Dear friends-
What an exciting week it's been! I was very busy each day this week, which was wonderful. I am excited to share with you some of the terrific experiences I've had, from the awesome to the confusing to the frustrating.
On Monday I began the day by singing, "How Great Thou Art" at the college chapel service. Later in the day, I taught my first communicative English class at the hostel from 6-7 pm. It was so much fun! About 20 girls showed up and we mostly played games and worked on introducing ourselves. I always have pictures of my family on me as these have been most useful and I pull them out at least once a day, either just to share or for teaching purposes. (Random aside-dear parents, Joce, Suzie, and Jackie and Mark-I have shown pictures of you all to almost every person I've met in India. They actually know you by name and ask about how you're doing! So please know that literally hundreds of children in local schools and at the college have seen your photos and know who you are! Isn't that wild?!)
A really dear moment: At this class, we played a game where you say what your name is and then something you like that starts with the first letter of your name, i.e. "My name is Claudia and I like cats." After I had finished explaining this to the girls and was confident they understood the premise, the first girl went, and she boldly said, "My name is Sumita, and I love Jesus!" My heart almost burst! I will never forget that moment, and how boldly she confidently she said it! Unfortunately, because she was first, I had to explain to her that the thing she loved had to start with an "s," but we kept "Jesus" in there, and for the rest of the game Sumita's line was "My name is Sumita, and I love Jesus and sunshine!"
On Tuesday, after teaching the Faculty Voice Training class, I had my very first day of teaching at Baker School. Baker School is a nearby school for girls, many of whom come from an underprivileged background. There are about 1500 girls that attend, from ages 5 to 17. This is a place where the volunteers have traditionally served and I will be going one day a week to teach. I taught four communicative English classes and two music classes from grades 5-8.
Please just imagine this day with me: first of all, I couldn't move anywhere because there were literally girls crowding around me smiling at me ALL DAY. Even at the end of teaching a class they would just come up to my desk and stand there and surround me, smiling! They were all dressed in uniform and wore yellow ribbons at the bottom of neat braids, hundreds and hundreds of them! I carried a globe around with me to each class to show them where I'm from, and a lot of them thought the word 'Pittsburgh' was really funny. We worked on introducing ourselves-our name, age, family, and maybe some hobbies, too. Each class had about 40-50 kids in it-overwhelming! Because of the unexpected large class size, some of my activities would not work, so I had to continually adapt as I taught. They stood as soon as I entered the class and always stood when they addressed me; I had to continually insist that they stayed seated and just speak up! They were fascinated by my family photos and practically knocked one another down trying to see them. In general, they answered me very loudly as a group and then were practically inaudible when I asked them the same question individually-informal class participation and discussion is a rather new concept. Most classes were very noisy and giggly, but extremely respectful and very easy to manage, considering the size. It was sometimes hard to keep them quiet but they responded to my 'classroom management tactics' almost instantly. Their gazes never left me. I kind of felt like I could've stood in front of them and counted to a thousand and they would have watched with interest. I quickly discovered what the letters after the class name meant-A,B,C, and D are their levels of English comprehension. The A and B classes responded relatively well to my exercises but the C class had very minimal understanding. In general, I found that the students were very sweet, incredibly respectful, and VERY shy-they really needed to be prompted and encouraged to reply!
The best part of the day was the music class I taught before lunch, which was comprised of EIGHTY students. 80 ten to thirteen-year-olds! Oh my goodness! The Lord gave me peace very quickly and surprisingly I didn't feel any fear whatsoever. I taught them the song "I Like to Sing," a very short, simple song, and only that song, for forty-five minutes-that's how intense their attention span was and how long it took them to learn the song! They watched me impeccably and tried SO hard to learn the song. There was no misbehaviour whatsoever-they were absolutely precious students! I couldn't believe how smoothly this class went-thank you, Lord!!
Here's a video of the kids singing "I Like to Sing," (just a few seconds of it):
Other firsts-first time crossing the street by myself. You might think that that is funny, but let me tell you, crossing the street here is REALLY hard to do. There is constant traffic. I waited almost 5 whole minutes just trying to cross-you literally have to dodge between cars sometimes to cross the road here-it's pretty scary! (We YAVs affectionately refer to it as Frogger.) I have also gone out on my own to the bakery for the first time, walked from town by myself for the first time, and even went on my own to pick up a new churidar by myself. These small things feel like huge accomplishments to me.
