Today we went to the residential school. The school houses grades 5-12, but only the 10, 11 & 12th grade students are back from break (because they are writing their exams this year). The other students will return after the Pongal festival on Jan. 14th. Pongal is kind of like our Thanksgiving, where people feast and give thanks to their gods for the good things in their lives.
Anyway, we were once again greeted with the morning assembly, this time complete with an elaborate puppet show, singing and miming. They played the U.S. National Anthem, which was a first since we've been here. It was a nice taste of home! :-)
We spent the morning hiking up the mountain behind the school. I was warned that we'd be hiking today, but I didn't really pack for that so I just hoped for the best and hiked in my flip flops! It worked out ok, but my feet are a little sore from all the rocks. The good news is it was well worth it! The veiw of the school was absolutely beautiful from where we hiked to. My student guides (Charles, Ahmed, Venilla and Jenathai) said we'd gone about 3 km up the mountain. It was a really beautiful hike. On the way back down, we collected materials (mostly leaves and flowers) and the students fashioned them into a bouquet (Miss America style) for me when we got back.
We observed a couple classes and had lunch, then got to play some traditional Indian games with a few students. It was fun and I was good at it! One of the games is kind of like jacks, but instead of bouncing the ball and picking up jacks, you have 5 rocks spread out within a circle playing area. You toss one rock into the air, grab another rock from the floor and catch the tossed rock before it hits the ground. You continue doing this (tossing only one rock, not all that you've collected) until you have picked up all the rocks. Then you spread them all out again and try to pick up 2 rocks while the tossed rock is in the air. If you drop one or don't get one picked up, you're out. It was fun... I excelled at this game! lol Another one was kind of like the game Sorry! Their dice are little gold bars that are marked with the circle indents like you see on dice, so there are only 4 sides. The game could be played with dice too, and is sometimes played with shells (you toss the shells out and count the number that land with the rounded side up). We also played hopscotch. A game played by boys was probably my favorite, though. you have 2 wooden sticks, one long and cylindrical, the other short with rounded points on either end. You lay the short stick on the ground and hit one end with the long stick to make the short stick spin up into the air, then if you get it up in the air, you hit it with the long stick again. It's kind of like tossing a baseball to yourself. I was good at this one too... my mentors were quite impressed when I hit it about 30 feet or so on my first try! It was a really fun afternoon.
We finished the day watching a debate and a cultural program put on by the students. It's interesting how much these schools emphasize debate, miming and dance. We've seen many examples of each of these art forms and I feel like these aren't really things that are valued in the states. I certainly wasn't as versed in debate as these students are, and I can't recall ever doing miming or dancing in school. I think it really adds to the students' confidence and communication skills to be performing these things regularly. I like that it's part of their school curriculum.
It was a pretty long day today. Since it's a residential campus, the students live right next to the school in dorms, so there wasn't any rush to keep on schedule. We didn't even leave the school until close to 6:30 pm. and there were students still in the school working on homework when we left.
Tomorrow we are headed to the mountains for a weekend adventure, so I won't be updating until Sunday. I should have plenty of exciting things to report from the weekend. Rumor has it there are tons of activities to do at the mountain resort we're headed to, like horse back riding, kayaking, and biking!
Have a great weekend, love to all! :-)
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