I can't believe it is Thursday already! This week has just flown by. Yesterday doctor daughter had her Scottish interview, so she was the main focus of our thoughts. Now she and we have to sit back and wait and pray!
My group at school has continued to run with between 2 and 4 pupils attending each day. My two new pupils have both been attending regularly, both are much more developmentally delayed than the others and so the work I am doing is much more like that done with our younger Canaan kids. I've also been working with the three school pupils as before and the two lowest classes on an alternate daily basis. They all love working with songs which is nice. It's really nice having parents in with my young kids too as they too join in the singing! I produced a feedback sheet last week which I am distributing. It was translated into Tamil for me, but the two I have had back so far have both answered in English. The picture below is S who is 20 months old and arrived in our physio's hospital clinic the other week. Joel referred him straight to me and we are now working together with him twice a week, which is great. The authorities didn't seem to know of his existence till then which I suppose is down to the fact that there is not a GP system here, so families are not linked with a doctor unless they are sick and then they go to a hospital out patient clinic.

The wildlife here continues to amaze and delight me... usually - I'm not sure about the two inch long bee which I had to duck to avoid as it flew around my classroom today... I am not exaggerating its size either. It was a bumble type bee, most of the bees I have seen around are jet black and really quite sinister looking. Suddenly the world is full of chameleons - there was one sunning itself on the wall at Kovalum last weekend and I caught this one sunning itself outside my classroom today. The paddy fields around the school which were being planted when I first became aware of them, probably early December, have been harvested at some point over the last week without me noticing! Now it is full of birds searching what is left for food.
There are lots of egrets and crane type birds around, mainly white but also some black ibis which are large and extraordinary to look at. Keep forgetting to take a picture of the egrets because they are just everywhere, the picture is of a black ibis at Tuckerammalpuram, it was the best part of 2 foot tall! The birds of prey here are phenomenal, it is really strange to get used to eagles, kites and buzzards circling around above me all the time. Some of them are huge, I saw them mobbing some crows today as I walked home,quite a sight but no-one but me seems to notice them!
I thought that in spite of Mike's comments about jack fruit - which I really like the taste of incidentally - I would put up a pic of them growing, they really are extraordinary and look almost like a parasitical growth rather than the fruit of the tree they are growing on.These are still quite small only about 12inches long, so roomt o double in size yet, you can imagine how odd the tree looks by then! For your information, you can get them tinned in the UK in Asian grocer shops if you would like to try them!
The last pic is a sign I saw on the road the other day. It was next to a steam filled with some of the most pungent effluence I have yet come across and made me smile. The Indian people go in for signs and slogans in a big way and sometimes shorten them to just initials which is very confusing for people like me! You'll probably have noticed advertising slogans painted on practically every wall or bus or lorry which i have photographed.

The other news is that I have a pair of purple rumped sunbirds living near to my house and coming to the red trumpet flowers outside my window to feed from the nectar. I get a really good look at them and the male is stunning - purple rump as expected and iridescent green around his head which flashes is the sunlight, gorgeous. Perhaps I will yet get to see a pair with their young.  Photos will be no good though as there is a mesh covering the window. I don't think the birds would stand for me being that close to them either!
PS My nose is peeling!!