Tick-Tock

Two hours to dry with intermittent dabbing of lemon juice and finally the Tiger Balm

I’ve been on a losing battle with time. My bedtime keeps getting later and the mornings just come that much sooner at 7:00AM. But it was especially an issue today as I had stayed up until 1:30AM waiting for henna to dry on my hands and arms (I ended up sleeping with it on because I couldn’t wait the extra ten minutes for the Tiger Balm to work its magic and make the henna darker). And lack of sleep leads to a very active appetite. So after demolishing a couple bowls of cereal, rice with chicken curry and an Indian version of the pancake (made of potato I think?), I consoled my need for extra sleep on our car ride to Nirmal Nagar.

Teaching Phonics to our Level 2 kids at Nirmal Nagar

But once again I faced my fatal foe: time. While we planned to quickly go over most all the phonics we studied throughout the week, the reality was that the kids were more forgetful than we had anticipated. Needless to say, we spent some quality time on the differences between –at words and –ate words, which left us feeling a tiny bit rushed toward the end of class when we taught them fruit names along with pictures.

However, all that zeal to teach dissipated as we neared lunch time. Professor Leela and Dr. Prasad had prepared a presentation on sanitation for the kids at Nirmal Nagar, and while I very much cared for the children’s health and cleanliness, I was also acutely aware of my drowsiness and hunger. Each minute really did feel like five.

After lunch came the afternoon slumber, in which my body just felt lazy and time felt like it was going by so slowly when it actually wasn’t. For example, we had gone through about a third of what we had planned for our class at Sri Sai Nagar only to look at the clock and see that about fifty minutes of our allotted ninety had already passed. We ended up forgoing our storytime for the day.

This took about 10-15 minutes per person

And then there was the mad rush to get back home and hit the showers as we all had to prepare for a Bharatanatyam show(?) put on by one of Professor Leela’s relatives (which is what the henna was for the night before). We had about ninety minutes for all eight girls to shower, do hair/make-up and get into our saris that Professor Leela was kind enough to loan. Well, let’s just say time wasn’t exactly on our side.

Yay for saris!

The Bharatanatyam dance ended up being a great pleasure to watch and a real feast for the eyes (maybe too much for the ears?), except I wish I had known more about the dance to really understand what was going on before me. One of the dances lasted for thirty minutes without me knowing any of the techniques involved. What seemed like the same feet movements for the tenth time could all have been different in a significant way. Who knows?

All I did know was that time was not going fast enough for my growling stomach.

We got home at around 11:00PM, and I’m just glad that we get to sleep in a little tomorrow. TGIF everyone!