On Sunday Sealdah was actually quite calm. The kids colored and we handed out food and did wound care and there were no problems.
The girls came for the computer class and I took them to the Iway so they could e-mail previous volunteers. A woman who was here earlier this year had set up e-mail addresses for them. However, when we got to the cafe', none of the girls knew their address, or even what provider (g-mail, yahoo, etc.) it was on. This is understandable because they really have no exposure to computers and the internet. Its just not something they really think or care about. Anyway, I opened new accounts for all of them and had them e-mail Nancy, the American woman who helped start CRAWL.
At school the kids drew vampires.
Yesterday morning, Ellenoor and Trina went the the Sunderban Tiger Reserve, where they'll be until Wednesday afternoon. So I went into Kolkata by myself. I went to a coffeeshop and read the news for awhile. Then I walked around the Park Street area and found this little independent bookstore that had all sorts of Communist and Marxists writing. I spent at least an hour browsing through there, and bought two books on globalization. Next, I made my way to the Oxford Bookstore where I was disappointed to find out that they don't carry any kind of workbooks for writing the Bengali script. I was hoping to find something that little kids use, but their selection is almost exclusively English. I'm a little frustrated by the lack of resources for learning Bengali. It would be much easier to get info on Hindi. I really want to do Bengali though, because that's everyones's first language here.
Anyway, I had a nice Indian lunch in town and then headed back to Khardah.
I played football with a bunch of my students and alot of other kids. The field was abuzz with activity. There were multiple football and cricket games going on at once, so were were confined to a very small corner of the field. It was hectic with so many of us playing in such a small area. It was fun though. After we finished playing, Prativa, Piya and Arati came back to the flat with me to keep me company since Ellenoor and Trina are gone. But they had only been there for about 20 minutes when Piya's mom showed up and they all left.
Today wasn't quite so eventful. I slept in, and then just did laundry and such when I got up. Four little girls (they were probably about 8 or 9) in school uniforms came to the door and wanted to talk to me. They examined my hands (white) and my hair (light brown) and asked me all sorts of questions in Bengali. I told them I don't speak Bengali, but that didn't keep them from trying. One of them showed me her English exercise book, which was interesting. It had things like singular and plural, and taught vocabulary like apple, cat, and ice cream. Eventually I figured out that the girls wanted candy. I don't know where they got the idea that I had candy, but whatever. As it turns out, we have a huge bag of candy that was left by a previous volunteer. I gave them each a piece and then they all shook my hand and left. It was pretty amusing.
After I get done here at the cafe', I'm going over to the field to play soccer with the kids again.

~m