This past Sunday, on the birthday of the famous educator, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, India celebrated Teachers’ Day as a way to express appreciation for the nation’s devoted instructors. Since Railway Girls’ High School is closed on Sundays, the teachers and students there organized a beautiful celebration for Monday morning and invited Kara, Asma, Neha, and myself to attend as special guests. We were thrilled to be able to spend more time at the school interacting socially with students and staff, in addition to our great time in the classrooms. Our time at Railway on Monday was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the school’s history, the relationships amongst the teachers, and the community as a whole.

The weeks since I (and Kara) arrived in Hyderabad have been a whirlwind – a constant barrage on the senses and full of more incredible experiences than it feels possible to recount in a simple blog post. Images/sounds/smells/impressions seem to be accumulating in my head and in my computer in a frightfully exponential fashion, and it has taken some time to begin to process them. However, now that we are settled in, Kara and I have an immense amount to share and we are both quite excited to finally begin spilling our stories out onto this ample white (web) page.

For now, I will let the photos I took at Railway speak (mostly) for themselves – you can think of them as chaat, and of the much more detailed posts that will follow shortly, as very large and filling plates of biryani.

Asma and Neha, our two teaching assistants from Technology for the People. They are wonderful women and invaluable assets to the classroom.

A precise and very delicate dance by one of the Railway students.

The little ones! I’ve never seen such enthusiastic audience members – their applause was furious.

Dr. Smt. V. Indira (in orange), the former Headmistress of the school, and an inspiring speaker. Next to her, (in green) is Smt. Janaki, the current Headmistress, a similarly admirable woman.

Watching the performances from behind the curtain.

The 10th year girls all wore their saris to school instead of their uniforms so that they would look more like teachers. On Teachers’ Day at Railway, the teachers get to rest and the 10th year girls teach classes in their stead.

Shailaja, Railway’s very sweet computer teacher.

Navya, a former TMS student. Navya played the part of Headmistress, and she was excellent in her role (just the right amount of formality and authority in her tone to let me know she took her job seriously – at least for the day).

So! chew on all this (like paan,) and check back soon for a slew of new blog posts. Now that the blogging ball is rolling, it will certainly pick up speed.