Finally in Varanasi!

After a huge snafu with my train reservation, I finally arrived in Varanasi. The campus of the school I will teach at is really cute. All the buildings are brightly colored and laid out in the traditional architecture style, with an open courtyard in the middle and rooms all around. The rooms are small and decaying (they are in the process of building a new guesthouse) but they are certainly colorful and decorative. Right now I am doing teacher training, which is super interesting. There are just some things that they insist on for the school that are natural for the American teachers but really difficult for the Indian teachers. So Nita-ji the person running training, a professor in California, runs the class in the same way she would run any classroom, simultaneously telling the teachers how to train their students to raise their hands, and training the teachers to wait their turn, not interrupt, and raise their hand. The result is that anyone who calls out is ignored. Making some pout and others gloat at having remembered to raise their hand. This coupled with the fact that we all sit on a circle on the floor, and occasionally play games that reduce even the older men to giggling, reminds me of a bizarre grown up pre-school. It really is a lesson in good education pedagogy. Off to breakfast, more later.

Love,

Violet