Udaipur - Take 2

So, I arrived back in Udaipur with a great sense of relief. Traveling is amazing, but so exhausting, which you don't realise until you get a chance to unpack and sleep in the same bed for more than 2 days.

Now, I'm getting settled into my new organisation. Tomorrow is my first day of teaching, which is exciting and a little nerve wracking. I have a second grade class in a little school about 20 km outside Udaipur's city center - it's set amidst the Aravalli Hills, and is just beautiful. We new volunteers went out there yesterday to see it, and met the kids, who are shy but very curious. I will be co-teaching with another volunteer, but he has to go to Delhi tomorrow so I'll start off on my own. A lot of it will be about getting them comfortable with having me around, so we'll play some introduction games, then I'll have them draw and color name tags (thank you 6L for great ideas!) and then I'll start some review to see where they stand on ABC's and numbers and basic vocabulary. It's been a month since they last had a volunteer English teacher, so I want to see how much they remember.

Overall, I'm really looking forward to it. I spent about 2 hours today doing lesson planning - I want to make sure I have backups in case something happens, or everything goes too fast - but I think the coloring will take time. We're working with really limited resources, which is such a change after ISB, so Mark and I are making most of the materials from scratch and are trying to come up with fun crafts projects we can do with basic materials. These kids rarely get access to colored pencils and drawing materials and the like, so I want to incorporate that aspect as much as possible into the classes. The students I'm teaching are all from tribal communities - their families all live in extremely poor conditions (all below the poverty line) and most of the kids are sent to school partly because a free lunch is included.

Next weekend is Holi, a huge festival in India which involves complete freedom from all normal social restraints and colored powders which are thrown on everyone. It should be interesting, to say the least, though my Indian friends told me to be very careful and be sure not to move outside alone as most of the men are drunk and high on bhang lassis. It also means that shops are closing down and attendance is going to be lower than usual this week, so that may affect the dynamic of my class. But like I said, we'll see how it goes! At any rate, keep your fingers crossed for me and wish me luck for tomorrow :)

Miss you all!