School, vineyards and games

Well, school is going well, I am getting better at sign language and teaching the children basic English instructions to make lessons/crafts easier. We have done stand up, sit down, quiet, make a circle and a few others. I am also getting good at talking very basically with minimal words, like 'colour', 'draw'! It is hard work but I am here to be challenged and I am enjoying it.

Today we went to the vineyard which was a 2 hour coach trip, but it was good to see the Indian countryside. We drove past lots of farming fields and rivers, we saw camels at one place and white cows (with a hump, maybe a buffalo?) pulling the ploughs in the field. At the vineyard, we saw the machines (which were Italian) and weren't in use as they only process the wines during harvest season from January to March. We also saw the bottles of sparkling wine and big barrels, so it was ok. Unfortunately there was no wine tasting, why go to a vine yard and no taste wine! There was the option to buy some but I was told that Indian wine can be very sour and I don't drink much anyway so it seemed a bit pointless!

This afternoon we played games in the campsite with the local guides and the Sri Lankan guides which was fun, but hot. We did some songs, in Marathi, Hindi, Sinhalese (Sri Lankan language) and English. We played a version of Cat and Mouse but it was a tiger trying to catch a God and a big game of tig. Whilst we were out in the campsite there were hundreds of dragonflies around, it was very unusual to see so many, there were so many that I accidentally hit one whilst doing an action song!

So all going well :)