My photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28873916@N04/
Kelsey
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
hey everyone! so i've been back home for around a week and a half and i finally got my pictures uploaded and i put them on a flickr website. it would only let me put up 200 photos and it got a lot of them out of order so i will try to rearrange some of the photos later, and i might create another account so that i can upload the rest of my photos. enjoy!!
Kelsey
Kelsey
Saturday, July 12, 2008
I just spent the last 24 hours with Julia and Stephanie. Wondering why they haven't posted? It's because they haven't had internet for almost 2 weeks. Yep, the entire 17,000 person town of Mundgod doesn't have internet. The school has one computer with internet, but apparently it's a big deal for them to ask to use it.
Stephanie and Julia have done a GREAT job with what they have to work with. With a little less than $500, they (with Kenji and my help) have bought colorful carpets, pillows, bookshelves, books, games, and CD-ROMS. They have made posters saying "Quiet in the Library" and rules for the books/levels, and gotten the sisters in the hostel to translate all of the posters into Kannada so they are in both languages. They have labled all of the books in Kannada with stickers (reinforced with tape) corresponding to different levels of difficulty. They bought audio casette tapes and recorded themselves reading books in English, so the kids can check out the books and listen to them being read in English. I'm really proud of all that they have done, and really feel like with their hard work, they have made this Mundgod library a successful endeavor. You can find some of the pictures at the following website:
Besides doing a great job with the library, the girls have also made friends with many of the D. Ed (teacher in training) students, and have fallen into a really comfortable routine. Their beds are ROCK hard (I slept in it last night and woke up about 20 times) and they have pretty much the same thing every meal (rice, sambar, and maybe some vegetable), but the campus is beautiful, and I think this experience really allowed them to reflect on their time in India so far. They are definitely getting into the culture, eating with their hands, not wearing anything that shows their shoulders or knees, using an Indian toilet and filling up a bucket to pour on top as a flush, taking bucket showers with cold water, etc. They don't seem to be complaining or fighting or anything. Basically, they are doing a great job and enjoying themselves.
Kenji and I parted ways yesterday. He took a bus from Hubli to Goa, where he was supposed to meet Zach and Emily (Kelsey and Natasha have already left). Unfortunately, their train was an express train that PASSED the Goa station, and they ended up all the way north in Maharashtra! I talked to them this morning though and they had taken another train to meet up with Kenji. They will stay in Goa until tomorrow night, when Emily and Zach will go back to Mangalore, and Kenji will fly up to Delhi and then to Nepal. Julia and Stephanie are going to work on the library until Tuesday, and then take a bus to Hampi and then meet Emily and Zach in Mysore next weekend.
As for me, I'm about to fly to meet Chris (my old work buddy) in Chennai for 2 and a half days, then back to Mumbai and gone home!!! I can't believe this trip has gone soooo fast, I've been to over a dozen cities in 28 days, but it feels like it's gone by in a blur.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
More pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2133288&l=68743&id=208301
Kenji and I just met up with Julia and Stephanie, they have lots of stories and plan to stay in Mundgod at least through the weekend, at which point they may travel and try to meet up with the other group.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2133288&l=68743&id=208301
Kenji and I just met up with Julia and Stephanie, they have lots of stories and plan to stay in Mundgod at least through the weekend, at which point they may travel and try to meet up with the other group.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
from the mangalore site
Ok so we have been living in the Catholic orphanage. It's been pretty fun. We had an ice cream party with the nuns the other day. We really enjoy teaching English lessons to the housemoms because they are older (about 20) and so they understand all of our instructions and we have dialogues with them. We are going to start gearing our lessons toward teaching them how to maintain the cottage libraries we are putting in.
The lessons with the kids are a little more challenging because they hardly understand any English so it is hard to give them directions. But those have been fun too.
Right now we are waiting to hear back from some schools and some carpenters before we proceed with any library building.
And a side note, Mangalore has very famous ice cream, so we went with Natasha the other day and just bought hella ice cream dishes. And we found an amazing coffee shop that seems super trendy. They were playing Indian radio (and we really miss music) and they had a bunch of teenagers hanging out. It was just like Starbucks at home... We definitely plan on going back when we get a chance.
Tomorrow there is a special mass at 6:30 am and then the next day the kids are putting on a dance program they have been practicing hard for. It should be really fun.
The lessons with the kids are a little more challenging because they hardly understand any English so it is hard to give them directions. But those have been fun too.
Right now we are waiting to hear back from some schools and some carpenters before we proceed with any library building.
And a side note, Mangalore has very famous ice cream, so we went with Natasha the other day and just bought hella ice cream dishes. And we found an amazing coffee shop that seems super trendy. They were playing Indian radio (and we really miss music) and they had a bunch of teenagers hanging out. It was just like Starbucks at home... We definitely plan on going back when we get a chance.
Tomorrow there is a special mass at 6:30 am and then the next day the kids are putting on a dance program they have been practicing hard for. It should be really fun.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Before I go into details about the site, let me just say a word about our time in Goa:
Goa is the popular tourist destination for rich Indians wanting a luxurious vacation with no garbage on the road or beggars in the streets. However, we were there during the off season, so there was hardly anything open. It was still incredibly relaxing, and far different from anything we had experienced before; much lower noise level, less crowded, cleaner, etc. We laid on the beach, and the four of us (me, Julia, Stephanie, and Kenji) were essentially alone except for a pair of bulls lumbering over near us. We got caught in the monsoon a couple of times. During the worst bout we ducked into a roadside stand, where I bought a few pieces of clothing, and we talked to the lady trying to make a sale in the off-season. She asked us what we were doing here, and we told her "we're building a library"...she looked at us funny, and said, "what's a library?" I thought that was pretty shocking...
