Sniffles and other small woes

I have a cold -- a dripping, sniffling, shivering, sniveling cold -- and I'm out of tissue paper. More accurately, I'm out of toilet paper, which is what I've been using to mop up the liquids pouring out of my nose.

Sorry. Too graphic?

It's almost 5 in the morning, and soon I have to walk down the street to the railway station and catch a train to Jaipur. I'm going to spend the weekend with my dad and some friends there, nursing my cold and recovering from a long week.

Classes have been all over the place for the first several days, mostly because I've been trying to assess my students' existing English capabilities. Every passing hour reveals just how much of the language they lack, and--far more importantly--just how much I lack the skills to teach it. To make myself feel better, I stick with the mantra that the whole gig is ultimately more about friendship and mentorship than about formal education; I wouldn't yet consider delving into "The Cat in the Hat" with my 18-year-olds a wasted morning. (Besides, vocabulary is always more fun to learn when it rhymes -- and when your dignified, Harvard-educated tutor wildly bounces up and down on one leg while reading aloud, all in a poor imitation of the Cat in the Hat.)

As for the younger kids, it's hard enough just to get fifty percent of them to pay attention at once. Their afternoons have almost no structure, so I'll end up with anywhere from five to twelve students actually participating in class, and the rest rotating between praticing "How are you?", playing marbles on the side, or bashing each other over the head. The older boys at the contact point, whose job is to keep the kids in line and generally amuse them while their teachers are reading newspapers on the side of the classroom, love to interfere with the class: they interject their own few sentences of English whenever they can and translate everything I say into Hindi, both of which I find pretty disruptive. (Would you? Or am I reacting too strongly?) In any case, a lot of my energy goes either toward ignoring them, or toward trying to persuade them to be quiet for two minutes at a time. It's a big distraction, especially when I mostly want to spend time with the smiling, enthusiastic, crazy younger set.

And I am realizing more and more just how sketchy my neighborhood is. It's really not the most fun place to live. Oh well -- at least I have my sunny room, not to mention all the kind people who work at the hotel and who have been taking such good care of me.

Off to the railway station, to Jaipur, to cough drops, and -- finally! -- to the weekend.