I've spent the last two evenings with Mrs Lydia trying to to finish off the work on the book on Bishop Jason. the articles which were sent in English are fine, they went straight to the press for final edit, it's the ones which were in Tamil or Hindi originally which have been translated by somebody local. Some of the expressions are really rather strange and as the main audience is non-Indian, it has needed some juggling. Some of them were already done, but I have done a huge number or so it seems. Now I find out that they are not going to use all of them... ah well!
Last night I went straight from school and got home around 9.30pm and had forgotten to do any shopping so ended up having 2 bowls of cornflakes... lucky I had some milk. You have to remember to buy milk in advance and boil it. If you forget and don't have time to let it cool you end up with hot milk on your cornflakes... not an Egon Ronay speciality I can assure you. Tonight it looked like the same thing was going to happen so on the way back I asked Enoch who is Lydia's eldest son, to stop at the food stall nearby and bought a tandoori chicken leg and some Parotta. Parotta is a round, bread type thing which is cooked on the stove top in a flat pan.
I had a new pupil again yesterday, another youngster who had been recommended by Joel (physio)... he's doing a great job at referrals and he has been in my class working with me so I guess he approves of what he sees! This boy came with his Dad who said that he knew me, sometimes I bought tea from his tea stall in Perumalpuram... small world huh! Joel's another sudoku fan, so we periodically fight over the Hindu paper of one of the teachers to see who can get to the puzzle first.
I'm off for an early night, all this brain work is too much for me!
Well I was just about to go for a cold shower and hot 'bucket bath' when the power went off so I'm off to bed dirty! Trying to carry water through the house in the dark then showering in a dark bathroom is beyond my desire to get clean! So may of the things I will be glad to leave behind me in India have to do with water... not having any hot running water, cold showers, filling the downstairs tank, pumping the water from the downstairs tank to the upstairs one, having to drink bottled water all the time, I even boil it for my tea and wash veg in it which may be excessive but I prefer to be safe than sorry. A large can of water, the same as the plastic bottles we get on office water machines in the UK only costs me 35 rupees, less than 50p and lasts me over a week so I'm obviously not being too extravagant. the problem is too, many people have expensive water filters fitted in their homes, but I have been told that filtration does not actually remove the bugs which cause the upsets, it is UV and other treatments which do that. Having seen the water in my tank which is what is then filtered I don't fancy it I can tell you. which brings me to the next thing I won't miss, cleaning out that said tank once a week!
This is a pic of Ida, Metilda and I with a baby who came to visit with a family the other day and was just too cute. As you can see the difference in skin colour between me and the Indian teachers is reducing! The other pic is of a gorgeous young man in Class 1, one of the brightest buttons there. He comes to me most days and just runs into the class room with a big grin and sits down! He was all sad because he had been home for the weekend... he only goes once a term, he's 6, so I took his picture to make him smile. To my amazement he then looked at the pic on my camera and pointed to himself and grinned... he doesn't talk!
