Please pardon my typing and spelling errors. I am on a Danish keyboard!

 

A quick update as I am always racing to beat the power outages in Vellanad!

 

All is well here. I am happy and healthy.  There is another american here who is also interested in education so we are pal-ing aroudn a bit.

 

very difficult to upload pix because i only have internet access to an old computer. might be able to figure something out.

 

Some disappointing news regarding my internship, the Center for Research that \i was to be interning at closed. Depending on whom you ask, it closed a few months ago or several years ago. the principal of the school said that my research will still  come out of the Center but I don't know how this will be! I am considering my options to fulfill internship hours such as teaching portraiture as part of the after school program, a project report for the school, researching foundations for architectural rennovation, and spoken English - if they let me, the principal thinks i speak too fast! (also, I know teaching english can be problematized, but I actually feel that it's an asset based on some of the needs I have observed- Happy to discuss!( Feel free to throw internship suggestions my way. The more overlap between my internship and my research the better. My research inquiries look at :

 

1. The success of Mitraniketan and its longevity iof 56 years

2. Gender equity in class offerings\

3. Whether the curriculum is liberatory

 

No water in teh guest house right now. A danish couple left their sink on and trotted for a week. it depleted much of our resource but fortunately Sabu was able to shut it off at the master pipe. he is currently looking for a key to their room. fortunately, sabu turned water on just long enough so we could fill our buckets last night and have water for toilettes, and baths - depending on how you rationed it out.

 

I have spent much time with the founder of the school. he is 85 and says he's in the "evening of /my/ life." All meals for volunteers are served at his home so chatting with him about shared interests has been wonderfully natural. He is soft spoken and has a great laugh that sort of takes over his whole body. With all he has done, he feels his contribution to teh community has only been mediocre. Unbelievable, i say.

 

By the way, I am in teh SW region of the country the train fire was in the SE region. Very sad.

 

I hope you are doing well and loving summer. It's hot here but in my opinion, no hotter than NC to Fla. just no AC!

 

All my love,\\