Settling into a Routine

Now that I am well into my second week of classes, I can finally talk about some kind of routine. I teach my English classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. This alternates with a computer class for the same group of students on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Thursday is always a day off for Jagori staff, as are every other Wednesday, but I teach on those days as well.

On the days that I teach, I get up around 8:45 in the morning, have breakfast, clean up, and orient myself for the day. The Knowledge Center opens up at 10:00, so I head down around then and set up for my class. If I don't have much set up to do, I check my email on the one computer that has internet connection there. My morning class runs from 11:00 to noon and has somewhere around six students. After class, I head home to make some lunch, then come back for the afternoon. My evening class is from 4:00-5:00pm and seems to have slightly more students than my morning class. After that is over, I clean up and go home.

On my days off, I have to do lesson planning, and that frequently requires trips down to Sidhbari to make some printouts and copies for my class.

My duties also include making the Jagori Grameen web site. Now that I have met with Abha, Anup, and Anya on it, I have much more to do. We're aiming to have it up by the end of October at the latest, so I suspect that's how I will use my time between classes from now until then.

As to eating, the meal schedule here is later than I am used to back in the US. Lunch happens between 1:00 and 2:00 usually, and dinner sometime after 7:00. This was a little hard to get used to at first, but it's something I'm adjusting into. Now that the Knowledge Center has been moved down close to my house, and it's usually just Vandana and I there, we don't hold so strictly to the lunch traditions.

However, up at the office, everyone makes their lunch before work in the morning and brings it with them. Then, when enough people feel that it's time for a break, they all gather together and eat. One thing to note is that everyone shares. You pass around your food and everyone takes a little bit, so that by the time all the food has gone around, you have about two or three bites of everyone's lunch. If someone didn't bring any food, the others gather up enough for them to eat. Thus, when I was spending time up at the office before the Knowledge Center moved, I couldn't just bring a peanut butter sandwich for myself. I had to make something that I could share.