English Class

Our career as English teachers has begun!  We started class on Monday with 4 kids from our street.  Gun Gun, our friend's daughter is in back next to Caitlin.  Beside her is Ishu, right in front is Shambavi and between Ben and Caitlin is Vishnavi.  The little ones are all roughly Ben's age - 5 or close to it.  And Vishnavi claims to be 8, but I think she's got to be more like 10 or 12.  She and Caitlin have hit it off really well.

Class is 90 min a day, 6 days a week.  So far we've covered the basic formalities of meeting and greeting each other and delight in practicing very excellent table manners while having "biscuits" (read:  cookies) and juice.  We play an American board game or card game each day, and sometimes draw pictures.  Everyone's undisputed favorite activity is playing "What Time is it, Mr. Fox?"  in the street.  The kids love it, but so do all of the neighbors who discreetly watch from their balconies, as well as the fruit juice wallahs who now make it a point to be on our street between 4 and 5 and who just stand and openly stare.  (Chris says its very rare for adults to play with kids in India so the sight of a western woman running madly over the cobblestones with a pack of kids must really be something!)

The kids all study English in school so their vocabulary is pretty good, but pronunciation is a bit lacking.  The mothers have charged me with teaching the kids to speak like Americans...  not sure how that'll turn out, but we're all having a good time in the process!