Monsoon Season Continues

Good news today! Finally! The teachers told one of the sisters, (then sister told me) that the third grade is improving with their English! Since they are hearing me speak every day, they have gotten somewhat used to my accent and now they can understand the English when the teachers are speaking since the accent is Indian! I was so, so very happy to hear that they are improving!! Ya know, I am here in India (essentially on a whim!) and I have been a little down because I did not think that I was providing anything for the children. But I finally got some feedback! Even before I got that news, today has been a good day! It has been raining all day (monsoon season) and it has been such a relief!! I have been learning a bit of Telugu as well :) I walked in my class this morning and just as every day they all stand up and say in unison “Good Morning Auntie! How are you?” I answered "bagunanu" (which means I am fine in Telugu). They were so surprised and so happy! Then I asked, "Bagunara?" Which means, how are you in Telugu. Their reactions were so cute, each one of them wanted to teach me another word in Telugu.

Me & Brenda in the middle of the all the teachers that I teach

Last night I received news about hiking the Himalayas. We are set to start our hike in Nepal the first week of November. I am SO excited about this!! We are going to hike up for 3 days and on the 4th day we will hike down. The train will take about 24 hours to get up to Darjleeng and from there a couple hours to get to Nepal. The culture is supposed to be very different from Southern India so I am anxious to see what that is like, and how the food is! Andhra Pradesh is known to have the spiciest food, so it will be a nice change to have food that is not so spicy or “pungent” as they say here.

It’s strange though, I am so looking forward to the first week in November - but then I have only one month left here! I can’t imagine leaving right now. I feel like I am just getting started. We are finally starting to understand each other and we are all able to talk more and more that I do not even want to think about leaving! But as they tell me time and time again, this will always be my Indian home. I am sure that when the time comes for me to go home, I will be ready. I am just glad that it is not my time to go home yet! I am planning on going to Secunderbad on September 4th to watch the ND opener against Purdue. The volunteer coordinator is a HUGE ND fan so he got a new computer screen and he has access to live feed for the games online. Once we established that we have this passion in common, we decided that I should make the 3 hour journey on Saturdays to watch the games with him. I am VERY excited about this! I was so sad when I thought I had to miss all of the games. They will be showing from 1am-5am here…which will be a little rough, but we will see how it goes. At least I have the option of watching the games now!

                                  

Jaysree is in Pre-KG (nursery school) and she has a conversation with me every day in Telugu. I absolutely love her.

My 3rd class today during class. About 15 kids were absent so only 41 were in attendence which made class a whole lot easier!  Sorry about the angle, I thought about that after I loaded it on the computer! Pranay is up at the board drawing.  When I let them draw on the board they have a blast, so I tend to create lessons where I can have them draw on the board!