8 April 2008

Today is the second day of classes. We have most of the students in the class. Apparently two more enrolled over night. Gurpreet is sitting in on the classes as well. She is refreshing her knowledge and helping out where she can. Her son is on the course.
During the morning a Sikh priest came over to bless the establishment. We all took our shoes off and put something on our heads. I’m not sure what it is about baseball caps, but it seems that its not considered suitable head gear for this kind of ceremony. Mind you, Gurpreet’s husband said that if I wear it around the wrong way, then that was fine. (I kinda looked like the local gangster. The only thing missing was the bling). So the priest said his prayers and handed out what looked like a small tennis ball to each of us. It was food. Like a sweet cake. Gurpreet’s husband put some of his on the edge of the computer monitor. This was a part of the Sikh ritual. Khilandeep’s mother, wife and their little helper were there. I am hoping that all the festivities will be over soon. Would be good to get into a routine. It will help to stabilise the learning.
After lunch the reporter arrived. I’m fairly sure he’s the one that got lost yesterday. He took some photos of the students, Gurpreet and myself in a teaching session. (Not that I was still teaching. We had done that this morning.) He then wanted myself and Gurpreet to step into my office and look as though we were being interviewed by him as he took some more piccies.
So, the classes run from 10.30am to 2.30pm. Monday through to Saturday. They are then with Gurpreet from around 3.30pm for a short conversational time to bring up their English speaking confidence. Not sure what happened today about that. By time Khilandeep and I got back from lunch the campus was locked.
One student asked me towards the end of the day how I thought he handled the class. He wanted to know in terms of percentages. He thought he performed 60%. I told him I thought 100%. He was surprised. I told him that he was the only one who made an effort to try the same thing a few times to get it right and he was the only one to right down the instructions I was giving them. He was the most needy in the class. He may even need to re-learn everything tomorrow, but what is success measured by. One of the other students seems like a born natural. It didn’t seem to matter what button he pushed, the result always really great. (Green fumes of jealousy poring out of Collie’s ears). This student was not pushing himself. Just along for the ride.
After work khilandeep took me to see if we could get a tutor from the MAAC institute. We discovered that the institute no longer existed in Ludhiana. We tried another establishment only to discover they had gone too.
I’ve seen a number of different headdresses whilst I’ve been here, but I saw something tonight that tops them all off. There was a chap that was riding his bike wearing a woollen tea cozy. The only thing missing was the holes for the spout and handle. You gotta love these guys.
On the way home we stopped of at a friend’s studio. He’s a photographer. He did the photographs for Khilandeep’s wedding and engagement. What a really nice person. He has messages in his studio such as ‘smiles are free’ and ‘we are here to serve ‘. His work is really good. It has lots of flare. Whilst we were chatting, he showed me some of his work. To my surprise he offered to have my photograph taken. His colleague took me to the back room where they do the portraits, set up the lights and gave me the royal treatment. 10 minutes later I had a photo printed and some digital files to do with as I pleased. That was a gift, he said, welcoming me to India.