Monday

Today was a very encouraging day! I taught an English class at the Bethany English Catholic College. We focused on vowel sounds, syllables, and stresses. I was really nervous about it but the students are great and seemed to really understand. After the class, the English Department Head pulled me aside and said that she learned so much from me and that I was really a blessing and had been given the gift of teaching. This was probably the most shocking thing she could have said because I have always said I never wanted to teach with my English degree and I hate speaking publicly. I know that God must have given me comfort and words to speak because I am definitly not a teacher. I am just really glad that I could be of some help to them. Next time we are going to focus on conversational pieces. That will be fun and interactive. I am still not sure when I start teaching at the Elementary schools, but I'll let you know.

After that, Kim and I headed to the Children's home where we started our first week of mini-Vacation Bible School. Every Monday we will do a different lesson from the VBS lessons we use at my church. Today we did the moral God is Real with the Bible verse, God is good to everyone. We passed out sheets with the moral on them and had them write the Bible verse. Then we did a sock puppet show with Negative Nancy (me) and Positive Peter (Kim). After we the puppet show we taught them a song and dance from the VBS cd. I think they had a lot of fun even though it was difficult for them to pick up the English in the song. We will teach it again next week with another lesson and puppet show!

Also, today at the Catholic school I was able to talk with a 26 year old faculty member. She told me all about how marriages work here in India. Even the Christians here believe in arranged marriages. Her marriage is being arranged within the next year. The parents control everything and put out ads in the newspaper and then take interviews. If they like the male, then they set up a meeting where the couple talks for 5 minutes only and then the male decides if he would like to marry her. If so, they don't see each other again until their engagement party. If the woman decides she can't go through with it, the family is shamed and it is hard for them to get over that reputation afterwards. Although the Indian culture is slowly becoming more westernized, arranged marriages are still very common. It was interesting to hear about the differences from our culture to theirs.

Please let me know if there is anything specific you want to hear about or for me to find out about!