class screamed at the top of their lungs HEY MACARENA!!! Although it was something small it gave me such an incredible sense of accomplishment, the kind you get when you win a race or stand in front of an applauding audience. It was pretty awesome. After that, we went over the animals and their noises and managed to find some crayons to talk about colors. Once again we had an hour and a half left and we were out of ideas. By now a group of people had gathered outside our tiny 'classroom' and were avidly watching us with curiosity. So I whisper over, "What do we do now?" In response I am told to, "think of something, you're the actor!" So I did, well, I tried. I ran through every single warm up and game that I could remember. We shook it out, repeated after me, mirrored eachother and at the end we had about 15 minutes left and I was half dead from exhaustion. Of course the kids were sitting on the floor giving me toothy grins not being tired at all so in the end I decided that I would just review everything we did. I was amazed at how fast they picked it up and remembered what we did and from that I could see that these kids wanted to learn, they just couldn't, and I was finally giving them a chance. I'm going to be honest with you but I expected the kids to be kind of stupid seeing as they had received no education at all but I was completely blown a way by their brightness. When we left and said our goodbyes I realized that I had just influenced the lives of a dozen children for the better. That's what, I decided, the goal of this trip was. To make the lives of as many people as possible better, even in the smallest of ways. It's still sad to see that people bathed, drank, and washed their clothes in the water and lived in those conditions. The return journey was about as uneventful as it gets in India and we returned back to the house safely. Some of the volunteers had left earlier that day so we moved our things into the room they had stayed in, two floors above. There are 8 beds, two of which are still occupied by B and Maddie, both volunteers, who are also pretty cool people. Later that evening the American family, my Mom, and I walked to the orphanage near the house. There I recognized some of my buddies from the park the day before and they showed me around the place. It was pretty small, consisting of a few rooms with bunk beds for the seven orphans that lived there. They had a kitchen and the owner who was a nice guy, introduced us to the other helpers. When we got back home we had dinner and retired to our rooms for the night. The next day we were going to visit another and bigger slum school and see what we could do there. But first, we went to sleep.
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