Anyway, so last night we took a 6 hour bus from Goa to Hubli, where we spent the night. This morning Fr. Pinto picked us up from Hubli (he drove several hours to come get us), and drove us all to the school. Kenji and I left our stuff in our room at the hotel, rightly assuming that we could come back to get it before the 10:30 p.m. checkout.
The school is in an incredibly rural area, about half an hours walk from Mundagod (which is about an hour and a half outside of Hubli, the next biggest city). It's a huge school, spread out over a large area, connected by dirt paths. The buildings are large, clean, but very simple. The school is for grades K-12, plus a 2 year teacher training program. The grounds house 600 out of the 800 students, who come from all over the state to attend this school. Most of the student sleep on mats on the floor in cottages scattered over the grounds. After the age of 10, boys and girls are on opposite sides of the campus.
The students have a very rigorous day- wake up at 5:30 a.m., go to mass, chores, breakfast, then school from 9-4 with an hour for lunch. From 4:15-5:30 they have a break, followed by study until 7:45. At 8 they have dinner, followed by more studying until about 10, when they go to sleep.
Julia and Stephanie are staying in a cottage with the D.Ed (Teacher training) students, who are about their age. We had a great conversation with Fr. Johnson, the principal of the 8-12 grades. He is young, and just moved into this position taking over from Fr. Melwyn. He seems to have a lot of enthusiasm, and will be a lot of help.
The biggest issue is going to be stretching $450 to create a decent library. Bookshelves are expensive, around $75 (Kenji and my task for tomorrow is to find out exactly how expensive), and books in kannada range from $1-3. The girls also don't have internet, and their phone doesn't recieve calls for some reason, so communication will be difficult, we have to have certain times of day when they will call me.
Kenji and I are probably going to go get good books in Kannada in Bangalore, where we will spend time with a family friend who can help us pick out good books for the children. We will then come back and help the girls in any way we can. It's hard for us to do much though, because there isn't room at the school for us to stay, and Hubli is an hour and a half away. Nonetheless, we will do the best we can. No matter what, these kids don't get that much exposure to the english language, and their current library is pretty shoddy- I think that Julia and Stephanie will make a postive impact, probably larger than they realize.
Goa is the popular tourist destination for rich Indians wanting a luxurious vacation with no garbage on the road or beggars in the streets. However, we were there during the off season, so there was hardly anything open. It was still incredibly relaxing, and far different from anything we had experienced before; much lower noise level, less crowded, cleaner, etc. We laid on the beach, and the four of us (me, Julia, Stephanie, and Kenji) were essentially alone except for a pair of bulls lumbering over near us. We got caught in the monsoon a couple of times. During the worst bout we ducked into a roadside stand, where I bought a few pieces of clothing, and we talked to the lady trying to make a sale in the off-season. She asked us what we were doing here, and we told her "we're building a library"...she looked at us funny, and said, "what's a library?" I thought that was pretty shocking...
Anyway, so last night we took a 6 hour bus from Goa to Hubli, where we spent the night. This morning Fr. Pinto picked us up from Hubli (he drove several hours to come get us), and drove us all to the school. Kenji and I left our stuff in our room at the hotel, rightly assuming that we could come back to get it before the 10:30 p.m. checkout.
The school is in an incredibly rural area, about half an hours walk from Mundagod (which is about an hour and a half outside of Hubli, the next biggest city). It's a huge school, spread out over a large area, connected by dirt paths. The buildings are large, clean, but very simple. The school is for grades K-12, plus a 2 year teacher training program. The grounds house 600 out of the 800 students, who come from all over the state to attend this school. Most of the student sleep on mats on the floor in cottages scattered over the grounds. After the age of 10, boys and girls are on opposite sides of the campus.
The students have a very rigorous day- wake up at 5:30 a.m., go to mass, chores, breakfast, then school from 9-4 with an hour for lunch. From 4:15-5:30 they have a break, followed by study until 7:45. At 8 they have dinner, followed by more studying until about 10, when they go to sleep.
Julia and Stephanie are staying in a cottage with the D.Ed (Teacher training) students, who are about their age. We had a great conversation with Fr. Johnson, the principal of the 8-12 grades. He is young, and just moved into this position taking over from Fr. Melwyn. He seems to have a lot of enthusiasm, and will be a lot of help.
The biggest issue is going to be stretching $450 to create a decent library. Bookshelves are expensive, around $75 (Kenji and my task for tomorrow is to find out exactly how expensive), and books in kannada range from $1-3. The girls also don't have internet, and their phone doesn't recieve calls for some reason, so communication will be difficult, we have to have certain times of day when they will call me.
Kenji and I are probably going to go get good books in Kannada in Bangalore, where we will spend time with a family friend who can help us pick out good books for the children. We will then come back and help the girls in any way we can. It's hard for us to do much though, because there isn't room at the school for us to stay, and Hubli is an hour and a half away. Nonetheless, we will do the best we can. No matter what, these kids don't get that much exposure to the english language, and their current library is pretty shoddy- I think that Julia and Stephanie will make a postive impact, probably larger than they realize.
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