Namaste Everyone!

I hope you are all really well and have had a great start to the New Year?

My time out here has really picked up since the new group arrived. The house was so quiet until they arrived last Monday. We were all out cheering and clapping to welcome them in and put red thread bracelets around their right hand - a sign of prosperity and good luck in India.
There are two other Scottish people in the group and it is nice to have such strong accents in the group again! Despite only having spent a week with them, I know our time together will be grand. There are lots of big characters like in the last group but we have all came together really well. Their first couple of days we showed them around Palampur and took them on some treks to show them what to expect over the next 10 weeks.
School was off Monday and Tuesday so the new group came to visit us on our placement on Wednesday. Hayley chose to work at Malanta Day Care Centre along with me and I know we are going to have a cracking time. We have the same dry sense of humour and love working with kids so my last weeks with my wee ones will be full of much laughter and fun!

As my kids in the Day Care Centre are all really comfortable with the syllabus, we have started them on further work, namely body parts, vehicles, days and months and animals. I know by the time they come to study at Primary school they will have a good foundation on which to build their future education. I would really love to come back at the end this 3 year project and see how they are getting on. On the negative side, after the festival the attendance at the DCC has been really poor, with 7 kids at most attending during the day. I asked the DCC women what is happening to the other kids but they are unsure of when they will be back. I hope I get at least one day with all my wee ones again before I leave. It seems so close already. I will be home in Scotland in 4 weeks today. I think when the day comes I will be ready to leave but part of me will always stay here in the actions of the kids I have taught and in the construction work that we will be starting soon. These last few weeks are going to fly in so I'm going to start reflecting on my time here so I can write a journal proper once I get back home to inform everyone of my work, the rich culture in India and what life is like over here.

We plan to make some blackboards for Malanta School because as there are more volunteers now, the school has opened up two of its classrooms. As the kids were all usually taught outside before, the classroom have clearly been neglected and need a lot of work. Despite the challenge that physical work will provide, as my kids will be going to this school after they 'graduate'from DCC, it will be more than worth it. After finishing most of our community surveys, we are now ready to begin constructing a toilet at Drovi school, which is just up the mountain from where I currently teach. Part of me is a little jealous that the group who come out here after us will have a lot more projects that they can become involved in but at the end of the day, the first groups out here have sown the seeds upon which these projects will grow and I am so happy and proud to be part of it.

Work at the High School is still coming along fantastically. Especially now I have Hayley teaching alongside me. We have been teaching our kids how to draw inferences and conclusions from paragraphs they are reading.
They have found it difficult to pick up but this afternoon they had most of the answers correct so they are really getting into the swing of it.
I think my own English has also improved as the English lessons the kids get out here are much more intense than the ones we get back home in Scotland. For example I am teaching my class 7 (ages 11-12) what a preposition is and a superlative adjective, things that we never knew the names of at school.

They have their exams soon to go into the new class so it will fall on the new group to continue the work we have started to push all the kids and make sure they graduate and are able to have good prospects for their future careers.

I'm still finding it hard to take in just how friendly Indian culture is. It is totally different from back home and has been a good wake up call to all of us that so many of us Westerners are so wrapped up in our own concerns that we do not give attention to those around us when we really should. We have made good friends with a local bunch of Advocates whom we play basketball with during the week and there are always invites back to people's houses for Chai so they can chat to you and find out more about what life is like in the UK. It is also interesting for us as it helps us to work on community integration and find out more about the day lives of people over here. It is amazing that despite so many families living in what we would look at as absolute poverty in the UK, they are so happy, welcoming and open and would go out of their way to help you in any which way they can.

Last weekend we went to McCloud Ganj (again) and as only 3 people stayed behind there were 24 of us who went. As always, McCloud never seems to disappoint and our weekend only comes second to our New Years venture.
We tried different restaurants this time so we could get to see more of the town. Just before we got our food, there was a power cut throughout the whole of McCloud for 30 minutes. Luckily, our food was cooked so we all had a candlelit dinner which was lovely! We checked out a nightclub called Xcite which the old group had a lot to say about. It was full of Tibetans breaking out the dance moves, but as always we were not one to back away from the challenge and brought out some moves of our own! It was so much fun and a really good team bonding night. The weather sucked the next day though so we made a swift retreat back home just in time for tea, after checking out our favourite restaurant, Carpe Diem of course.

Well that all my news for this week but I really do hope you are all week and please send me your news as it really does make my day!
Love,
Chris