Climb up Rainbow mountain

 Noah's Ark performance at Kings School started off my week. This was the collaboration I worked on with Sam. They performed in front of the whole school in assembly. And with only a little practice, they all remembered what they needed to do and where they needed to be at the right time. For one boy this was the first time he was up on the stage. As teachers tend to leave him out. So it was a big success and the kids were super happy that they could take their masks home.

 We had an early celebration on Monday night for my birthday, when I was brought a massive chocolate cake. Jhansi and family don't really celebrate birthdays, so she pulled out the only candle she had, which was massive and tried to attach it to the cake.

 I am not a massive birthday person. When any of the students at the school celebrate their birthday, they bring penny sweets around all of the students and teachers in the school. You have to shake their hand, give them a birthday wish and take a sweet. I decided to follow the tradition, and brought 3 kilos of Indian sweets to take to Arni.

 Each class sang a different rendition of Happy Birthday and Indian people singing happy birthday is the best present I could have asked for.

So I shook over a hundred hands and received my happy words from these very grateful children. Probably not the best idea to load them up with sugar before the workshops.

 Paint crazy with the younger kids

 Then with some of the older kids, we are creating a massive rainbow which will be spread across their uninspiring classroom wall. The rainbow is divided across different sheets of paper, with different groups and using a mixture of paint, fabric and wool to make a collage. I know at the moment, they feel like this is team work, little do they know how amazing it will look when it is all pieced together.

 I still give my camera to one of the kids, to document the workshop. So I wasn't surprised, after the end of the work shop when I was organising my things, to look up and see a whole fight scene being filmed at the back of the classroom. And when seeing the video, the acting is pretty hilarious.

 The tie-dye bags are finished. I spent time at the tailors making sure the bags were made correctly. Then on Wednesday I got the girls to sit with their eyes closed, they didn't know what to expect. When they opened their eyes, each one had their completed bag in front of them. Each one kept asking whether they could take them home. It took awhile for them to sink in that this was something they could keep.

With all of the bag excitement over, we started to look at our next mini project, making earrings. Something which they have been asking about for a while.

I have never made these earrings before and it is more fiddly than I thought, but lets see how we go.

 4 of the girls with their bags. I don't normally like showing the children's faces online, but these bags are an exception. 

 Part of my walk along the busy road of Arni, From school to bus stand.

 Rain poured on Thursday night and Rainbows continued down at the learning disability school on Friday. Keeping on track with the wall designs and landscape theme. 

 Trying to use a different material each week, I drew and coloured a rainbow, which apparently looked like a mountain. The children then glued the wool to match the colour of the rainbow. An absolute success.

Some of the boys asked me what I had for breakfast in Tamil. They obviously found it highly amusing when I shared the information. That they continued to ask me another 10 or so times in laughter.

The younger and less able children painted white clouds.

 Reach!

The rain did pour again and this time I got caught out in it. Arriving home, wet through.

As I sat taking some bread from the packaging one morning, I commented to Jhansi very casually that their were ants crawling across my plate, from the bread. All she replied... “No worries, Veg or Non-Veg”, so I brushed them off and thought nothing more of it.