Okay, so, I know that I've been really really bad about posting on this blog, and I apologize for that. Things have been super stressful lately and I just haven't had a lot of time to spare. That being said, this post is probably going to be pretty long, so you may wanna sit down for this. In terms of what's been happening, I'll tell you guys about school, the family, and the volunteer work that we've been doing.
School. Since leaving the hell known as Indus, I've been doing online school. That was going pretty well, and it wasn't too hard or anything, but that was only as far as I knew. Unfortunately, I was a little too relaxed with it, and I got myself in a bit of a situation. Turns out that I was way too relaxed with my easiest classes, and pretty uptight about my harder classes. So basically, I'm going to finish geometry, biology, and chemistry way earlier than I had originally wanted to, but I'm going to be working on English, Spanish, and AP world history for way longer than I had originally wanted to. I first wanted to be done with everything by the end of June, which is gonna work out okay, except for a couple classes (I'll get to those in a bit). Another thing is that taking AP world history as a freshman doing online school was a big mistake. It's WAY more work than I thought it would be, and each assignment takes me forever to finish. The work itself isn't hard or difficult to understand, it's just extremely time consuming and extensive. So AP world history is a class that I'll be working on until the end of July, which kind of sucks. English and Spanish are both super easy, but I was too chill about those and I'll be working on those until the first week of July. Other than all of that stuff, school is going okay. We made a spreadsheet of all the work I have to do so I know exactly how much I have to finish every week, and I'm sticking to that so I can have at least a small summer break.
Family. We've been okay lately. We're getting a little sick of being here and we all miss Washington and our lives back home SO much. We're going to visit Washington at the end of March, and I honestly don't know if I'll be able to get on the return flight back to Bangalore. Before moving here, I never realized how much I loved Washington and how much I would miss the little things that are so characteristic of Washington. How green everything is, driving across the bridge and seeing the mountains in the distance, the lack of speed bumps every quarter mile on the roads, seeing Starbucks around every corner, our house, our kitchen, my friends, our cat....the list goes on and on but I'll leave it at that. Anyways, bottom line is that we're doing okay but we're literally counting down the days until we return to Washington for good. (Literally counting down the days on a calendar countdown on my mom's phone).
Volunteer work. A much happier note. We've recently started teaching English at the Abhayadhama Boys Home, which is an all boys home about 15 minutes away from our house. The boys who are living there are not all orphans, but some of them are. They range from ages 15 to 23, and they are all there to study one of three fields: welding, carpentry, or auto-mechanics. They pick one of these fields that they want to study, and then they complete a training program that lasts a couple years in that field. This allows them to be qualified for a job back in their village, which will give them a future in something that can provide an income and a steady source of work. My dad and a group of other good people in Bangalore have started a group called Orphanage Outreach Bangalore, and their main mission is to connect volunteers with orphanages and homes that need work done. They volunteer by giving medical exams (physicals), tutoring the kids in math or science, doing extra-curricular activities with the kids, and teaching things like English or other subjects/skills. My parents and I have started teaching basic spoken English the boys at Abhayahama to help them be more competitive for jobs in the future. English speakers in Bangalore have a much better shot at getting jobs because so many expats live here. So far, we've taught them three times and it's going really well so far. I think they like us and they're always eager to learn new things. Some of them are extremely advanced compared to the other boys there, but they are all learning fast. Each time we teach them, we include two music videos or clips from movies/TV shows just to give them a break from learning for a couple minutes and show them some music or movies that are popular among westerners. So far, they tell us that they like Michael Jackson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Captain Jack Sparrow specifically), and Mr. Bean. I'm always surprised and entertained by the things that they know about. I definitely wasn't expecting them to one day randomly call a boy (named Jackson) Jack Sparrow. Anyways, teaching English is a lot of fun and I really love doing it. We're planning on going regularly starting this week--every Wednesday and every Friday for one hour. We decided not to focus on reading and writing, though most of them already know the alphabet and how to read a little, because it would slow down the process a lot. We're just working on speaking English and having conversations.
