Library Mishaps and Confusion

January 14, 2009
Tuesday was quite frustrating. It took us forever to get the library software to work and when it finally worked we brought it over to third hostel, but we were missing a power cord for the monitor. We had to wait until Hafeez got back from picking up the kids at school, so the whole morning was lost. We then had lunch and came back to find that the power was out. We decided to work on sorting the mountain of clothes that were donated that were sitting in one of the rooms downstairs next to Dan’s room. The power stayed out for at least 3 hours. When it finally came back on we found out that the monitor we were using doesn’t work. So, again we were stuck. We spent the rest of the day pretty much playing with the kids and relaxing.

Yesterday was a Hindu holiday, so three teachers were not going to be there. I had planned to take over one for the Math teacher that was not supposed to come, so I took the school bus and was all prepared. Once we got to the school I found out that the teacher was in fact going to come. I was a little bummed, but I decided that it was a good thing because then I could start computer classes. However, three out of the ten computers were not working and also most of the kids had finished the typing software that is on the computers. I spent a while trying upload new software, but the power kept going out in the middle so I gave up. I worked at Lynne’s house for a little while updating the medical records and other administrative things up until lunch. Marion and I had lunch at the school. Marion spent the day teaching English by herself. She seemed to really enjoy it!

After lunch I went with Lynne to the store to buy some supplies for the Hindi movie we were going to have that night, we then went to 2nd hostel to hand out the kids Easter outfits from last year for them to wear and then we ended at the office. I did a lot of photocopying and printed out some application photos. At around 5 Ratnam picked me up on the two-wheeler to take me to get a cell phone. While we were there we went across the street to Coffee Day for a really good treat we both had a drink called a Café Frappe which had coffee and vanilla ice-cream. It was really good, and while we were drinking I got to hear all about Ratnam, He has such a cool story. He literally came from nothing. He went to public school were his parents didn’t have to pay his tuition until college. Then he had to beg for them to let him in because he had no money for the tuition. By the ended he felt really guilt for not paying anything so he and his parents sold there only cow to pay for half of his tuition. When he got to medical school he had nothing even to sell to pay the tuition, so he took a year off and worked three jobs everyday. At the end of that year he had just enough for the tuition for the year and a little pocket money for food. At the end of the first year he really had no desire to work as hard as he had the year before, so he had an idea to make sort of a study guide for first year medical students. The whole summer he spent writing a condensed version of the text book with helpful sample questions. He went to a publisher, but they would not pay for the idea so he sold it on his own. He said that he went to all the local medical schools and sold them. It went really well and he didn’t have any money problems after that. He made another book after each of the next three years and he got them all published. He said that I could still find his study guides in schoolbook shops. We then went back to the house were everyone was waiting to start the movie. Hindi movies are all about three hours, so we had to start early. It was called Jab We Met, which means, “when we met”. It was pretty good, considering all Hindi movies have music videos in the middle of them. Lynne, Ratnam, Dan, Amy, Marion, Thanuja, and I all watched it, and then had dinner at around 10:30.

Today I went to ARV with Amy. It was the same usual group of kids except that one negative boy, A. Sai, came with us because he has a weird skin rash. We met Sheila there and waited to be called to see the doctor. The hospital was nice enough to provide ride on toys for the kids while they waited, which they had a blast on. After we say the doctor, Jayapaul took A. Sai to the dermatology department with Amy, Sheila, and I, while Hafeez stayed with all the other kids. It turned out to be a kind of virus that is common in HIV positive patients, which caused us to be a little scared. We all went back to the ambulance and then Jayapaul took Sai to get a blood test done to make sure that he is not positive. We waited in the ambulance for the results for almost 2 hours and everyone fell asleep including Amy and I. We woke up and luckily the results said that he was negative. We headed back to have lunch and we hung out in the room for a while. We had to wait until Dan got home to get into the ground floor where the library is. After Dan got back we worked on the library for a while, seem to get nothing done, but I guess we made a little dent. We are about a 20th of the way done WOOHOO! Well at least we finally started, after talking about it for four months.