Together with other volunteers I arrived in India about six months ago. 

After one week at an arrival-camp, I moved to my host family, where I will live for my entire time working at my project.  This project is in my case a government aided primary school where I give english classes and assist the teachers with their daily work.  The school has seven classes and a total of about 230 students. Those are spread out between 1^st to 7^th standard which all of course require different approaches for teaching. Whilst the older students speak English pretty well, the younger ones naturally have more difficulties following a lesson held in English, which leads us to communicate with a mixture of English, the local language Kannada and drawings. Last ones are especially helpful for explaining vocabulary. 

Now after a couple of months I not only have learnt how to draw a dog so it doesn’t look like some ancient monster, but through my lessons in Kannada I also learnt a few words which help me talk to the students. 

Today we had no classes. But not because it is a public holiday or something like that, no, today we held a special event at school. The students learnt and practised dances and wrote sketches. There was a feeling of excitement in the air, everyone was busy running around and finishing the last preparations for the evening. 

Then at about 05:00PM the first parents and other special guests arrived and sat down at the chairs prepared in front of a small stage. Music started to play from the speakers and people held speeches, which I unfortunately did not understand. After that the first students showed what they had practised for the last few days. The students danced and played their sketches, their teachers who were training with them were proud of the performance and the guests applauded. Then I had to walk on the stage and had to hold a speech in Kannada written on a piece of paper. Since there were a lot of people, I was more than just a bit nervous. After finishing the speech, I was really hungry, so I decided to have a look at what our cooks had done the whole day. Together with one of the teachers I found a buffet full of tasty food and some other teachers and students enjoying the meal. Of course I joined and ate rice, sambar and payasa. 

After some more music and speeches everything was over and I returned to my host family. We watched a movie together, but I was so tired I think I have fallen asleep one or two times during the movie.