Travel Home

After leaving Vijayawada, we took an overnight train to Hyderabad, then a day break, then a flight to Delhi. Next day flight from Delhi to London. Overnight in London. Flight from London to San Francisco.

In Hyderabad, we visited our dear family friends the Anjereddis.

 

In Hyderabad, we stayed with Rao's brother.

We had a couple of days in Delhi. We went to visit the Qutab Minar, a mosque and tower. It was beautifully carved sandstone.

Lots of travel with children. Here are a few travel pics.

Now we are home in Oakland and still jetlagged. Poor Kavi fell asleep waiting to be served dinner tonight. Gopal wasn't far behind. We will all be back to normal soon!

Meantime, we are already appreciating the two suitcases full of pachadi (chutney) that Gopal's parents packed to bring home:

Last Day in Vijayawada

Today Ila said goodbye to her classmates of three days. They love her! She loves them too and loves the teachers.

She likes the English class time much more than the Telugu class time. It's basically like a dual immersion class, but in First Grade, they still do a lot of Telugu. Surprisingly, Ila and Kavi have not shown any growth in learning Telugu. They may be understanding, I'm not sure, but they are saying nothing. My Telugu is better than theirs, and that's not saying much!

When we left school today, we took an auto rickshaw home. We had promised them a ride in one and had not had the opportunity yet.

This may be my last post for the trip. We'll see...maybe one more. We are basically traveling from here on out and may or may not have the computer/internet time. See you all soon! Happy New Year!

Visit to Living-In School, Nekkalam

Yesterday, Parimi Uncle took us to Nekkalam, where they are building a new school in a mango orchard. They call it the Living-In School. It is meant to be an operating farm school for high school students.

Here we are on the drive there. It takes about 45 minutes to drive there. We had to stop for a train crossing.

On the way there, we saw a group of monkeys cross the road. That was fortunate, because we have promised the kids monkeys, but have not seen any. We took a photo, but you can't really see anything.

Here is the site of the mango orchard school. You can see that it's still under construction, but it is in a beautiful location, and the architecture looks really nice.








The site is surrounded by these beautiful hills.









Yesterday, being Christmas, there was no school for the kids. And today is Sunday. So last night we watched a movie then played games with the kids here. Here we are playing "Wig Out."

At School

Today Ila had her second day of going to first grade here in India. She seems to like it. Meantime, Kavi went to pre-K, though he didn't have as much staying power.

At Vikasa Vidya Vanam school, the kids in the primary grades have half day instruction in Telugu, their native tongue, and half day instruction in English. This is highly unusual for a private school. Typically the only schools that have any instruction in Telugu at all are the government run public schools, whose job is to impart some basic literacy to poorer students.

So Ila has been attending the morning session, in English. Meantime, Gopal and I had some meetings with the teachers about education. We tried to leave Kavi in the preschool, but he kept getting lonely and having to come out with us.

From two days ago, here is Kavi and Strahlia in the pre-K class. Jini and Strahlia left India today. Kavi keeps asking where Strahli is (and what she will eat.)

VVV is a very special school in many ways and also unique here in India. There is a very warm atmosphere. The kids say it's a great school because they have more freedoms, they can be friendly with their teachers, they have small group instruction and project based learning, and best of all, the teachers don't hit kids.

In addition to that, their school day lasts from 8 or 9 until just 4:30. At most schools around here these days, they are keeping kids in school from 8 am until 8 pm! Actually, I just asked Virinchi (Kavi's favorite person in India) and he says one residential school he attended had study hour until 10:30 pm and they had to wake up at four am.

We have also visited another alternative school called Vidhyarthi. We had some interaction with the students, then they performed songs and dances. They also gave us some of their handicrafts.

Today when I thanked Ila's teacher for having her in class, she said, "Don't say thanks, she is our child." How sweet is that? People don't like it if you say thank you too much. They feel it is their duty to take care of guests, so why would we thank them?

I learned recently that the Telugu word for guest, "athidhee" means literally "one who comes anytime, unannounced." This is part of the whole philosophy of life here.

Kavi's favorite thing about India: rough play with big kids.

In Vijayawada

We feel as if we have "come home" to Jabilli, the house/hospital of our dear friends in Vijayawada, India. This is the place where we stayed for the better part of a year in 2000. The young kids here have grown up, but otherwise most things look the same, with improvements. This is a big community of family and friends that is extremely welcoming, and it's great to be here. Everyone is disappointed that we will only be here for 8 days. (Now only five left.) We have had just one visit to the school we helped work at and we were so happy with the atmosphere and the positive changes they have made. Today we are meant to go look at the site of the second school they are building, which will be a residential "farm school."

Over the past two days we have done several village visits. First to Mussilipatnam where Suvarna's great aunt lives. She is "Kanamamma" to Gopal and Jini. Then yesterday we drove to Mudenepali, Rao's home village. Also went to Ajay's father's house in Gudivarda. (Any Indians reading this will be appalled at my spelling--sorry.) At each place, the kids have been so happy to play with each other in such peaceful places. The houses always have a high cement wall around them, with generous patios and small gardens full of plants and flowers. The children can just wander around and play. One day they got carried away feeding sugar to the ants. Another day collecting flowers. Kavi and Strahlia also like to climb the steps to the flat cement roof and and look around from up there. Meantime, we grownups are being fed enormous Indian meals in the kitchen. Our hosts are not satisfied until we are stuffed.





Another highlight was going to the village temple in Mudenepali, where there was a puja for our family. It involved, first washing feet, then walking barefoot around the temple three times. Then going inside the temple, where the pujari (priest) performed a ceremony, honoring the gods and blessing the members of our family. I would not be able to explain the significance of all the different parts, but there were chanted blessings with flowers, water, smoke, food. He cracked coconuts, saved the milk for the ceremony, then gave us the coconut halves. After the ceremony, we sliced them and ate them. Strahlia loved it.

In Mudenepali we visited both of Rao's cousin-brothers, Ragarao Pedenana and Ramarao Pedenana. Jini and Gopal's cousin Vijaya delighted in showing us around the various animals they keep: geese, chickens including a brood of three day old chicks, and cows. Of course, the kids loved it all. It has been a joy for all of us to bring them here, despite a few hardships. It feels like our time remaining is so limited!