Water Safety

The classes we've been privileged to teach here have been so welcoming and very responsive. We have taught at 3 different schools and over 581 students our water safety, first aid, and CPR programs. It was been such a great experience to interact with so many different students and be able to give them life saving information.

At the last school we taught at, just outside the city, we were treated like local celebrities. The students bombarded us with wanting to take pictures and asking us for autographs.

Miley, how do you do it?

Team Tiik Chha had so much fun with all the students.

For those who have read our previous blogs, our bathroom was finally fixed today. We now have a toilet seat.

Signing off now... Thank you to those of you who are following our posts. It's great to relay our progress back to all the supporters back in the States! So thank you thank you, we love you all!

Much Love & Many Thanks

Amanda, Nicole, Jacque, Paul, & Nick

Peacee!

Teaching Begins!

Today we completed the second day of teaching in Madurai. We taught at the UC Higher Secondary School, for a 9th grade class, followed by the boyscouts from the same school. The boyscouts were mostly from rural areas, that are very close to lakes and rivers, so the water safety program was especially helpful for them since they are around water daily. We taught them in the park (complete with a ferris wheel) next to the Gandhi Museum, the boyscouts caught on really fast, and asked very good questions at the end of our lesson. When the lesson was over, and after a long picture or "snap" taking session, they acted as our personal tour guides in the Gandhi Musem, where we saw Gandhi's glasses or "specs" and the blood stained clothes he was wearing when he was assasinated.

Yesterday we taught a 5th grade class of 100 boys and girls at the YWCA Nursery and Primary School. We taught them the water safety program in the morning, and in the afternoon, each of the 100 students were able to pracitce the skills we taught.

We are all loving the teaching experience and are continuously impressed with the bright students we are teaching.

On a side note, at lunch the other day we met a family from Santa Barbara, California, they are in India for months with four boys under the age of 10! It was great meeting people who are close to home, and it's nice to have friendly faces we run into almost daily.

Pictures are on the way!

Love from Madurai,
Kaitlin, Caitlin, Carley, Jesse, Bela and Betheny

Hello All!

Teaching again today, as we did yesterday. Will add more tonight!

Namaste,

Paul

The Blondes Invade Kathmandu!!!

Greetings!

Today was the first day of teaching. We taught over 300 kids today! Jac and I (and the rest of the group) had a freaking blast with the kids!!! Some were shy and some were studious but all of them were interactive. The students were so respectful and SO EXCITED that were were there. It made you feel very proud to work with PSI and that our efforts are honorable and proactive. It felt really great watching the kids learn. It is always a powerful feeling.. 'teaching and watching their brains light up'.

Oh, but the best part was CPR. It's my (Amanda's) favorite because the kids get all giggly about the 'mouth to mouth' part. They like the scenario and role playing we do with water safety and CPR. The 30 compressions were funny when we had boy volunteers up and demonstrating because their 'aggressive' tendencies came out as they tried breaking ribs and such... We're all smiles today.

The school was beautiful and so was the staff. As we learned from them today, "...guests are treated as gods". How beautiful is that? You just feel welcomed and so honored to be making professional relations as well as making new friends at the same time. Wow.

Nicole warned us we would be exhausted. We are just realizing that tonight as the two of us are crawling into our sleeping bags at 7 P.M., just dying for a cuddle sesh.

The efforts put in are so minimal compared to the experiences we are taking out of it.

Well, the power is going to be cut off. We only have hours of electricity a day. HA.

Sending our love from across the world,

Amanda & Jacque
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Morning from Nagarkot

What a great sunrise from Nagarkot, just 30 km or so east of Kathmandu. The Himalayan Range is very prominent from here, as you can see. Yubraj and family accompanied us, and brought breakfast, consisting of coffee, chipati and jam--a very nice surprise!
Teaching water safety education and first aid tomorrow morning. Getting tired, so am gonna leave it at this for now!
Paul

The Veiw

We hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Yesterday we went to Deepak's family's home and enjoyed a traditional Nepali lunch and spent a great day with his family! His mother's hospitality was very warm and welcoming! We were so full for the rest of the day.

SO... today is our last down day for awhile and tomorrow we start teaching. Today we went to Naragot to see the sunrise. It was so beautiful!! We went with our in country partner and his family, we had a lot of fun!

On a lighter and rather funny note, the girls room's bathroom has so many problems that we are now making jokes about what good plumbers we are becoming.

Wish as luck as we start teaching!

Namaste!

Team Tiik Chha

Nicole, Amanda, Jacque, Nick, and Paul

Vanakkam from Madurai

After a long journey here, and some travel delays, we are all settled in Madurai. On our first full day here with the entire group, we had our orientation at Grace Peter Charitable Trust with Vijayakumar and his teachers and volunteers. Everyone is so welcoming and they put huge garlands around our necks, and gave us each two towels that were sewn by the women in the Charitable Trust's Women's Empowerment program. Each member of the group handed out a gift of either clothing, books or backpacks to some of the teachers and students. One woman who was laughing and smiling the entire time was supposed to be handed a gift by Jesse, but was too embarassed and too giggly to do it! Vijayakumar then talked to us about Indian culture and taught us a few Tamil words. We also found out that we will be teaching swim lessons at least one of the days. After that we saw the King's Palace which was 600 years old.

Today, we went to the huge temple in Madurai, it has four entrances: South, West, North and East. The temple was beautiful, over 160 feet tall with 1,511 statues inside. Not only was the temple beautiful, complete with cow temples with live cows inside, but there was an elephant that we got ride! And we got some great news, Carley, Betheny and Jesse had their bags lost when we arrived in India, and they were delivered to our hotel today!

Tomorrow we will have our first day teaching, and we are all very excited. We start out at the YWCA Matric School.

Sending our love from across the world,
Kaitlin, Carley, Bela, Caitlin, Betheny and Jesse.