Girls' Home

Spent two hours at Girls' Home tonight. No crazed children stealing my camera, so no photos for you today, but I absolutely will be taking a few pictures when I visit next week, because the view from their roof is spectacular.

 

Actually, I will show you one picture:

 

Several children have asked me over the past few days to see a picture of my family. This picture is saved in my Favorites on my phone, so it is very easy to pull up. I point out my mother and my sister, and without fail they point to me and ask who it is. And without fail, they are shocked when I tell them it is me, and stare intently at me trying to see it. So apparently I'm looking a little dowdier than I thought lately. So now I'm on a mission to locate an optometrist so I can get contact solution and put an end to this nonsense!

Back to Girls' Home. They were eating while I was there, and they dished me up a bowl. I don't think it was the actual meal, but I haven't figured out how these things work yet. Regardless, it was excellent. It was cooked chickpeas. Just chickpeas. I even checked if they cooked them in anything, or added ghee, but nothing. Just pure, unadulterated chickpeas cooked from scratch. And they were so good. Eaten sitting on the floor, with the bowl on the floor, with your fingers. I noticed several, but not all, of the girls mashing each handful a little before they ate. I tried it, but it didn't affect the taste, and seemed like unnecessary effort to me. I also had a cup of tea at the end of the night, with a little sugar and lots of milk. Definitely not as much sugar as they put in my coffee each morning- I mainly drink that to be polite, but it's doable because it basically tastes like tiramisu.

I spent about an hour on the roof with some first graders, doing maths (writing out the words for numbers from the digits), and despite my repeated attempts to explain that I don't speak the language, correcting their Tamil homework as well. The last half hour was back inside (with tea!), helping one of the older girls with her maths. She needs to brush up on the basics, but picked it up astonishingly fast once I started walking her through it. She is going to come find me during lunch tomorrow to keep working on it. I am rapidly getting frustrated with all of the Reading work I do with the kids, but who ever would have thought I would become the Math Maven?

 

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