Lunch

I'm very fed up of the dining room curry now, it's this thick yellow-orange-brown water with floating random vegatable like things in it, and it's too spicy to ignore it while you eat it. So I'm starting to eat in the small restaurants across the street from the school whenever I can. In particular Ice+Spice is a nice little restaurant that sells the most delicious lamb burgers! I was there for lunch a couple of days ago and when there wasn't a spare table I offered an elderly gentleman and his daughter the other half of mine. We got talking and got on really well, it turns out he is a very successful retired doctor who used to work for the Sultan of Bruni for 11 or 18 years (I cant remember which). For those of you who don't know the Sultan of Bruni is the richest man in the world!! - and for Cheltonians amongst you, he's also the one with all the horses.
They offered to give me a lift to the main high street because it was en route for them, and on the way they showed me the gentleman's house so that if I needed anything I'd know where to go. Showing me his house turned into a tour around it, and tea with the daughter and some of her friends! I spent the whole afternoon with them!
I was talking to her about Bishop Cotton's school and she gave me the number of a different school in Bangalore. As a few of you will know BC's wasn't the type of school I came to volunteer in, it's an Indian version of the Cheltenham Ladies College! Private kids who usually do very well in exams, and they are great kids but they don't really need me around to help them. So while my lessons might be a fun novelty I don't really feel like I'm adding anything. This other school is for deprived children, I would be able to help teach English and other lessons, and hopefully actually add to the project. I'm going to call them later today. We'll see what happens.

You can call me Mrs Kumar!

I went to church as normal on Sunday morning, it's practically the same service as St.Nic's including most of the hymns but the sermons are so much longer!! At the end of the service I was talking to two of the girls from school when one of the men in the choir came up to me,
"I have a son, do you want to meet him?"
"Umm...ok?" -ah he knows I'm new and wants to help me make friends
"He lives in Dehli"
"OH?!?" - that's not a friend he's after!...I really hope he doesn't come down from Dehli to meet me!
(addressing the school girls I'm with) "She's nice, isn't she?"
The girls giggle that yes I am nice and then he asks how long I'm going to be in Bangalore, he looked very disappointed when I said only 3 months. Clearly 3 months isn't long enough for a wedding to be arranged! When he left the girls broke into hysterics, particulary after I told them I'd never met him before, and said that they wouldn't marry his son! If only I was in Bangalore for 6 months!

The naughty class!!

I have finally found a naughty class! They're not amazingly naughty but naughty enough for me to need to shout quite a lot! For some reason they love coming to the front of the class, I can not for the life of me work out why they need to come to the front and try to talk into my ear 20 kids at a time. They seem to hate sitting in their places and even when at their place will stand. They are also the noiseiest class I have ever come across; after much research I have found from the children and other members of staff that, yes, they are genuinely the noisiest class and noisy for all teachers. It's not just me - thankfully!
Yet at the same time they're so friendly and I have never got more gifts in my life than from these girls. Yesterday I got a good luck charm, keyring and letters telling me how nice and pretty I was, today I got a pen, pencil, keyring, necklace, star, troll and yet more letters!! I have no idea why they like to do this. At breaktime I have to walk out reasonable quickly or I will be surrounded by 60 girls all trying to give me a portion of their tuck, the only sensible response is to not eat any because if I've eaten some of one girls then I cannot refuse the others!!
It's so cute to hear them all when I walk into class, "Good morning, Miss Clare" (and of course the occasional "Mrs Clare"), that I don't really mind that I have to ask them 100 times to be quiet.
By the way, please post comments! I like to know who's reading my ramblings!

Pictures of my apartment

My mother has been pestering me ever since I arrived to put some photos on the blog, so here is the first installment! It was a holiday while I took them though, so I'll take some more of the lessons and playground when the girls are here.



As a quick preview though, this is the main playground, it's basically a huge sand pitt! It's surrounded by centuries old rain trees, probably called that because when their leaves fall down the sound they make as the are blown about on the ground is exactly like rain.





This is my living room, I'm not great at keeping it tidy!













My bedroom, appreciate the time I spent making it presentable for a photograph! It's a double bed so there's plenty of room to keep things on the edge I might need, ie books, insect repellent, biscuit tin...


My bathroom, it took two days to work out how to use the hot water!

This is the kitchen I dont go in much! Not because of a dead rat because I no longer think there is one, and not because I had to kill two cochroaches the last time I went in there, but because all my cooking is done for me. Although I think I'm going to have to start doing a bit more myself, the canteen food is good but I CANNOT cope with curry for breakfast anymore - IT'S JUST PLAIN WRONG!!
This is the family of pigeons that live in my extractor fan or ventilation (I dont know what it's called!). They're all called Arnold.






The view from my balcony.
I suspect one of the people living in this building of playing loud club music between the hours of 10pm and 12pm - every night!!
In a way I don't mind, it reminds me of going out in England with friends, but there are times you dont want to hear "She's a maneater..." and those are the times you just want to sleep!

Pictures of the school, lessons ect will follow!

Holiday!!

