JAN 19 Preparing

MY PLACEMENT
Today was the best day at work so far. It was wonderful. The children were great. Before my main frustration came from my desire to contribute but lack of ability to do so. Now that I am on the same page as the teacher it is very different. Today I was prepared. I brought worksheets that I made yesterday pertaining to counting and fruits and the teacher liked them and so did the children. The sheets really challenged them and directly related to what they were doing. There were not many kids today so all age groups were combined. The main teacher sat in the middle of the group and they were pretty quiet because they are as intimidated by her as I am. When a child would giggle or have a bit too much fun she would say a few words in Hindi and all of the children would get silent. She can strike fear in the hearts of people of all ages. I just moved around and helped the children work. They love to show me their work because unlike most of the teachers I act very excited to see what they have done and I praise them a lot.

I don’t know most of the names because they have difficult names to pronounce, so unfortunately I can’t distinguish by name. There is one girl (my favorite) who wears eye liner everyday. She is beautiful. When she smiles I just want to hug her. She is precious, but especially dirty. She is always covered in snot or smells like pee. Apparently parents put eye liner on children because it is supposed to scare evil spirits away. The smartest kid of the younger group is a cute, tiny boy who is always smiling. When the other kids are coloring purple and pink tomatoes and refusing to count he always colors things the precise colors, stays in the lines, and answers my questions. One girl looks just like an Indian Cindy Loo Hoo (from How the Grinch Stole Christmas). She has squeaky shoes. She will put them on and stomp around, grinning. Even though its annoying its cute. Other kids take the squeakers out sometimes though and that makes her cry. Though they drive me crazy sometimes I can already tell that I am going to miss them.



RESEARCH

Today I called the YMCA and have an appointment to meet with someone on Friday afternoon. I will confirm that tomorrow. Again Bella could not meet with me. Today the excuse was that it is her birthday. She promised to talk to me tomorrow. Tomorrow will be quite busy then. I have a meeting with two different people from Vidya. One from the headquarters and one from the office of the Papayn Calayn site, which is where Daniel works. I finished my questions and looked over the web site. Unfortunately for CCS staff to arrange these meetings I will have to miss work tomorrow to go. Jackie missed work today because she was sick so she will take over tomorrow while I have my interviews. I am excited to make progress.

I also watched the documentary on auto-richshaw drivers that Prashant’s NGO made. It was very interesting. It said that 93% of the vehicles on the road are private vehicles, but carry 30% of the travelers in Delhi. 3% of the vehicles are auto-richshaws and they carry 60% of travelers! (The rest go by bus or taxi). There is a huge demand for transport but little supply and they system, because of excessive government regulation and control they system has become corrupt and basically run by the Indian mafia.