Posts made in September, 2011
Radhica
This is Radhica This is Radhica. She is 3 years old and is absolutely adorable. She loves being picked up, carried, and snuggled. Watching her run is difficult to describe, but is truly hilarious. Her heels kick up to her sides and she doesn’t stop until she runs into your knees. She doesn’t speak any English, but will sing Telugu poems and songs the entire time she is sitting with you. She loves stickers and melts into a puddle when she doesn’t get one after phonics class, and it’s quite hard to resist giving her one even though she was so naughty. When she is surprised by or excited about something she opens her eyes wide and takes in an extended...
Read MorePhonics
Phonics in India One of our main jobs at Shunem is working with the kids on their English reading skills. We recently introduced a new phonics program with the kids. The odd thing about learning to read in India is that it is all about memorization. In school the kids will simply repeat “c-a-t cat” until they memorize how to spell it. The kids who are particularly good at this can read fine, and the smarter ones even figure out some letter sounds. However, most kids have no idea what to do if they encounter a new word. The common practice upon seeing a word they haven’t memorized is simply guessing a word that might be in the story. For example, if they are...
Read MoreGolkonda Fort
Golkonda Fort, or How Many Pictures will Emily Have to Be in With Strangers? Golconda fort is explained perfectly by the following pictures. Words are hardly necessary, except perhaps to say that Coffee Day afterward was perfect. And that Emily posed for roughly 50 different pictures. This is a brief...
Read MorePraveen and Jam
A couple weekends ago we took an overnight train to Bangalore for the Karnataka Christadelphian Youth weekend. When we got onto the train we all felt a little bit uneasy about the coming night sleep, but it turned out to be just fine. However, the way we woke up was a little bit unsettling. Prabhu Kiran, one of the two Shunem boys that came with us, tapped each of us on the back saying, akka anna, we just missed our stop! We got off at the next stop and had no idea where to go. Luckily we weren’t too far off, so our ride soon showed up with two motorbikes for the seven of us plus luggage and a guitar. Seeing the impossibility we hired a couple of autos and crammed...
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