I don't like doxycycline!! I think that's what was giving me a stomach upset. It's better today than it was yesterday though, so I'm not too worried. I was supose to be going to Mysore today to visit a friend of one of the English teachers but I dont think I'm up to it. I want to try visit him another time because he runs a program for street kids out in Mysore and I'd like to find out more about it and if I could possibly volunteer there sometime during my 3 months out here.
I taught a few more English classes, but after the physics class the other day I want to teach more science! We'll see.
We've got a holiday on Monday, which was an unepected bonus. There are so many religions in India, each with their own holidays, and so there are a lot of days like this. I think this Monday has something to do with harvest, it's a family meal.

I'm a proper teacher!!

I'm in such a good mood today!! Nothing could possibly ruin it! I've just taken my second and third class and they went really well!
The first was English with the equivalent of yr6/7, we were going through an extract of 'The Call of the Wild'; the kids enjoyed it so much that they asked if they could make the single lesson a double lesson, and asked their art teacher if they could be excused! I promise I'm not making it up! And just in case you were wondering, no it wasn't because they could walk all over me! I kept good discipline!
The second was a physics class for yr8/9, as any one who knows me will attest I am not a physicist (I can barely spell it!) but I agreed to take the class because the teacher said I could teach anything I wanted. I chose 'How do planes fly?' (the very basics: weight, drag, thrust and lift). I explained the four forces and gave examples, drew diagrams ect... then we did the important part...making paper planes for a competition at the end of the lesson! It was great fun, Claire Love would have been proud of me! They cheered me at the end (no joke!) and I felt quite guilty that we might have been disturbing other classes. I just hope they realize I'm not going to be allowed to teach lessons like that all the time.

First Lesson

I've just taken my first class! It went quite well, the girls were friendly and responsive. Although, the normal teacher was still in the room and she is really quite annoying (I hope she doesn't read this!). We were reading through 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' and pausing at phrases, hard words and anything that needed explaining; nice and easy (especially since I managed to read the book yesterday afternoon and now know what I'm talking about). However the teacher kept interupting to say that not enough people were putting up their hands and moaning about how their parents would be asking her why they were getting such bad grades in English. These girls are fantastic at English, it's the marking that's harsh! If they forget one comma or mispell one letter they loose a mark - I know they need to get it right but there's no way they'd be losing marks for those mistakes in England! She complains that the girls think she's strict 5 times a minute! Argh - I don't want to be told again!! But other than that she's lovely. I'm going to be taking their next class and I'm hoping to teach them a bit about the French Revolution, to help them put it into context. Also tomorrow I'm taking two year 6 English Classes, I need to prepare them tonight, lots of fun!!

Arrival

Emirites is the best airline EVER!! The food is good, there's enough leg room and they even give you a cosy blanket so you can go to sleep. I arrived in Bangalore at 5am in the morning and took an eventful taxi ride to my contact in India's house, eventful because the taxi driver had no idea where he was going and the driving in Bangalore is manic. They have no concept of lanes or only driving on one side of the road. Motorcycles and scooters zip between the cars, buses and autorickshaws. When they stop at the traffic lights on the far left they are more than happy to drive in straight in front of everyone in order to turn right. As you can imagine horns NEVER stop going, all day and all night!
Patricia set me up working in a school, I arrived on Friday had lunch with the headmistress and settled in over the weekend. I've got my own apartment in the teacher's block with living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and balcony(although I never go in the Kitchen because I think I can smell a dead rat!! lol -really should get that checked out). Despite the rat, noise (including car horns and club music which is nearly all English, ie Maneater!) and all my bedding having the words 'sick room' written on them, my room is great, I wasn't expecting anything like this good.
I've been observing classes for the past day and a half and learning about the school. It's Bishop Cotton's Girls School; there's 3500 girls here ranging from age 4-18 and with 60 per class. Nearly all of them speak really good English, and all teaching is done in English. They work scarily hard, during years 11 and 12 (our equivalent of 12 and 13) they take 6 A-level equivalents! Their exams are in March and between now and then the year 12 girls will have at least one mock exam per day which they need to get a good mark in, or they will be punished - I'm not quite sure what this punishment is. The boarders are woken up at 6am to study before school and then they have to study after school and after supper. The teachers are often incredibly strict and expect perfect behaviour at all times. The pressure here is enormous for the girls, because it is so hard to get a job your qualifications need to be good, and this school is ensuring that they are. However it is a private school and so it may well be very different in a rural or state school.
Tomorrow I'm going to be teaching a yr8 linguistics class, we're reading through the Scarlet Pimpernel (I've never read it before!) and I think the day after I'm suppose to be teaching a History class (on Indian Architectutre - ie my subject of specialism...!). It could be an interesting lesson...or at least a short one! I'm hoping to go and working in a more rural school soon, where they may actually need someone to teach english or other basic subjects. It's also possible that I could go and work in a hospital or program for female street children. It's a case of wait and see at the moment. But all is going well and I'm enjoying myself!

Argh!!

OK I leave for the airport in 3hrs, my bag is still not packed properly (ie it's far too heavy for me to lift and gives me backache after 5mins of wearing it) and I haven't loaded all my music onto my Creative Zen yet, it's midnight and I want to go to bed!! argh! Who thought travelling was a good idea?