Day 9

Today was similar to Monday in that I spent a good portion of the day tutoring. It is amazing how well some of the young students can read English and also amazing at how poorly some of the older students read. Tutoring is necessary to give that one-on-one attention for their different levels. In the afternoon each volunteer in my group takes a few second graders for reading group. I was kind of dreading this because last time some of the kids were out of control and I had a hard time getting one boy in particular to focus. But reading group went great today! Another volunteer gave me a tip. In between books, we would play hangman with one or two words from the book. The kids loved playing and then searching the book for the word they had guessed.

So how cute is this girl? Every evening before dinner, the children gather for prayer time. First, they sing songs. I usually can't understand them but they do sing one song a night from the LDS hymnbook. Then they pray. This little girl was trying so hard to be reverent and keep her eyes closed but she kept peeking. So in an act of self-discipline, she pushed her fingers to her eyes to keep them shut. I wish I could take credit for this picture but I stole it from Ryen, another volunteer with excellent photography skills.

There has been a volunteer here all summer teaching dance classes for the kids at the school. Today was her last day and so to celebrate, we had a dance party. They loved it! And they have some pretty impressive moves. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of these kids in a Bollywood movie someday.

Tomorrow, we are getting up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a bus to Chennai to fly to Delhi, to take another bus to Agra. How lucky am I to get to see the Taj Mahal? I have really been looking forward to this. But I most likely won't be blogging for the next couple of days so I will have to catch up when I get back.