Good-Byes and Beginnings

January 31, 2009
So Friday Marion had her last set of classes and Amy had her last day with hostel 2. We then came back and worked on bills and the Library. Saturday we spent all day doing bills. At around 5 we went to 2nd hostel so that Marion and Amy could say good-bye. We then went back to third hostel to say good bye to 1st and 3rd. After the long ceremony, we finished off the bills from the last 3 years. We then went upstairs and packed. We had planned to stay up all night since they had to leave at 4:30 for the airport, which was a good plan in theory, but once 1:30 came around I was completely exhausted and ended up falling asleep until about 3. We then watched Grey’s Anatomy until 4:15 to keep awake. We headed to the airport so that they would catch their 7:30 flight and we said good-bye. We came back and I slept in my old room at the guest-house for a couple of hours.

Sunday I realized that I didn’t have the key to get back into the room. I am thinking that both the keys ended up heading back to the states. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but not having clean cloths for the day was quite a bummer. We then went to clean Lynne and Ratnam’s new house because they are planning to move in this weekend. We brought along some of the kids who volunteered and cleaned pretty much the whole day. Monday was Republic Day so we went to first hostel where all the kids were waiting. They had Lynne hoist the ceremonial flag and the kids sang the national anthem. They then had the teachers play some games and they handed out some candy. We went back to the house where Lynne and Ratnam started packing to go to New Delhi. Lynne is going to New Delhi to make sure that their application to bring in foreign money is processed. They had applied three times before, but each time the government didn’t even respond to say that they even received the paperwork. Tuesday they left early in the morning. I worked on administrative things at the house. Wednesday I went into the office and worked online for a while. Thursday I started back up classes I took 7th, 8th, and 9th in for computer classes, 7th math class, 9th grammar class, and 10th math and English class. It was quite a long day, but it was good to get back to teaching. Yesterday Laxmi and Thanuja were packing the house, so I was helping to watch the kids. I held the non-computer class, but I canceled the computer ones. Today. I had classes as usual. The older kids are very anxious to start learning how to program, so I gave an exercise similar to the “Making an Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich” problem where you have to very specifically describe how to make a sandwich. However since they don’t eat PB & Js I had them write about their morning schedule. At first I had them write a little, but while they were writing I wrote one to show how detailed it needs to be. They had trouble at first, but once they got the idea they did a really good job.