Wednesday-I led my first-ever choir retreat! The choir was from Jerusalem Marthoma Church in Kottayam, a 60-member choir, comprised mostly of youth. I led them from 10am-4pm in a variety of subjects: vocal training, breathing exercises, warm-ups, Kodaly rhythm training, and training in following conducting and some music fundamentals. I'm finding in general that things just take longer to teach here than in the states, because most of it is all new information to them, and also I have to talk very slowly. In the afternoon, we learned the parts to a Bach chorale and worked on it, trying to incorporate what we'd learned in the morning. I couldn't believe I had enough material to teach from 10 to 4! I received a lot of positive feedback from the choir members and made lots of new friends-it was a pretty awesome day. I became attached to the choir very quickly and was very proud of the progress they made, and very thankful for their feedback. I look forward to doing more work like this with other choirs and more work with this choir in particular.
Other firsts that day: First Indian birthday party, and first mail received from home! Thank you so much!!!!!
New friends from the choir retreat :)
Here's a video of me leading the choir in a Bach chorale, "How Brightly Shines the Morning Star," at the end of the retreat:
Thursday: first time as a judge of a competition. CMS held a vocal quartet competition in memory of a choir member who recently passed away from cancer, an event called "Quadramonium." 25 vocal quartets from Kerala and a couple of places outside of Kerala came to compete, and I was one of three judges of the competition! This was a huge honor, as the other judges were very much my seniors and have years of experience. We sat at a judges' table with clipboards and listened to each group, awarding points. Each quartet had to sing one common song and then a song of their choice. Fortunately, all three judges had unanimous scoring as to the top 3 quartets. After some deliberation, we announced the winners and awarded the prizes. And then, I was asked to give a brief speech in front of everyone there-surprise!
Here are some pictures from the competition:
With fellow judges Abey Sir and his brother Poonoos Matthew at the Judges' Table
Listening to one of the quartets
Awarding prizes at the end
Friday: first bus ride alone, first truly frustrating day. I traveled to Chertala, over an hour away, to help out with some training for a Western music competition. I had no idea what this meant. When I showed up, I found three students that needed help learning the songs for the competition, which were:
2 Backstreet Boys songs, Final Countdown, and a Michael Jackson song. Oh boy.
I tried my hardest to do vocal training with them, but this was kind of a failure. I tried to teach them the songs-they had no music and didn't have the words. After learning one Backstreet Boys song, I decided that we should learn some simpler songs, so we spent the rest of the morning and afternoon working on some easy worship songs.At three pm that day, their father came in to tell me that he had just called to check with the judges and that devotional songs were not allowed. Gah. Trying hard not to show my frustration, I scrambled to find some folk songs for them off the top of my head. I left them unsure of their music and the songs they'd be singing for the competition and feeling like much of much of the day was wasted. But I know it wasn't, and God had His specific purposes for this day.
It is very important to experience frustration as well as the joys of successful endeavors, lest I become too reliant on my own strength. For in my weakness, He is strong. It was a trying day, but the Lord led me through.
I realize that this has been an extremely long post. Now I'd like to close with some prayer requests:
1) PLEASE continue to pray against my anxiety. Satan will NOT have this victory. Though I have been in many awesome circumstances and am in a great place having great opportunities, I am still not feeling well and still having some really hard days anxiety-wise. I have some really good days and some really hard days where I just want to be home. The Lord's blessings are so abundant, and He is bigger than my feelings. Even though my experiences have been wonderful, my emotions have not corresponded with them as they should. I am still having rather inconvenient and embarrassing random crying spells. We will get this sorted out, but until then, please pray for my mood to be stabilized, for the anxiety to cease, and for me to be able to experience the joy of all that is happening around me, which I feel kind of aside from. I anticipate His healing. Please keep praying against this anxiety. Your words of encouragement mean so very much right now.
2) Please pray for my vocal health. In all of these days of teaching and talking all day, it's been easy to lose my voice. Pray for wisdom for what to participate in and what to cut out of for my vocal health.
3) Please pray for Gig Sir's family-Gigi's brother-in-law's brother experienced brain hemorrhaging about a week ago and is in critical condition. Pray for the Lord's victory to be manifested in this circumstance, and for His peace to just transcend upon every member of this family.
4) Pray for me to develop "Kingdom Eyes." India can really feel like an assault to the senses, especially to the eyes. I am continually seeing much that I don't understand and many things that don't make sense to me, which is stressful and overwhelming. I am also continually stared at by many people. This was fine at first, but it gets old, and when it's a lot of people it can get very overwhelming. Please pray that I might see Him in the midst of all the confusion and find peace amidst the chaos of my new culture. Pray that I might seek and see His face.
Know that I am praying for you all, as well. GOD IS GOOD, ALL THE TIME! ALL THE TIME, GOD IS GOOD, especially today.
