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.