Abby: School

The past two weeks and a half have been a big struggle for me. School isn't going too great. The kids are perfectly fine but the teaching style is way different and as a matter of fact almost everything else is too. Besides the teaching style, here are some of the differences:

I have two hours of French every day except for Monday (or Hindi and Kannada for those who chose to do that, most of them chose that because most people at school know Hindi and/or Kannada)

I have two or three hours of science every day, one hour for one branch of science the other hour for another (either physics, chemistry or biology); there isn't as big a focus on reading and writing skills.

This school starts computer as a subject in first grade. I really like my computer class and teacher.

In America most kids have this standard of whats' "cool" and "uncool" like Dora, Barbie and Hello Kitty (none of which I like). There are not big standards of "cool and "uncool"- if someone has something with Dora, Barbie or Hello Kitty on it, even if you think its kind of girly or "uncool" you don't say anything about it because either they like it or it's all that person could find and they might not like it either.        

Since the British ruled India for so long, we have "houses" in the schools. Those who have read Harry Potter or seen the movies are familiar with "houses" in schools right? Each grade is divided into four houses. The houses compete with each other in sports and other activities and academics. So I'm in 6th grade, but I have people from each grade from K-12 in my house. I'm in the green house called Caesar. The other houses are Phoenix (red), Poseidon (blue), and Hercules (yellow). Our shirts are gray, but have stripes on the sides. The stripe color tells which house we are in.  


One thing that has helped me with moving here is a song by the Christian singer Mandisa called Stronger. Here's it is.    

 Please pray for me!

 

Abby: Legolas Chinnadurai Joseph

Playing with one of his favorite toys , the evil bunny

 We got our dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! His name is Legolas Chinnadurai Joseph.  Legolas is the name of one of the elves in Lord of the Rings, and Chinnadurai means "little prince" in Tamil. We call him Lego. He is 38 days old so he's not even close to the size he's gonna get! He is so cute and he's growing so fast I don't think the pics on the last post are quite accurate, so here are some more:

"Sleeping" on Andrew's lap

                                                                            

Just chillin'

                                                                            

He likes to sleep all stretched out

   









Now don't be fooled by all the pics of him sleeping, he is very active (especially now that he's reached his chewing stage) and he keeps at least one of us awake some of every night. I couldn't get any pictures of him active but I'll try to get some!