Surviving the first day of school 6/10/24 Written by Cori Compton

I woke up today around 5 in the morning to the sound of car horns and dogs barking. 5 in the morning here is 5:30 in the evening back home which still freaks my brain out. I went from balcony to balcony as I wandered the hotel alone until 5:50 when Alysa, Bella, and Sloan(don’t yell at me if I spell their names wrong. I’m really bad with names) anyway. Alysa, Bella and Sloan came out of their room. They asked what time it was. I checked my watch which is still in Utah time. My clock said 6:09, so I had to add a 1 and minus an hour to get the time. Later in the morning I found the three girls again. We looked at the beautiful view and found out that the roof had a balcony. We hurried up to the roof and man was that view amazing. The sun barely shining through the trees and houses. The roof tops were full of color and trash it was awesome! There were purple trees, and colorful houses that could be seen all the way up the mountain. A bit later we were all getting dressed in the school uniforms of ours. The girls wearing the pink top with the dark blue baggy bottoms, a pink, white, and blue colored scarf wrapped around like a satchel.  The breakfast  was amazing. Pancakes, bananas with Nutella, juice, eggs and toast, it was awesome. Best pancakes I’ve had in a long time. After breakfast we all got ready to set out to our different schools. In my school team, Olivia, Brenner, Aiden, Viv, Me Cori, our team leader Jeff, and our Translater Gunnu. The Car ride over was fun of laughter and nervousness. The road was as insane as always, cars flying past everywhere. Cars on the other side of the road, honking everywhere, people everywhere. it was great.  Arriving at the school was so strange. It wasn’t really what I imagined. I don’t really know what I imagined. We arrived as they were doing their morning ceremony chant thing. We walked over to the teachers  room where we sat, listening as we could hear their cute ununderstandable morning chant. The kids went around  running as we continued to wait… for something I’m sure. They served us some nice people on tea while we waited. It was actually amazing. After waiting a long while. We finally get to get started with Viv being our village leader that day. We started by singing some songs. That was awkward. We went and played a giant game of down by the banks. Half of our team knew one version and the other half knew a different version which makes it kinda confusing. Especially when one version is slightly longer than the other. After the little game we started having them write their names on the name tags in English letters so that we can read them. We helped them make a portfolio with their name and drawings of the things they like. Tho I think they got confused and just started copying Brenner with a bunch of soccer balls. After getting them all in line by grade each of us got a group to take to a classrooms. I got grades 4-5 which was a large group of some of the older kids. There was a grade 6 but we weren’t in charge of teaching them. It was so strange to finally be teaching them but I didn’t have much time to think about it. The lesson I was teaching for day one is Body Parts. Which was one of the easier ones to do when you have a giant language barrier. The 4-5 graders had a quite good grasp at the English body part names. I kinda ran out of things to do but I think I did well there. Next was lunch because we took so long to get started. Sadly, I had to use the bathroom. Which… is hard to call a full fledged bathroom. It was a tiny little stall outside. No lights inside, it was pitch dark. No way to lock or really shut the door. And the toilet was a squat pody.. yeah that was interesting. I used a lot of hand sanitizer today. We had lunch up in the classroom I was teaching in, we pretty much locked ourselves in as the children swarmed outside of the doors and windows. The windows were open but bared so they were trying to stick their hands through the gaps. It was quite a chaotic lunch. I finished my lunch and headed outside disputes the fear of getting trampled, I head down the outside steps a bunch of kids follow me. Mostly girls. The boys mostly watched. The girls all held my hands and were talking to me. Whole bunch. I couldn’t understand a single thing. One of 6th graders that spoke okay English asked if i spoke any Hindu. I said that sadly I didn’t because you guys have so much to say. They were all surrounding me as if expecting me to do something. All eyes were on me. It’s strange looking so different from everyone around you. I headed back up the stairs where my team finally came out from hiding and were also hanging out with the children. The kids loved Vivs hair with how orange it is. The lessons went on. The lessons were shorter as it went on. The first graders didn’t say much other than one young boy who was in a class of quiet girls and just had so much energy. He was funny. He kept asking for the scissors. The second graders was 1 girl and 3 boys. The boys were chill and payed attention until the roust kid came in and started fighting them. That got them in the mood to wrestle. 3rd graders were pretty loud. There was a lot of them. I had Gunnu with me at that point so it was easier to get across what I was trying to say. The other ones understood quite well for not understanding me fully. Before I knew it. The school day was over. And we went home. We were tired. But when we got home we almost immediately left to go shopping DOWN town. I had just enough time to get dressed. When I said down town I meant it. We walked down a lot of stairs into a crevasse that was full of stores and stands. It was so cool! Everyone got cool India outfits. I wasnt too happy with mine but that’s fine. Everyone had fun. The boys went somewhere else. We got to walk to shop. Dinner was good. I’m running out of time and it is lights out! Gotta go!

 

4 Responses to “Surviving the first day of school 6/10/24 Written by Cori Compton”

1. Cheryl Compton, on June 11th, 2024 at 6:02 am Said:

   Thanks for the update! I love you!

2. Arden Compton, on June 11th, 2024 at 6:13 pm Said:

   Thanks for this update! It is great to read your first hand account. Thanks for all the photos. I look forward to more updates.
   I don’t know if Cori will see this, but Cori, your sister Abby had her baby on June 9!
   Go and do great things!

3. Tylers Mom, on June 12th, 2024 at 9:41 pm Said:

   Thank you for posting all the pictures. Its nice to see you capture the moments. Keep making memories!

4. McKell Berrett Berrett Scanlan, on June 13th, 2024 at 6:08 pm Said:

   You paint a vidid picture. Funny about the potty!