Welcome to India

I made it! Delhi was kind of a hot, rainy blur thanks to jet lag. On Monday we flew out, after a five hour delay, and finally made it to the Himalayas. The airport is in the bottom of a valley so we slowly wound our way up to Dharamshala and it is absolutely beautiful. Dharamshala is in the foothills of the smallest range of the Himalayas and as a result is still quite jungle-y, monkeys and all. Where our flats are I look up to the mountains and down into the valley. Jet lag and exhaustion sill have me to bed at 9:00 and up at the latest by 7:00, so I've been doing a lot of hiking and yoga in the mornings.
Where I'm working is a school developed by ccs (the NGOI'm here with) that caters to the mentally and physically disabled children of the area who otherwise would not otherwise be receiving any sort of education. I'm working with four kids, Muthil, Ravi, Dimple, and Anchal. Muthil and Ravi are both 17 year-old boys who have cerebral palsy and are moderately mentally retarded. Muthil is also hearing impaired. Dimple is a 14 year-old girl who is visually impaired and learns at a much slower pace, but seems to be the most with it of all the kids. Finally, Anchal is seven and has extreme facial deformations and is severely mentally retarded.
They come each day to the ccs base and we do exercises, sing songs, and learn english, math, and hindi. There are two staff members working with myself and another volunteer so each child generally receives one-on-one attention. A previous volunteer runs an NGO in DC and has taken it upon himself to develop an actual school for the children, which they will be moving to in July. There they will have more room as well as a speech and physical therapist. There will also be more students, but no more than 15 at any given time.
Our main initiavie while we are here is to try and be more creative with the kids. Indian education tends to rely solely on rote memorization, so while most children know the English alphabet and can read, write, and speak a fair amount of English, they have little concept of what they are actually reading, writing, or saying. The kids I'm working with are used to having a family of words, say the days of week, written down for them, and then copying them. They are very capable of writing the words, but they don't know what they mean. The staff we are working with also believe that the children are limited in their capabilities, and as a result do not challenge them. In reality, the children are all exceptionally bright and eager to learn, so Chiara (the other volunteer) and myself are hoping to introduce some new basic concepts rather than continually reviewing what they already know. While I can't learn Hindi fast enough to communicate with the kids, or anyone else for that matter, a previous volunteer has also taught them sign language which is really great. I received a crash course in sign language and am beginning to learn more signs that the kids don't know in hopes that we can expand their ability to communicate. None of them speak, so to be able to interact with them in sign language has proven to be the most effective means of communication. Working with these kids has been really, really hard, but each day it gets easier and I'm excited to see all that they can accomplish. Besides work, everything is great and I'm really happy to be here.