I love you all and miss you dearly.
What an exciting week it's been! I was very busy each day this week, which was wonderful. I am excited to share with you some of the terrific experiences I've had, from the awesome to the confusing to the frustrating.
On Monday I began the day by singing, "How Great Thou Art" at the college chapel service. Later in the day, I taught my first communicative English class at the hostel from 6-7 pm. It was so much fun! About 20 girls showed up and we mostly played games and worked on introducing ourselves. I always have pictures of my family on me as these have been most useful and I pull them out at least once a day, either just to share or for teaching purposes. (Random aside-dear parents, Joce, Suzie, and Jackie and Mark-I have shown pictures of you all to almost every person I've met in India. They actually know you by name and ask about how you're doing! So please know that literally hundreds of children in local schools and at the college have seen your photos and know who you are! Isn't that wild?!)
A really dear moment: At this class, we played a game where you say what your name is and then something you like that starts with the first letter of your name, i.e. "My name is Claudia and I like cats." After I had finished explaining this to the girls and was confident they understood the premise, the first girl went, and she boldly said, "My name is Sumita, and I love Jesus!" My heart almost burst! I will never forget that moment, and how boldly she confidently she said it! Unfortunately, because she was first, I had to explain to her that the thing she loved had to start with an "s," but we kept "Jesus" in there, and for the rest of the game Sumita's line was "My name is Sumita, and I love Jesus and sunshine!"
On Tuesday, after teaching the Faculty Voice Training class, I had my very first day of teaching at Baker School. Baker School is a nearby school for girls, many of whom come from an underprivileged background. There are about 1500 girls that attend, from ages 5 to 17. This is a place where the volunteers have traditionally served and I will be going one day a week to teach. I taught four communicative English classes and two music classes from grades 5-8.
Please just imagine this day with me: first of all, I couldn't move anywhere because there were literally girls crowding around me smiling at me ALL DAY. Even at the end of teaching a class they would just come up to my desk and stand there and surround me, smiling! They were all dressed in uniform and wore yellow ribbons at the bottom of neat braids, hundreds and hundreds of them! I carried a globe around with me to each class to show them where I'm from, and a lot of them thought the word 'Pittsburgh' was really funny. We worked on introducing ourselves-our name, age, family, and maybe some hobbies, too. Each class had about 40-50 kids in it-overwhelming! Because of the unexpected large class size, some of my activities would not work, so I had to continually adapt as I taught. They stood as soon as I entered the class and always stood when they addressed me; I had to continually insist that they stayed seated and just speak up! They were fascinated by my family photos and practically knocked one another down trying to see them. In general, they answered me very loudly as a group and then were practically inaudible when I asked them the same question individually-informal class participation and discussion is a rather new concept. Most classes were very noisy and giggly, but extremely respectful and very easy to manage, considering the size. It was sometimes hard to keep them quiet but they responded to my 'classroom management tactics' almost instantly. Their gazes never left me. I kind of felt like I could've stood in front of them and counted to a thousand and they would have watched with interest. I quickly discovered what the letters after the class name meant-A,B,C, and D are their levels of English comprehension. The A and B classes responded relatively well to my exercises but the C class had very minimal understanding. In general, I found that the students were very sweet, incredibly respectful, and VERY shy-they really needed to be prompted and encouraged to reply!
The best part of the day was the music class I taught before lunch, which was comprised of EIGHTY students. 80 ten to thirteen-year-olds! Oh my goodness! The Lord gave me peace very quickly and surprisingly I didn't feel any fear whatsoever. I taught them the song "I Like to Sing," a very short, simple song, and only that song, for forty-five minutes-that's how intense their attention span was and how long it took them to learn the song! They watched me impeccably and tried SO hard to learn the song. There was no misbehaviour whatsoever-they were absolutely precious students! I couldn't believe how smoothly this class went-thank you, Lord!!
Here's a video of the kids singing "I Like to Sing," (just a few seconds of it):
Other firsts-first time crossing the street by myself. You might think that that is funny, but let me tell you, crossing the street here is REALLY hard to do. There is constant traffic. I waited almost 5 whole minutes just trying to cross-you literally have to dodge between cars sometimes to cross the road here-it's pretty scary! (We YAVs affectionately refer to it as Frogger.) I have also gone out on my own to the bakery for the first time, walked from town by myself for the first time, and even went on my own to pick up a new churidar by myself. These small things feel like huge accomplishments to me.
