Paint and Politics.

Good Evening!

How y'all doing?

So far, this week's been pretty rewarding!

We got to school on Monday to find that Saturday's going to be the inauguration of the new classroom (that's been built a couple of years...) and that a top local politician's going to be there. Although we don't normally work Saturdays te teacher was very pesistant that we attend to it looks like this weekend will be full of ceremony! I've found that in India politicians mean alot. Their 'photos are up everywhere and people generally respect them (they've probably not asked about expenses or anything yet...) so it's quite a big deal. Infact our teacher is normally pretty lazy and unmotivated but one wiff of a local big wig and she's pretty enthusiastic. The children have been allowed to skip class to practice traditional singing and dancing and the teacher's even finally agreed to buy some paint so that we can draw pretty pictures on the wall and boy- do the pictures look good! (Although the teacher bought 4 cans of blue , 1 can of brown and a can of red paint- nowhere near enough to do the task in hand so we had to get our own too :-) ) It's incredible what politics does to people.

My class are still cute and has grown by 2 members (that's 100% increase!) although one of them fell, broke her hand and spent a week in hospital and can't come to school for 20 days. Her family have had to gt a loan to cover the crippling 1100Rs (about 150 pound) medical bill, so we're going to see if we can help with that before we go. The other new addition to my class is a persistant homework cheat- she always somehow manages to bribe an older sibling to do it so that she gets 100% and a sticker. But alas, her plan has been foiled. Callum 1. Sneha 0.

Apart from that, the sun is STILL shining (haha.), the food is STILL amazing and everything's pretty good! I hope you're all excited for Christmas (has the Coca-Cola advert started yet?). I'm a tad disappointed that I won't have an advent calander this year!

Love to all,

Callum