Endings/Beginnings

Apologies to everyone for the lack of an update in nearly a month! The past few weeks have been very busy, full of teaching, lesson planning, and weekend trips away. Although my time in Kochi has come to a close, I ended on an extremely high note. 

In the last few weeks, we got much more involved at the school that I was teaching at, filling our time wisely and trying to be as productive as possible. Most students are taking exams in the next couple weeks, and so in the weeks leading up to their testing, volunteers worked tirelessly to make sure our students did the best they could, and that their test scores would reflect their hard effort. Working 1 on 1 with kids has really allowed me to understand students' individual learning methods, as well as develop a closer relationship with them than I could if I was working with many students. It's so wonderful to watch them succeed in something, whether it's understanding a "simple" concept, or acing a test that we had been preparing on for the entire week, and being able to build upon that. In addition to teaching/tutoring, volunteers have also started a few new initiatives, including a drama class, painting educational murals around the school, and making files for the students to send to future volunteers. In the files for the students, we are writing their strengths and weaknesses, along with notes about their personality and learning style, and anything else we think would be useful for the next volunteer working with them to know. By doing this, the volunteer has a better idea of what to expect once they start working, and they can make better use of their time with the student, having known this information. It was hard saying goodbye to the kids and the school, especially after we started becoming fully immersed in the school. I will definitely miss many of my students, playing football and hackey sack during their recess, leading games and activities for the crazy 5 year olds that are always full of energy, learning Malyalam when the kids decide that they want to teach US something for a change, and listening to Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! during breaks while brainstorming in our staff room. 

I mentioned in my last post that I was making plans to go to Munnar, which I did and was fantastic! It was absolutely stunning, and one of the highlights of the trip for me was simply driving through the gorgeous mountains for hours. We stayed in a hotel with a spectacular view, and met many other interesting travelers there, most of them from around Europe, and a few from the UK. During the trip I saw countless vistas, went to a spice garden, which was fascinating, rode an elephant, and went to a tea factory, as Munnar is known for it's enormous tea plantations. The tea museum and factory were very interesting, especially after driving past miles and miles of tea plantations. The week after that I went on a tour of Kerala's backwaters, which was beautiful and very peaceful. I knew that people were drawn to Kerala to see its backwaters and I now understand its appeal, after drifting through the network of lagoons and lakes for four hours, only to be interrupted to say for a delicious lunch on plantain leaves and to say hello to locals that we passed by on the boat. I spent my last weekend in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. As you can imagine, being the capital, Trivandrum is very busy and much bigger than Kochi. and we spent the weekend there going to its enormous zoo, seeing a temple, getting caught in the rain on multiple occasions, watching the Oscars in our hotel, and going to the beach, which was so much fun! We had an impromptu swim in the ocean, did some rock-scrambling (which resulted in a breaking a shoe), sat around the lighthouse rather than climbing it, because it cost 150 times as much for a foreigner than an Indian, and ate good food at beach side restaurants. After having a long and heated debate with taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers, we finally got back to the hotel. The highlight for the weekend for me would definitely be the beach, but I also love the train rides! Trivandrum is about 4 or 5 hours from Kochi, so the ride was not too long, but it was very relaxing, and we all agreed that we fell under a train-induced trance.

My last day in Kochi consisted of a spectacular ultimate frisbee game, reminiscing, lots of food, and very little sleep. It was very sad to leave the city and all the volunteers that have become close friends, but I am sure that we will keep in close contact! Here in Chennai I will be working in a school called Monahan, which also has a girls' orphanage. I am unsure of when I'm starting, but if the last 6 months have taught me anything, it's that flexibility is key! I spent today in the city, which is even bigger and busier than Trivandrum, which I loved, and I can't wait to spend the next 6 weeks here!