vacation

I am here! On this cliff! It's beautiful!

The address of my hotel is "Cliff, Varkala." On Sunday, I'm going to Trivandrum to pick up my mama and then we're going to lounge here for a few days before going back to Sarang.

This is by far the most touristy place I've been in India. On one hand it's nice to indulge in smoothies and to feel comfortable lounging on the beach with my shoulders and knees exposed. But I've been so concious of being modest here that it's hard to join in the fun of stripping down to my bikini and renting a boogie board with everyone else. Which I really really wanna do because there are perfect waves here. I'll give my shoulders some sun, then see how it goes.

Also, I accidentally watched the live streaming of the moon crash. Then Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. That's the first TV I've watched in months. It was confusing.

lessons in google

Hi Friends,

Each night after dinner, we have general body meetings, where the kids share their journals, review the day and plan for the next. Recently they've started trying to translate their journal entries for me, rather than have Anu or Gauthum do so. Everyone tends to contribute a word or two, until they have the makings of a sentence. Once they get a sentence constructed they all say it together a few times to lock it in.

So as part of the kids computer class, where they are learning photoshop, Gauthum asked them to each make an advertisement. He warned them that when you google image search things, you don't always get exactly what you are looking for. Uni learned this the hard way, when she did a google search for "girl," and "girl advertisement" and then "malayalam girl advertisement" while trying to find a Keralan movie star to use for her advertisement. I was sitting in the corner of the room while she was doing this, and could tell things were not going as planned, but in the spirit of experiential learning, assumed she'd figure it out eventually.

Anyway, last night when she read her journal there was a lot of laughter and the kids quickly figure out a translation, which they sung to me as a chorus (you really have to imagine the chorus of voices and faces hoping I'll understand them for this to have full effect):

"Today. Uniarcha. Googled. Girl. She. Found. Bad. Pictures."

Here they paused while I took it in and then erupted in laughter at my 'oh noooo' face. They continued,

"Then. She. Googled. Girl. Advertisement. She. Still. Got. Bad. Pictures. She. Is. Still. Searching. For. A. Good. Picture."

So, photoshop pros, but still working on the googling skills.