#indiagirlproblems

This morning I woke up with a case of the Mondays, frustrated that I hadn't left campus all weekend and annoyed that I had to teach the annoying little children at Lady Andal. Well, as usual, the poops at Lady Andal weren't half as bad as I had made them out to be in my head. There I go letting my expectations ruin my mood again. Called Brock, freaking out that my India trip isn't what I wanted it to be. He told me I was overthinking everything and that I probably need to just chill out. He was totally right, I'm such an analyst. I'm here for three months, and I can't go out touring the city every single day. There will be days of rest and boredom as well as fun. I'm planning a trip to Goa, as well as weekday adventures around Chennai. It's not a matter of having things to do, there's plenty to do. It's about summoning the courage to learn the bus and train system because rickshaws are starting to get expensive.

My hoop classes were such a ball today. I mustered up the inspiration to burn a CD and we had a goofy dance circle where one person would run to the middle and do a hoop trick that everyone would have to imitate. Then we played follow the leader around the playground and the girls are finally learning to use their imaginations to invent new tricks and connect the tricks that I've been teaching them. Let's just say they're not exactly taught to be creative in school. Whatsoever. During the period that I teach them hooping, the girls would normally have drills where they stand in lines and learn how to march like army soldiers. I just wonder what kind of ripple effect this spark of creative energy is going to have on the school.

I'm teaching all of my students the PLUR handshake (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) and they love it. I learned the Tamil translation for these words to make sure they really understand the meaning behind it.  Today I had them draw something that represented each one of these words.

Please observe my artistic doodles on the blackboard and my extremely attractive sweaty face.

So, today was another day of haggling and struggling with rickshaws to get places around the city but we made it, having spent way more on autos than planned. I'm going to try the train again soon. The first driver we had was plain stupid, he took us to three different places before he actually got us to our destination. The second bugger was a nice guy but he knew we were foreigners so he wanted to squeeze as much from us as possible. He took us to the wrong place and we had to backtrack quite a bit, and we had to pay him some extra. When we got home he asked for even MORE than we agreed to, even when I tried to tip him. We left him with what we originally planned, except I left my bag of mangoes in his backseat. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Another adventure to add to my bag of stories.

Anyways, my room smells like mix of "pleasantly scented" bug killer spray and burning trash. Who needs the ozone layer anyways? Every city has a river of shit and trash where everyone dumps their unwanted crap, and I think people have been burning remnant trash on the banks for the past few days. Yes, kids. That is India's waste management system. Be glad you live somewhere with a government that has such a luxury. 

Ah, my head is spinning from this burning carcinogens/ant poison smell. Oh well. We'll all die from cancer some day if we don't die from natural causes. Until then, I'm going to wallow in this stank.