Wednesday-I led my first-ever choir retreat! The choir was from Jerusalem Marthoma Church in Kottayam, a 60-member choir, comprised mostly of youth. I led them from 10am-4pm in a variety of subjects: vocal training, breathing exercises, warm-ups, Kodaly rhythm training, and training in following conducting and some music fundamentals. I'm finding in general that things just take longer to teach here than in the states, because most of it is all new information to them, and also I have to talk very slowly. In the afternoon, we learned the parts to a Bach chorale and worked on it, trying to incorporate what we'd learned in the morning. I couldn't believe I had enough material to teach from 10 to 4! I received a lot of positive feedback from the choir members and made lots of new friends-it was a pretty awesome day. I became attached to the choir very quickly and was very proud of the progress they made, and very thankful for their feedback. I look forward to doing more work like this with other choirs and more work with this choir in particular.
Other firsts that day: First Indian birthday party, and first mail received from home! Thank you so much!!!!!
Here's a video of me leading the choir in a Bach chorale, "How Brightly Shines the Morning Star," at the end of the retreat:
Thursday: first time as a judge of a competition. CMS held a vocal quartet competition in memory of a choir member who recently passed away from cancer, an event called "Quadramonium." 25 vocal quartets from Kerala and a couple of places outside of Kerala came to compete, and I was one of three judges of the competition! This was a huge honor, as the other judges were very much my seniors and have years of experience. We sat at a judges' table with clipboards and listened to each group, awarding points. Each quartet had to sing one common song and then a song of their choice. Fortunately, all three judges had unanimous scoring as to the top 3 quartets. After some deliberation, we announced the winners and awarded the prizes. And then, I was asked to give a brief speech in front of everyone there-surprise!
Here are some pictures from the competition:
Friday: first bus ride alone, first truly frustrating day. I traveled to Chertala, over an hour away, to help out with some training for a Western music competition. I had no idea what this meant. When I showed up, I found three students that needed help learning the songs for the competition, which were:
2 Backstreet Boys songs, Final Countdown, and a Michael Jackson song. Oh boy.
I tried my hardest to do vocal training with them, but this was kind of a failure. I tried to teach them the songs-they had no music and didn't have the words. After learning one Backstreet Boys song, I decided that we should learn some simpler songs, so we spent the rest of the morning and afternoon working on some easy worship songs.At three pm that day, their father came in to tell me that he had just called to check with the judges and that devotional songs were not allowed. Gah. Trying hard not to show my frustration, I scrambled to find some folk songs for them off the top of my head. I left them unsure of their music and the songs they'd be singing for the competition and feeling like much of much of the day was wasted. But I know it wasn't, and God had His specific purposes for this day.
It is very important to experience frustration as well as the joys of successful endeavors, lest I become too reliant on my own strength. For in my weakness, He is strong. It was a trying day, but the Lord led me through.
I realize that this has been an extremely long post. Now I'd like to close with some prayer requests:
1) PLEASE continue to pray against my anxiety. Satan will NOT have this victory. Though I have been in many awesome circumstances and am in a great place having great opportunities, I am still not feeling well and still having some really hard days anxiety-wise. I have some really good days and some really hard days where I just want to be home. The Lord's blessings are so abundant, and He is bigger than my feelings. Even though my experiences have been wonderful, my emotions have not corresponded with them as they should. I am still having rather inconvenient and embarrassing random crying spells. We will get this sorted out, but until then, please pray for my mood to be stabilized, for the anxiety to cease, and for me to be able to experience the joy of all that is happening around me, which I feel kind of aside from. I anticipate His healing. Please keep praying against this anxiety. Your words of encouragement mean so very much right now.
2) Please pray for my vocal health. In all of these days of teaching and talking all day, it's been easy to lose my voice. Pray for wisdom for what to participate in and what to cut out of for my vocal health.
3) Please pray for Gig Sir's family-Gigi's brother-in-law's brother experienced brain hemorrhaging about a week ago and is in critical condition. Pray for the Lord's victory to be manifested in this circumstance, and for His peace to just transcend upon every member of this family.
4) Pray for me to develop "Kingdom Eyes." India can really feel like an assault to the senses, especially to the eyes. I am continually seeing much that I don't understand and many things that don't make sense to me, which is stressful and overwhelming. I am also continually stared at by many people. This was fine at first, but it gets old, and when it's a lot of people it can get very overwhelming. Please pray that I might see Him in the midst of all the confusion and find peace amidst the chaos of my new culture. Pray that I might seek and see His face.
Know that I am praying for you all, as well. GOD IS GOOD, ALL THE TIME! ALL THE TIME, GOD IS GOOD, especially today.
I love you all and miss you dearly.
No comments:
Post a Comment