Village Visits

After our wonderful weekend in Cochin with the Standard 12's last Monday was spent with the Standard 7's as they visited to local villages. The first was a Toda village called Muttanamund. There are about 15 houses in the village with less than 50 inhabitants. The women were sitting on the grass doing the beautiful Toda embroidery. The children were running about kicking a football (soccer ball) and the water buffalo were wandering about enjoying the grass! We were able to see the new water supply which is being developed and we also visited the site of the regional temple. The village priest happened to walk by while we were there. The students had to draw a sketch map of the village showing roads, buildings, and other features.

Following this visit we moved on to the village of Atthikal. This was a much larger village with about 200 inhabitants and many more buildings. Again the students had various tasksto perform. There were very few people about as it was early afternoon. We did see people working in the fields.

The weather was hot and sunny and even with sunscreen on there were several healthy looking faces by the time we returned to school later in the afternoon.

The rest of the week was spent in getting French lessons prepared and teaching the Standard 7 and Standard 8 French classes as well as doing the Standard 13 registration and PD class. The boys of the dorm are a great bunch. Last Friday evening we had all 39 (12's and 13's) for the weekly Dorm meeting and then birthday cake for the boys who had celebrated their birthday during the week.

We are getting to know them and are really enjoying our work at the school.