Monday, February 23, 2009

First Day of the Week

First day of school since my return. I’m still tired and it was quite an effort to teach the last two periods. As soon as school was over, I had a bath, then lunch and went to sleep. Slept till 3:15 and woke up with a headache which is still bothering me. Hope it will go away. Strange that in Kolkata’s polluted atmosphere I suffered no health problems. And as soon as I get back to fresh air, I get a headache!

The weather is strange. It’s cool at night. Chilly in the mornings and hot in the afternoons. Around noon it starts blowing hard and the gales continue till about 3 and then stop as abruptly as they start. The wind is dry but not hot. However, it messes up the whole project. It blows leaves off the trees and the palas flowers. I promised Yvonne that I’d post a picture of a palas in full bloom. Yet when I went to take a photo today I realized that ALL the flowers have been blown off! I can still see a few trees laden down with palas flowers outside the campus. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take a walk and photograph them. Failing which I’ll put up an old photo.

This evening I opened up the four parcels Yvonne sent us. They were full of crayons, notebooks, pencils and puzzles. I’ve decided to give these to the kids as their monthly attendance gifts. I hope Yvonne won’t mind. With the puzzles Simha left behind and the ones the Yvonne sent we now have enough jigsaw puzzles to keep the nursery and class one kids busy. And for once, we have more than enough crayons to go around and the children can now do some colouring and artwork.

The school timings remain as it is for the time being. We plan to change it from the 1st. We will then have classes starting at 8:30 and we will finish off by 12:30. Today at assembly I noticed that all the children were wearing their uniform. Great.

The good news is that I’ve heard from Amar Subash and Manas Das saying that they will continue to support the project’s work. This is great news indeed. So the hat is not looking empty. Hope I’ll get more good news soon. Today the masons came to discuss the well. We’ll start digging from the 1st of March. Hopefully by the end of March we will have ourselves a well. Let’s see how things shape up.

1 comment:

Yvonne said...

I am so happy the packages reached the project! My nieces Teresa and Anna helped collate the bags. Getting them there was probably no easy task, so thanks. Use the items any way you wish--for fun and/or incentive. The children deserve all of it and more. The coloring maps of India were the clearest I could find--although I don't think Bihar was divided into Jharkhand. But perhaps the kids could mark their locale with a star and the major cities with another mark. I thought once they were completed, they would make nice wall decorations, too. Did you see the books I included for you on the Grand Canyon? I have to get you prepared for your visit to the States someday. ; ) Some hair clips for Mitali as well!