Lunch at Maggie

Some of the teachers were late this morning, tisk tisk. I decided to go into one of the teacherless classrooms, 5th standard, and 'teach' the kids until the teachers got to school. As soon as I stepped into the classroom, the kids were up out of their seats calling good morning, laughing and demanding that I listen to them sing. I let them sing and remembered I had my camera, they were more then happy to sing again. Unfortunatly the vedio is taking too long to upload, maybe it'll show up later? I drew a very bad map of the US and showed them where my family lives and where I live. They were very surprised to learn I live 14 hours in a car away from my mom and dad. They asked me questions and somehow we ended up playing hangman for fourty minutes. These kids are good at spelling! After I explined the game and wrote the fgirst guess word on the board, I had 40 kids shouting at me. "Ma'am! Ma'am! I know I know! G! H! Y! T! F! A!" I tried to get them to quiet down so I could speak, that wasnt happening. So I sat on the ground until they all finally stopped talking. I told them I was only going to call on them for a letter if their hand was up and they were sitting quietly. The girls got it right away and for the first 2-3 games, only the girls played. Finally one boy got up and sat against the wall with his hand in the air. I called on him. The other boys all got up and sat against the wall. We had ourselves a grand 'ol time.

I skipped out on eating lunch today and spent 35 minutes with the kids. The boys got a game a cricket going and all the girls wanted their picture taken.

Tomorrow is Duwali, the festival of lights. There will be lots of fireworks, known here as crackers. Suzan, Chris, Jacob, and Ruth will come over and set off crackers with us, I'm super excited!

The play ground, two seasaws, two swings, and a b-ball hoop

Opening ceremony

The boys playing cricket at lunch

The girl on the right is Trisha, one of the teachers daughters

Me and some of the kids

These girls are sweet and come to talk to me every chance they get.

Some of the boys

Best friends

Rocky lives in the slum. He belonged to the old gatekeeped who died of a heartattach last fall.

The cricket ball got stuck on the roof

Another daughter of a teacher

This girl was at Vijaya's birthday party