Energizer Bunnies

Sunday, Nov 14
6 am

    This past week has been absolutely exhausting as we have been practicing and preparing for today's Children's Day festivities.  There will be a big program at the school where the children perform all sorts of songs, skits, and recitations.  I cant wait to see how my three montessori girls perform in their puppet show (they get distracted pretty easily) and how the 4-6 standard girls sing One TIn Soldier--I always get goosebumps hearing them sing it as this song's lyrics are my favorite.  Colleen has the 4th standard boys doing a drama called The Farmer and the Son and it will be simply amazing.  The children have never put on such a performance like this and we are so excited to see them decked out in costume performing a real drama.  One of the teachers has first standard singing Doe a Deer---I figured this would excite any sister in the Ryan family haha.  I was really sad that the older girls were not allowed to perform in a play, so we have them singing songs and doing recitations.  Two of my fifth standard girls will recite a poem they wrote called "I am" .  I hope I don't ruffle any feathers in doing this but I was so happy with their writing that I wanted them to share themselves with the audience.  This whole project for November 14 seems to have cracked the kids shells a bit, let them a little more free.  Lets see how it goes!
    I do want to mention Sumleen's adventure yesterday.  We headed to Calicut at 6:50 am for a film festival.  Anis Sir had informed us that we would go to watch some movies and sit on a panel to discuss the educational implications or something of that nature.  Colleen and I eagerly agreed as we love trying new things and we both really enjoy talking probably a bit too much.  We squished into the general class train car and made the two hour journey to Calicut.  We were greeted at the station by a smiling principal of Calicut University, Mohammed Ali, who packed us in his car, fed us egg curry, and hauled us to the film festival on campus.  We arrived to a very nice seminar venue and escorted to a room where we could change from our sweaty train clothes.  Dang, we were getting VIP service here!  I started to worry that they thought we were more important than we really were, but before a thought could finish Sumleen was directed to the front row of the auditorium filled with teachers and students.  Sir had informed us that we were to be part of the discussion, but I was already getting a feeling that we were being perceived as a bit more important than necessary.  I flip to the first page of the program to see what the heck is happening (as no one really ever knows whats going on here) and see printed on the first page:

Film Anchors

Summer Ryan Dunham
Virginia Beach, USA

Colleen McKown
North Carolina, USA

"SH**!!!" I turn to Colleen… is this T-II?? Babox?  I cant fit this situation into any of my Indian schemas!  The program began, we were introduced to the crowd, "We have Summer Ryan Dunham and Colleen Mckown from the USA to lead our discussion on these films today."  Mmmk so we are leading a discussion about the movies Dead Poet Society and Daddy Day Care.  Rather than panic, we pulled out our notepads and put our movie critic caps on.  Better to just accept this duty gracefully.  I had never seen Dead Poet Society, so the experience was quite enjoyable.  At the end of the movie Colleen and I went up to the stage and sat behind our official microphones and let the opinions roll.  It was great to see the students participate in the discussion as Venugopal (a scholarly man who put us up to this.  He is studying the acquisition of language in the child brain and visits RIMS often) stated that this was the first program of its kind that the students have attended.  Many of the participating students expressed interest in more progressive ways of learning (like in DPS), or commented on the teacher-student relationship.  Our comments and questions came to an end and we snapped some pics with some students and headed back to Kannur in the sweltering, jam packed train--first falling asleep standing up and then practicing Malayalam with a cluster of dudes.