Today was yet another day of
teaching, one which we communally agreed was the most rewarding so far. The period
after lunch was spent teaching the children from GKV primary school. The
children from this school come from extremely impoverished backgrounds
and have all their school fees paid for. The building in which they are
normally taught – as they come to Sri Jayendra for our lessons – is where
Usha, the headmistress, originally set up her school for 55 students. Each
of us left our lessons feeling very positive about teaching as the children are genuinely the
most engaging, polite and appreciative out o all our other classes. I
personally love how we always teach the same small group of children every
time a certain year group is timetabled for English lessons with us. I
think it allows us to build relationships with them. It is also a bonus
when we can recognize some of the faces out of the 2,800 students.
The last lesson of the day was
rather amusing as the girls and boys were grouped together to learn some
good old netball skills. It was evident to us that the girls hadn’t been
exposed to this type of sport before as the majority of them couldn’t
catch. In fact when trying to teach them how to throw a ‘chest pass’, many
of our passes bounced off their faces. We also noticed that none of them
understood the concept that you cannot move with the ball – Kimberley had
lots of ‘fun’ trying to teach them this crucial rule. In the end I was a
truly enjoyable experience for both us and the Sri Jayendra students.
After school had finished for the
day, our first handball practice kicked off. I think we can safely say
that our star players were Tom and Gus. It was interesting to learn a new
sport and hopefully with practice our skills will drastically improve
enough for us to thrash out
Tamil opponents at a sport they
practise daily.
Our evening excursion to Pothys,
a ‘western supermarket’ had been long awaited after allour food fantasies
(despite this only being our sixth day in India). We were surprised to
see another group of English students standing outside who obviously had
had the same idea as us – to stock up on Pringles, dairy milk chocolate
and bottled water. I can honestly say I’ve never been so excited at the
thought of eating chocolate (and this is coming from me) and I know
that several others felt the same way. This ‘reward’ followed a lengthy trip
to the fabric floor of Pothys where all the girls were measured for skirts
to go underneath our saris. There was an astounding difference between
this visit and the last in terms of how busy the shop was. Unfortunately
the quietness of the shop meant we were not introduced to quite so
many delightful locals.
We had a superb day (except for
those who have not been well) and we hope that the future weeks meet our expectations,
which we’re sure they will.
By Sabby
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