One month in...

Needless to say, after a month living in Pokhriabong, I have gotten quite close with my host family and the boarders that I am staying with. I share the same roof as eleven other people: Binod (host), Jyoti (hostess), Binod's mother, Jyoti's mother, Panaam (Binod's sister), Madori (a teacher), Jordan (my partner) and the four boarding girls (Aakancha, Latika, Sara and Anjana). This is done by having no kitchen, living room or laundry inside the house but having every single room, or space, turned into a bedroom. The six boarding boys (Karma, Nueyal, Aajay, Wongiel, Uojo and Unabov) and Reewaj (hosts' son) live in a small room outside of the house.

Since I prefer to be outside after school, as the house is currently being renovated so it's extremely noisy, and the boys are always outside playing soccer, naturally I spend a little more time with the boys. However, I spend more intimate times with the girls. More dancing, singing, showing each other pictures and more sharing in general. I really look forward to those couple of hours I have chilling and playing with all of them after school and all day on the weekends.

One evening last week, the house experienced a black out. So all the boarding kids and Jordan and I went out to the school quad and went a little nuts. We pretended to be ninjas and characters from Tekken. We were ballroom dancing, attempting the moon walk, breakdancing and shuffling. We played the untangling game where you have to untangle your arms and played a hopping battle where you have to make the other person fall whilst hopping. We did cartwheels and somersaults. We were twirling and spinning around until we were so dizzy we had to grab onto the floor for balance. Jordan and I forced them to call us “Jordi” and “Shaz” instead of “Miss” (something that they're still working on!). And when we were all exhausted we lay on the dirt and watched the stars (which are absolutely amazing by the way!). By this time we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes so we went inside and played the guitar, singing and dancing by the candlelight. I think those few hours were the definitely one of the greatest highlights of India so far. It seems so simple – playing with kids, but that day definitely made the kids more comfortable with us. We are the youngest volunteers here in Sacred Heart and it's important for them to know that we're not here just as teachers but as friends.

At the same time, being the youngest volunteers makes it quite difficult to get close with the teachers. Yes they are friendly but it's more out of politeness rather than wanting to be friends. The youngest teacher is 25 and the oldest in his mid 40's. There are some teachers with whom I have not even had a single conversation with. I am not to sure if they take what Jordan and I teach seriously as they don't seem to take interest what we teach. Although I am somewhat relieved that what we teach is not part of the student's final mark, I would like to know that the teachers here do take us seriously. We have not been invited to staff meetings and even though it would probably be boring and irrelevant, it will still be nice to know that we are considered as “staff” not “volunteers”.