Feeling the Flow


Although the first day of school was last Wednesday, I feel that this week is the first real week of school!  There's still a fresh excitement in the air as students and teachers are adjusting to their new schedules, and the excitement spreads as newly registered students continue to arrive.  

There have been some inquiries as to what my teaching schedule is like and how often I do other things outside of teaching.  Here is a simple breakdown of my week:
*STD= Standard (aka Grade)


Monday:  Teach UKG (aka Kindergarten), 8th STD*, 7th STD, 5th STD, and LifeDance Troupe
Tuesday:  Teach 6th STD, 9th STD, 3rd STD, 10th STD, and LifeDance Troupe
Wednesday:  Teach 1st STD, 4th STD, 2nd STD, and LifeDance Troupe
Thursday:  Spend the first part of the day at a leprosy colony with RSO volunteers (or enjoy other personal activities if there's no opportunity to go to a colony), and teach LifeDance Troupe in the evening
Friday:  Spend the first part of the day at a leprosy colony with RSO volunteers (or enjoy other personal activities if there's no opportunity to go to a colony), and teach LifeDance Troupe in the evening
Saturday:  Spend the day doing whatever I want!  I can join the RSO volunteers if they have special outings (or if they visit a colony, but that's rare on Saturdays), or I can even plan my own outings!
Sunday:  Attend church services in Chennai (leave around 8:00 AM and return to campus around 5:30 PM), and spend the evening doing whatever I want :)


Since we haven't auditioned the new LifeDance Troupe yet for this school year, I will be holding open creative dance classes during that time slot for whoever wants to come :)  Tomorrow will be our first official class!  I've even invited the house mothers to come!!  They want to dance too :)  We hope to audition the new LifeDance Troupe soon though.

All of my meals are provided by the school, but I do have a fridge with foods that I can prepare for myself-- mostly vegetables, fruits, eggs, milk, and bread.  And frankly, my body does not do well with spicy food and large amounts of rice (aka. pretty much every meal here, haha), so I do end up making at least one-- if not two-- of my meals each day.  The food here does taste good-- I'm just a pansy when it comes to spicy things!  Oh well-- such is life :)

I'd now like to introduce you to the space where we hold dance classes!  It's also the same area where we eat all of our meals, so that makes for a messy floor sometimes, haha.   Here she be-- the beautiful multipurpose room (or something like that.)  Click on the images to see them larger:


A view from the grove of trees outside

The main entrance (complete with one of our campus dogs!)

From this view you can kind of see the area where we dish up our food.

From this view you can see more of the general space that I teach in.  From this angle, the serving area is to our right (not visible here),  the main entrance is to our left, and during classes the students face the wall you see that's more to the right side.

This is the wall the students face :)  you can see the cabinet where I store my equipment.  And yes, that is a stack of rice bags!  We plan to move it out of the way soon, haha.

So there you have it!  Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions about my life here, or the culture, or whatever!  I still have two months to write about whatever I want to, so I'm happy to take special requests :)  

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