It’s been another busy day, starting with our second morning teaching the teachers. This time we were showing them ways to work on English prepositions with their children. For some of them it was difficult just to learn to pronounce the words and then to use them in a sentence. With others we got into lengthy discussions about when to use ‘among’ or ‘amongst’ or when something is ‘inside’ rather than just ‘in’- our brains hurt by lunchtime so they must have been exhausted. We did the planning for tomorrow with the Hastings teachers after lunch and showed them the new website that has been made especially for them to help them teach phonics (phonics4india.com if you want to have a peek).
This afternoon we visited the ladies at the Nari Dana Centre which is also run by the Cathedral Relief Service. This teaches young women skills that they can use to earn some money for their families. They make beautiful scarves, aprons, bags and some clothes and jewellery to sell. Some of them were there working when we went in this afternoon and were pleased to tell us who had made which of the things we bought.
This evening we went out for dinner to a restaurant that serves dosas, which are a huge crepe with vegetable and cheese fillings and were delicious- ask Mr Wilde about them, he was a big fan when he came last year!
While we have been doing all of this today, some of our group were visiting a village called Mahamaya where CRS were having a grand opening of their new centre which has a school, clinic and a community room and kitchen. Imagine our surprise to find this evening that the event had been on the national news! Have a look at the clip and see the kind of beautiful dancing and welcome ceremony we were telling you about yesterday. You might also spot Rig, who runs CRS and came to our school a couple of years ago- and lots of the others friends we have made on this trip.
We’re back at Hastings tomorrow with lots of fun activities for the children.
Night night from both of us xx
PS Mrs Worth, please would you tell Alfie that his work finding the peanuts in Elephants Aloft rescued us this morning from not being able to find them under pressure- we used the copy he’d marked up for us a lot! X
Further adventures in India... 
Hello, What do the children play at play time? Love from Belle xxx
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Hi Belle
They don’t get a playtime at school. They love cricket though and will really enjoy Saturday when we are taking all the children to a big park to play games. Xx
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Alfie is so delighted!! He has loved reading your blog with me this week and finding out what you have been doing. Enjoy your last few days and look forward to seeing you next week x Mrs W xx
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Wow. We loved watching the news clip, and it was lovely to see the children dancing in their beautiful dresses. It seemed very noisy there.
The dosas sound delicious, what has been your favourite food there?
Lots of love Ed and Ruby
Xx
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Miss Gill’s favourite so far is the dosa and Mrs M liked the honey roast potatoes. It is incredibly noisy here all the time with people, cars, car horns, music, the call to prayer, birds and so on and son on and so on…. Derbyshire is going to seem very peaceful- and empty! xx
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Hi Mrs M and Miss Gill from the Juniors’ R.E. Lesson!
The juniors have loved watching the news clip and Jacamo would like to know why they were throwing yellow flowers at each other. Freddie wants to know why the children don’t get any break time. We have been looking at the Kolkata weather forecast in Maths and also Y5 were converting Rupees into pounds. Neve wants to know if the news report was translated for you. Bella wants to know if the children (or teachers) speak any English. Alfie would like to see some pictures of the park activities. William wants to know if you took any equipment for the school this year? (Have you seen any blankets?). Shohei asks if India is scary and Emmy would like to know what vegetables were in the Dosa. Did any of the girls at Hastings wear fancy dresses like on the news clip? Did you recognise any children from last time?
We have loads of questions but I am encouraging all of the children to go on the blog themselves!!
We miss you and can’t wait to have you back.
The Juniors
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Hi Juniors ( Mrs M here!)
What a lovely set of questions you have given us and we will attempt to answer them one by one.
As we have already mentioned the Hastings children do not have any play time as there is no where for them to go. Look again at the pictures we have sent of the homes at Hastings
The yellow flowers are part of a welcome ceremony for us. They were not throwing them at anybody but throwing them In the air to ‘shower’ us with them like confetti at a wedding.
Miss Gill and I have been buying a salwar kameez each and we have had to convert rupees into pounds to make sure we are not paying too much. We think they were a bargain!
No, the news piece was in Bengali so we watched the pictures like you but the people who went and who were on the TV told us what happened.
Both the teachers and children speak very little English – the odd word and disjointed sentence but they are good at singing and saying rhymes.
I took a few blankets and lots of medical stuff such as bandages and sterile dressings that a nurse friend of mine donated. We took quite a lot of equipment we needed for our lessons – scissors, glue, rubber, crayons, felt tips etc which we have left after we used them. We also gave the children some little presents – stickers, hair clips, bubbles, snap bans, wooden glider kits stretchy men. The children were delighted with everything and they didn’t stop smiling – it was Christmas for them!
Emmy, there was definitely potatoes, peas, and carrots all mixed with a lovely spicy sauce😋😋
The girls at Hastings don’t wear the lovely dresses because they have very few clothes apart from their school uniform. However we have seen so many gorgeous dresses on all ages of girls. We don’t know how they keep them looking so clean and smart.
As soon as we entered the classroom we recognised virtually all of the children and they us which was lovely. We spent the first 15 minutes hugging!
We will send you pictures of the sports day tomorrow after it has happened,
Night night. Xx
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