Given this will be a travel day for me I have decided to post Maya’s first e-mail from India (written to her girl friends and copied to me) with a photo of her I took shortly before she left.
Hey everyone,
I’m writting this email without internet connection so I will send it if I ever find some WiFi. Ok so I’m at the school in Usgaon and it’s awesome. There are 243 girls living here so as you can imagine everyday is ridiculously fun. Ok hang on a second, as I wrote that last bit, our English speaking friend just showed us a copy of the local newspaper and there’s a picture of me with all the girls in it. Sort of wacky looking because the whole thing is black and white so my face sticks out like crazy, it just hit me that I look nothing like anyone here, but from my perspective it hasn’t been that relavant. I’ll get a copy and bring it home to you guys. Sooooo yeah ok and there is a girl named Davika and she’s the coolest ever. She’s the head girl of the school and she’s in 8th grade, she has taken me under her wing. We can’t communicate very well, but her English is great and her sense of humor shows through. It is really, really hard to be funny while speaking another language, but she manages just fine.
I’ve been teaching a lot of English classes, more like assisting my mom, but still. I have a whole new respect for teachers (not Mr. you know who but for every other teacher) It’s extremely hard and not because we don’t speak Marathi, but because we are running out of things to teach. We are working on members of the family in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classes. Every once in a while, we will know a word in Marathi that can help us in class like wedding, girl, or be quite (we don’t know boy but why should we at an all girl school) We are trying to learn 10 words a day and now know 40. The principle has me teaching an extra math class for girls who are behind with their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I’ve only had one class, but so far it’s great and I seriously like tutoring.
Sorry this email is so long. So much has happened since I’ve been here and this is only 1/8 of the stuff that’s going on. I don’t have internet and I’ll try to write, but chances are I won’t be able to until March 10th. Ok what else, oh yeah. I’m taller than every girl here, with the acception of a couple teachers and most of the men. It recently occurred to me that if I’m at least 5 inches taller than all of the girls, Maddie could easily be twice the height of some of the little ones. I’m dead serious.
The food here is incredible, Sarinnagh would HATE it because everything (absolutely everything) has at least some what of a kick, if not enought to make your eyes water. Fortunately I like spicey things, but we still have to bring tissues with us to all of our meals (even breakfast). The school cook, Tibi, is soooo nice and is always checking on us and bringing us snacks, chai, and just about everything else she can find. For school snack, there is a huge, huge pot full of cooked lentils. Two girls man the pot. While I was teaching the math class, they came up to the roof (where the class takes place) carrying the 25 pound pot of lentils. They started scooping them out into the girls hands, head scarves, onto their notebooks, or anything that wasn’t the ground. Everything anyone puts in their mouth here is nutritious.
When we are not teaching, we are usually in our little hut/house/shack/cabin/yurt, complete with a very behind the times toilet and shower spiggot (no drain on the floor). We have opted not to use this because we don’t know how to use it, the result is some less than satisfactory hygiene. Don’t worry we take sink showers… it’s a real thing. Also we have an unexpected roomate. He is beige, small, and lives in our air conditioner. Yeah we live with a lizard, but on the plus side he eats all of the mosquitoes.
Oh, we went to two weddings, a funeral, and an official government inspection of a fishing jetty, (the smell was offensive). I’m never going to eat fish again. This week we are booked to see a buffalo dairy and I’ve been promised the chance to milk a buffalo. We met the owner, Alahbox he is the nicest man ever. He is Muslim, has 4 wives, 5 children, and 600 buffalo, and has made us the best food we’ve had so far.
The girls are teaching me worli painting, some traditional dancing, and will later show me some karate. When I told them that I dance, it has become quite common for a student in class to say “Maya didi, dance”. We have started using my dancing as a reward for completing in class assignments… 100% effective, more so even than chocolate. When I return ask me to tell you about the chocolate catastrophy, it’s too long of a story for the email, and I have to go teach my math class. Oh yeah, someone tell Ms. Baker that I’m tutoring and when I sat in with Davika’s math class, I understood what they were working on (compound interest).