Past Two Days

The past two days have been a blast. Yesterday we spent most of the day i Bilaspur (about an hour away), and got to experience some of the luxuries of a bigger city. While Anil was taking care of business, our group (Joseph, Mark, Chris and Geeda) explored Bilaspur. We got some coffee at a Starbucks-esque joint, and Geeda enjoyed shopping for shoes as the guys picked up some burnable CD's for the school. We were wandering around looking for a grocery store, and we eventually found it about an hour and half later. We picked up a kilo of mozzarella cheese and some orange and cranberry juice, some luxury that are not available in Mungeli. Anil found us at the store and we went over to his wife's, Terry, first cousin house to hang out. We picked up thirty chicken on a stick on our way over. That snack was so delicious. They just barbecue nuggets of chicken that are stacked on a kabob stick after they are seasoned to perfection. The tender chicken reminded me of one of my favorite fast food restaurants, Chic-Fil-a. It was great to eat so much meat and get some protein back in my system that my mostly vegetarian had been lacking. But all in all we have ate so many beans and dahl (a crushed lentil sauce) that my diet has been full of protein. I am looking forward to Kovita's dinner tonight, she is making a lot of fish. Before we left Bilaspur we stopped at a sports good store and we bought some weights, cricket bat and ball, badminton gear, and table tennis gear. On our drive back home the six of us ate dinner at a small restaurant that Anil suggested for 475 rupies (about $10). I love a good bargain. We also had an eight year old boy as one of our waiters, oh child labor at its finest.

Today, something happened that completely surprised me. It has been raining during the dry season. Instead of eighty degrees and sunny, like all the days it has been like a slow April day of constant light rain and drizzle. Today was picture day at Rambo Memorial English School. We brought our digital cameras and took pictures of all the classes from nursery to class ten. We are going to get 8 x 12's made and put them on the bulletin boards we are making. I got a picture with class eight as the teacher. The teachers are not assigned class level, but just subject materials, like maths, Sanskrit, English and so on. I actually sat in on a Sanskrit period during an idle period, and worked on learning the alphabet. I taught all day today in mostly maths and science. I am purposely make math plural, because that is the way it is used here. Indians use a lot of British spelling of words like colour, flavour, and favourite. In maths, I taught the three central tendencies of mean, median and mode, and in science we taught the transportation that occurs within animals. We focused today's lesson on the circulation system (British term). We are about to cloth the final bulletin boards after we glued the Styrofoam to the frames two days ago. Mark went and got pictures of all the teachers back from the photo shop today. We are going to put them on some frames and showcase them in Principal Avinash's office.

We miss and love all of you. We especially appreciate all the letters that were sent with us. Joseph, Mark, Chris and I are looking to travel to Calcutta and Darjeeling for five days next week before the next DOC group arrives.