I'll post a more recent update (I wrote this one a couple weeks ago but didn't get around to posting it until now) a little later about our trip to Dubai and our visit back to the States, and our most recent charity effort called Baking for Bacchas! I'll try to post that next week or the week after, maybe this weekend if I get lucky, but until then, thanks so much for reading even though I've been horrible about keeping this up-to-date! School is pretty stressful, but I'll try to be better about posting on here. Thanks for reading!!:)
School. Since leaving the hell known as Indus, I've been doing online school. That was going pretty well, and it wasn't too hard or anything, but that was only as far as I knew. Unfortunately, I was a little too relaxed with it, and I got myself in a bit of a situation. Turns out that I was way too relaxed with my easiest classes, and pretty uptight about my harder classes. So basically, I'm going to finish geometry, biology, and chemistry way earlier than I had originally wanted to, but I'm going to be working on English, Spanish, and AP world history for way longer than I had originally wanted to. I first wanted to be done with everything by the end of June, which is gonna work out okay, except for a couple classes (I'll get to those in a bit). Another thing is that taking AP world history as a freshman doing online school was a big mistake. It's WAY more work than I thought it would be, and each assignment takes me forever to finish. The work itself isn't hard or difficult to understand, it's just extremely time consuming and extensive. So AP world history is a class that I'll be working on until the end of July, which kind of sucks. English and Spanish are both super easy, but I was too chill about those and I'll be working on those until the first week of July. Other than all of that stuff, school is going okay. We made a spreadsheet of all the work I have to do so I know exactly how much I have to finish every week, and I'm sticking to that so I can have at least a small summer break.
Family. We've been okay lately. We're getting a little sick of being here and we all miss Washington and our lives back home SO much. We're going to visit Washington at the end of March, and I honestly don't know if I'll be able to get on the return flight back to Bangalore. Before moving here, I never realized how much I loved Washington and how much I would miss the little things that are so characteristic of Washington. How green everything is, driving across the bridge and seeing the mountains in the distance, the lack of speed bumps every quarter mile on the roads, seeing Starbucks around every corner, our house, our kitchen, my friends, our cat....the list goes on and on but I'll leave it at that. Anyways, bottom line is that we're doing okay but we're literally counting down the days until we return to Washington for good. (Literally counting down the days on a calendar countdown on my mom's phone).
Volunteer work. A much happier note. We've recently started teaching English at the Abhayadhama Boys Home, which is an all boys home about 15 minutes away from our house. The boys who are living there are not all orphans, but some of them are. They range from ages 15 to 23, and they are all there to study one of three fields: welding, carpentry, or auto-mechanics. They pick one of these fields that they want to study, and then they complete a training program that lasts a couple years in that field. This allows them to be qualified for a job back in their village, which will give them a future in something that can provide an income and a steady source of work. My dad and a group of other good people in Bangalore have started a group called Orphanage Outreach Bangalore, and their main mission is to connect volunteers with orphanages and homes that need work done. They volunteer by giving medical exams (physicals), tutoring the kids in math or science, doing extra-curricular activities with the kids, and teaching things like English or other subjects/skills. My parents and I have started teaching basic spoken English the boys at Abhayahama to help them be more competitive for jobs in the future. English speakers in Bangalore have a much better shot at getting jobs because so many expats live here. So far, we've taught them three times and it's going really well so far. I think they like us and they're always eager to learn new things. Some of them are extremely advanced compared to the other boys there, but they are all learning fast. Each time we teach them, we include two music videos or clips from movies/TV shows just to give them a break from learning for a couple minutes and show them some music or movies that are popular among westerners. So far, they tell us that they like Michael Jackson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Captain Jack Sparrow specifically), and Mr. Bean. I'm always surprised and entertained by the things that they know about. I definitely wasn't expecting them to one day randomly call a boy (named Jackson) Jack Sparrow. Anyways, teaching English is a lot of fun and I really love doing it. We're planning on going regularly starting this week--every Wednesday and every Friday for one hour. We decided not to focus on reading and writing, though most of them already know the alphabet and how to read a little, because it would slow down the process a lot. We're just working on speaking English and having conversations.
I'll post a more recent update (I wrote this one a couple weeks ago but didn't get around to posting it until now) a little later about our trip to Dubai and our visit back to the States, and our most recent charity effort called Baking for Bacchas! I'll try to post that next week or the week after, maybe this weekend if I get lucky, but until then, thanks so much for reading even though I've been horrible about keeping this up-to-date! School is pretty stressful, but I'll try to be better about posting on here. Thanks for reading!!:)
