Well I am officially a little bored right now. I had one class this morning and that was it! I have to plan something for my English conversation class tomorrow but I have a pretty good idea of what I will do and I have alllllllll day to do it. So as a result I am going to write an entirely random entry on my Blog. Were to start... ah-hah! On Friday the teachers at my Shogakko (elementary school) had a new year’s party. I accepted their kind invitation even though it meant I could not go to Iheya with Teru, boooooooo! It turned out to be rather quite fun and I was glad I went. It was held in the yochein (kindergarten) room and we sat on their tiny, tiny chairs, barely enough space to fit half one’s derrière onto! The sight of all the teachers (the headmaster and vice in particular) perched on these dolls house sized chairs was something I will treasure for some time to come. I had the honour of being sat to the headmaster’s right which meant extensive and repetitive use of my limited Japanese vocabulary throughout the night. Being a party held by elementary school teachers we of course played a game. The game involved being blindfolded and drawing portraits of teachers each taking it in turn to draw one feature after another. For those of you who don’t know Japanese try and guess which one is me! For the rest my name is written in Katakana. It was a fun night anyway. The rest of the weekend was rather quiet, Izena seemed to be on shutdown. It took three attempts before I and Nagi found a place which served beer so we could study our respective languages over a cold one. Unfortunately the place then closed at 11 so it was a short study session. Well anyway, nothing much exiting happened so I won’t bore you. I think like the rest of the ALTs who went to India I have been mulling over my experience. However I think I am being drawn to a more cynical view of the whole affair. Of perhaps drawn between a cynical view and a more positive one. I don’t want to get into it too much but although I felt by going there we did something special for the children and I remember the joy and delight we gave to them and the joy and delight they gave us, I am somewhat troubled by the whole affair. So we definitely touched their lives in a positive way. However I am unsure of what lasting good we have done them. If teaching them English was our goal I don’t think we made a huge difference, their English was already good and due to our lack of Bengali most activities were games. Games were fun of course and having them associate English with fun is good. The importance of learning English is pretty much well established in India though and the standard is very high, it is essential for a good career there. If our aim was to promote this method of teaching as opposed to the very old fashioned methods commonly used in India, all fine and good, a noble cause but should we not have been teaching teachers then? Ok so the only tangible lasting effect I could see that we left was the things as a result of the money we donated. The new well shaft and water tank and wall for a classroom I think. And of course they will have money left over. So if they money was the main thing as I expect it was then it seems a fair point to me that our personal expenditures on the trip were vastly more than the sum we donated. I can’t help wondering if we might not have better served these children and the whole cause of better education for underprivileged children in India better by simply sending them more money and less people having actually gone to teach. What did we gain by having so many people go there in person over less people and more money? Nothing that I can see apart from our own personal experiences of the trip. So was then this whole thing as much about us getting to experience India as helping the children? I now imagine having sent more money and not having gone to India personally and even if I had detailed accounts of the trip and how the money was spent I would have personally got less out of the experience. I would have felt less good about what I had done. But now I realise my error, I was viewing the whole trip as entirely to do with helping the children. When it was also about being an opportunity to allow us to experience India and see the children first hand and in as such it was an undoubted success. With this realisation my above rant is unnecessary but I think I will post it anyway, also now I feel especially guilty that in effect Elvira, Corry and John did so much to organise what was partially a holiday in India, well I can offer them nothing now except my gratitude, you did a splendid job! I hope no-one is offended by my cynical take on things; it’s not entirely how I feel about the India trip. It was amazing, the kids were amazing and my fellow ALTs were amazing, I have a considerable amount of admiration for you all. Bear in mind I tend to feel uncomfortable with going along with the groups opinion on things (or whatever I perceive it to be) and am somewhat reactionary as a result. Well this turned into something I didn’t expect, so much for a little random post in my blog to pass the time of day. Actually in hindsight I think my frustration (and a little confusion) lay because on the one hand I felt very good about the amazing thing we did and how the kids and people reacted to us and on the other hand frustrated at the huge disparity between what we achieved and the scale of the problem(s) we saw there. I suppose India's problems and indeed one small schools problems are too big to solve by one 9 day visit by 23 people.