It still seems incredible when I think about it, but we are writing to you from India!!! Our trip here was long but everything went smoothly… Our 14 hour-long flight from New York to Delhi gave us plenty of time to savor the transition to Indian culture by choosing from a selection of over 15 Bollywood movies, and before we knew it, we were turning down taxi offers in the heat of a Delhi afternoon. The following day we took a domestic flight to Hyderabad and settled nicely into our apartment in the centre of the old city. The apartment is great, it has all the comfort we need and more, and it’s a very relaxing and tranquil place to come back to after a hectic day in the city – the serenity up here on the 8^th floor certainly does not give away the craziness of Hyderabadi traffic, the loudness of a million car horns and the cries of the samosa vendors that fill the neighborhood streets downstairs.

Last week was pretty much filled with meetings, visits, grocery shopping, a hunt for wireless signals and discovering the meaning of an impressive variety of menu items and cooking ingredients. We met Swarna and Siddiq from the American India Foundation, and Siddiq came with us to both of the schools and helped us with the introductions. At the girls’ school we were very impressed with the kind and sweet nature of the school secretary, Miss Sitarambai, who greeted us with tea and insisted on how much they appreciate our help and how much they valued the Modern Story project and its role in the girls’ education. She also told us that the girls from the group that Remy and Piya worked with (who are now in the 10^th grade) have been actively using the skills they learned, filming school functions and logging the footage onto the computers. Hearing this made us very happy, because it is a testimony to the success of the project, and reaffirms its importance. It proves that the students will continue using and augmenting the skills they learned even after the end of the course.

The girls were all very excited to meet us and the 10^th graders kept asking about Piya and Remy and telling us how much they missed them! We are now teaching twelve wonderful 9^th grade students who have already gotten very involved with the course and seem to have taken a great interest in the subject matter. Two English teachers from the school are sitting in on our classes and we find their help of critical importance, since English is just the third language for these students – after Telugu and Hindi – the language barrier can sometimes prove quite a challenge. What we’ve personally found is that the girls usually understand us, but when they don’t understand us, they are very reticent to tell us that they don’t understand, and instead, they keep nodding and pretending like they get it, although when it comes to applying the concepts practically, it becomes clear that they haven’t understood. So we are also trying to encourage them to be honest about the things they don’t understand and to ask us questions, because they never seem to have any questions, and being inquisitive should be a consequential part of the learning process. We have just finished teaching our third class at the girls school, and we have explained the concept of a story (and the difference between fiction and non-fiction) and the elements of a digital story (with examples of still images, moving images, voice/narration and ambient sounds from the previous group’s “Women and Education” video that we showed to them, as well as from new non-fiction topics that we selected). Last class we taught them how to use the digital cameras and to upload the photos onto the computer, and they were very quick to understand the process and proved to be extremely skillful with the cameras. After a series of in-class exercises, we are preparing for the more extensive scavenger hunt next class, while in the meantime their homework keeps them thinking about topics that are relevant to them – and that, therefore, they might be interested in exploring in the digital projects – as well as practicing their writing and language skills.

We enjoyed the same warm reception at the boys’ school, where Piya and Remy are also terribly missed – the Kings have been asking a lot about them and reminiscing dusty cricket afternoons in their company! We have fifteen boys in our class this time – this is the compromise that we could make with the administration, who at first wanted us to teach all 36 ninth graders!!! We only had one class at the boys school so far (we visited the school last Thursday and started teaching this Tuesday) but we have been very pleasantly surprised about their enthusiasm and respectfulness! It is a very diverse group of boys – of all ages, backgrounds and even physical sizes! – but they get along well together and will help each other out, with the language as well as with the concepts. They seem to have a more vast knowledge of popular culture than the girls, and even though their school is rural and quite sheltered from occidental elements, they seem to be more familiar with Western influences, technology and culture. And they even know about Romanian soccer!

The bus ride to Nalgonda and back is long and tiring, and at the end of the day we feel exhausted, extremely dirty and exceptionally sticky, but the boys sure make it worthwhile! The minute they come out to greet us when we step out of the auto-rickshaw and enter their world, we wouldn’t like to be in any other place… And the way they say “thank you” at the end of the class and see us off with wide smiles and enthusiastic waves is even better than the thought of a nice cold shower and that tasty sandwich on the bus ride back.