Heading to Amsterdam!

A trip to Amsterdam inspires me to reinvigorate my Musings & Meanderings blog! It's been unpublished for quite awhile (in fact it's been over four years!), but it's not because I haven't been musing and meandering*.

I'll be heading out on this new grand adventure to The Netherlands with my very good buddy and partner Kent. We've been planning this trip for months after a thoughtful mutual friend sent us a link telling about a "ukulele/bike/sail adventure" through the canals. How perfect - three of our favorite things all wrapped up into a trip to a far-away land where we've never been!

To prepare myself I've been reading both fiction & nonfiction (a favorite: Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto), watching movies & documentaries (so many out there about Vincent Van Gogh lately), pouring over Rick Steves and DK guidebooks, and trying to soak up as much as I can before our flight leaves.

The more I learn the more I realize what a special trip this is lining up to be.

And so something is driving me to re-learn how to blog as I get ready for this adventure.
I'm seeing if I can remember how to operate Blogger: How to write a post, how to compose something at least a little bit interesting, how to include a photo and/or video, how to link interesting information, how to publish the post, and how to get it onto Facebook so friends can find it.

So, with the traveling and sailing and biking and ukulele playing, wish me luck as I figure out how to find some time to actually write & publish a blog post after we get there!

~~~

*In fact I've been traveling and enjoying life immensely: A trip to Jamaica, a second trip to both France and Spain, three to the British Virgin Islands, one to Mexico, three to Hawaii, and several to other states in the USA. All un-blogged, but definitely journaled! I journal nearly every day of every trip, and create an occasional Facebook or Instagram post, but I find it takes something else entirely to turn a journal entry or a photo caption into a blog post.

Teaching at Shanti Bhavan

Into my second week now, I'm still trying to process how teaching here compares to my other positions through the years. As I muse a bit on this topic, have a look at these studious and lovely children during our nature walk/writing time today.

A major and quite apparent difference is the scanty amount of resources, such as paper, pencils, chalk, markers, crayons, scissors, technology, teachers' manuals, current textbooks, workbooks, library books, leveled readers, teaching specialists. I could go on and on. I could mention lights - my particular classroom has no power, ever, and most of the others use solar powered electrical lights - but it's not considered appropriate to turn them on during the day. Oh, and I could mention window panes.

Yet teachers and children here are beautifully resourceful - and that's definitely not detrimental to teaching and learning. One of the many wonderful things about teaching here is working with children who are bright and creative and eager to learn and who are learning to think critically and solve problems just as we hope all children will.

To be completely honest, some moments are fine and some aren't. What gets tiring is needing to be on top of every behavior at all times especially since there are so many needy children - essentially every single one. Every child here has had a more difficult upbringing than any of the other children I've taught through the years. Some will be as good as gold at most moments and others will try to get by with everything at all moments and others will only try occasionally. Just like a classroom full of kids anywhere.

And I should probably mention that these are definitely the first students I've ever taught who are fluent in Hindi as a second, or in many cases third, language. In fact we have Hindi class every single day, sometimes twice! Um, no I'm not their teacher for that!