Rainbow Primary School

Here are the boys acting like...boys. They were dancing and tickling all at the same time. We whacked-a-mole. The landlady is now an avid supporter of the school...until April. Then we get kicked out. But we whacked-a-mole again! The land transfer paper is now signed by all the necessary government people (see the post on "Indian Bureaucracy"). It turns out we had the plot behind our very nice neighbor's plot so there was no conflict over the land. Now the only step left is filing with the proper revenue government guy. Since we took five weeks running these government yahoos down just to secure the land, we have launched project "Kick Down the Door." Seems there is some supreme being to all the bureaucracy called the District Collector. This all-powerful person is highly recommended to me by my nonprofit friends. They consider him to be a reasonable, unassuming man. So I asked a friend to ask a friend who has connections to get us an appointment. ...

Isn't he darling? We do a lot of drawing here to cement in their minds different concepts and words. For example, today for English class, 4th standard drew Spiderman standing and sitting to learn those two words. Whack-a-Mole. We just found out the government did not own the land "sanctioned" to us for the new school. Who owns it? Our very reasonable neighbor who lives in a big house next to the slum. His son is studying at MIT, so our neighbor "gets" Americans and we talked for a long time (in English). He offered to help us buy another piece of land in the area for the school. We'll see where that goes. That same day (yesterday, Sunday) we found out we had royally ticked off our landlady. She was furious with us for cleaning out the room she is renting to us to serve as the office (top right). She is kicking us out entirely on Wednesday, out of the office and, it appears, out of the school. She has already hired a contractor to build a one-room apartm...

This blog entry was written by our darling teachers, Sunitha (Preschool), Neha (2nd Standard) and Divya (1st Standard). They picked this picture to post. Please keep in mind that there is no capitalization in Hindi or Telegu: "my childran is very good. inrainbow school i love pree school and all students and i love leighanne and kalpana. teachers names neha khan adi laxmi sunitha divya vijaya medam school antys names sabera bee nagamma." This means: "My students are very good. I love teaching preschool, and all the students. (this was written by Sunitha) I love Leigh Anne and Kalpana. Teachers' names: Neha Khan, Adi Laxmi, Sunitha, Divya, Vijaya. (this was written by Neha) School Aunties (teacher aides) names: Sabera Bee, Nagamma. "(this was by Divya) GOOD JOB, TEACHERS! Not bad at all. Then they sent an e-mail to their exhange teacher in the United States, my life-long friend Mary Helen. She teaches high school in Atlanta, Georgia. It was their firs...

Yesterday, the children, parents, and teachers picked the name for the school. RAINBOW PRIMARY SCHOOL I immediately ordered "Rainbow Head" wigs. Just kidding. We all stayed after the meeting to remove a thick layer of sand from the floor of our hut. It was making a mess during school time, dust was always in the air. There were one hundred little hands scurrying to fill buckets with sand, then tussling over who got to use the shovel to put the sand in the buckets. Other kids were fighting over who got to take the buckets of sand to the sandpile. The teachers formed a bucket line to pass the buckets down to the place to dump the sand. I helped them. As buckets came by, we would say "This is ice cream!" or "This is veg biriyani!" There were also a few three- and four-year-olds who forced their way onto the worksite. They had tiny little buckets they would fill with sand, the put on their heads (like their mommies) and walk, very straight and tall, t...