Finally! Shanti-Bhavan.

Lalita Law, the head principle of the school and her driver Ragu (yes I also thought pasta, when I heard the name) finally picked us up at Kamat’s Hotel Mayura. We drove for about 2 hours southeast to get to Shanti-Bhavan. On the way, I was impressed to see that on the outskirts of Bangalore there is a long strip of urban development where Intel, Google and a whole bunch of international consulting firms are shooting up 20-story high, glass windowed buildings. I guess that’s the “Silico Valle of India” people talk about.

Anyways, for the more exciting part, once we drove past urban world we had to drive past three villages. These were small, poor and very traditional villages where the men wore rags as underpants tied up sort of like dipers and the women wore their beautiful, bright colored Saris. No one wore shoes! Off course I had to ask Lalita hoping I wouldn’t be inappropriately crossing any cultural boundaries with the question. (At Shanti-Bhavan we are encouraged to ask anything we want which is great! “We are here to bring our perspectives and they are here to give us theirs…it’s all about sharing”). She explained that in the Hindu tradition, wearing shoes represented being disrespectful to their land, the land from where they came from. A lot of farmers in the rural areas of India suffer from foot infections due to the practice. And also because of this belief, when you enter someone’s house in the city it is polite to take your shoes off because otherwise it would be disrespectful to the household. It was amazing to see these villages and its people.

But it was even more amazing to arrive at the school. The campus/land is beautiful, very green, with flowers and palm trees and bushes all over the place, but oddly grown on an intense orangish-red colored soil that looks more like clay. They showed us our rooms, which are located in the “guest housing building”. The room was simple, a great size and clean, and the bathroom luckily had toilet paper (which I have learned to APPRECIATE!) and a western shower-head, AMAZING!

We then walked around the campus and met some of the children who were So DELIGHTFUL and very excited to meet us. From the initial introduction one of the 12-year old girls heard my name and said (as she placed her forehand on her forehead, bending her neck back): “Oh no no, I will call you JJ”. Hahaha! I knew the whole Genevieve (French accent) thing would throw them off. But let me tell you, their names although they ring like melodies, will be so difficult for me to learn and remember. Examples: Bhuvaneshwari or Chandrachekar or Yesashwini…yeah try that.

We had some chai tea which by the way has changed my life forever! So good! And then we sat down with the vice principal and Lalita to work out our teaching schedules. I find out in the first two minutes that I will be teaching 4th grade…at first I thought oh okay, English and dance to fourth grade. OH NO, 4th grade! Like all of it! So I see my schedule and from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm I will be teaching math and science and reading comprehension and spelling and creative writing, etc. to the 4th grade. And then I will be teaching a dance class after school to children from Kinder Garden through 8th grade. Basically in our very typical Nicaraguan slang “me van a sacar el jugo”, literal translation: they will sqeeze out the last drop “of my energy”. But those of you who know me well know that, I AM SO EXCITED, I gotta let this energy out some how right?

I think that what will be most important will be being not only a teacher to these children but a mentor and someone they can trust and rely on for love and understanding.