Photo Scavenger Hunt-Vijaynagar Colony

What an eventful week! I mean that in terms of classes and life here in Hyderabad, of course, but also for our people at home in the US. Here is a summary of some highlights.

We split our classes this week into two groups, which rotated. One group learned how to upload photos from the cameras onto the computer, as well as an introduction to Final Cut Express. The other group began brainstorming, writing, and creating storyboards for their first video projects. At times it was a little difficult to get the students who were in the writing group to focus, since the other group was working on the computer, which is always an automatic distraction. But they are excited by the prospect of planning for a video project, and many of our artistically inclined students especially enjoyed storyboarding, so they should be pretty prepared with their pre-production by next week.

The biggest difficulty for the students on the computer so far seems to be just getting used to the Mac mouse, which can be very fussy, and doesn’t have the separate right click button that PC mouses have. Several students became easily frustrated that they had less control over the pointer, especially in Final Cut Express, when they had to move different sections around on the timeline. However, it was a great opportunity for leaders to emerge. The students who had a better handle on using the computer were quick to patiently help their peers, and explain the process to them in their own language, which helped clarify some confusion. Pretty soon, the students were all taking turns placing photos into a sequence in the timeline, using the razor tool to trim the sections, and were using the text tool to create captions for each photo. The still image sequences from the Vijaynagar Colony group are uploaded here. The Nalgonda group is still finishing up, but we will post them early this week.

The Nalgonda group had a bit of a rough start to the week, as it was difficult to keep the boys in one spot and to focus and listen for more than five minutes. However, by Tuesday, after a brief conversation with the class, things ran much smoother. These boys have immense amounts of energy, and though it may be a challenge to get them to focus that energy, it is obvious that they are bright and quick to learn. I am confident that they will be able to produce creative, thoughtful projects, and am excited to see what they come up with. Shamstabrez, a student of Sarah’s and Ioana’s from last term, has been a frequent visitor in our class. Though he is one of the smaller boys and has an exceptionally sweet demeanor, he is a strong leader amongst the boys, and helping out with his camera and computer skills. On Monday, he asked if he would be allowed to come to our classes even though he had already taken it the previous term. I told him he could, but I also warned him that he had already learned a lot of the skills we would be teaching, and it might be repetitive to him. However, I also welcomed him as a helper and peer leader. He said he didn’t mind, but he also said, “Challenge me.” I was immediately impressed by this appeal, and am also beginning to see that once the young mind is exposed to something, it just whets the appetite for more. In particular, forms of creative expression seems to really open this floodgate, and soon a student will thirst for more and will ask to take on challenges. It gave me confidence that programs like this, really can create positive change. So we will start thinking about ways to challenge Shamstabrez and anyone else who may be more advanced, and we shall indeed bring it on.

The Vijaynagar Colony group has come to feel much more comfortable around us, which in turn has brought out more spontaneous activities, nick names (one student calls me “akah”, which means older sister in Telugu), higher participation, and many many giggles. Friday class ended with Dave demonstrating a break dancing move, the “coffee grinder”, when the students asked about dancing in America. This was quite the hit with the whole class 🙂 This was also Prithvi’s first week working with us at Vijaynagar Colony. He has been a very positive presence in the classroom, the students appreciate not only having someone who speaks both Telugu and English fluently, but also someone who is their age working with them. Prithvi has not worked much with video or editing software, but he is already picking up extremely quickly, and was already able to help instruct with Final Cut when he sat in on our lesson.

This week was full of excitement for Dave and I as Americans. Last week was full of anticipation mixed with agony, at the fact that we were on the other side of the world for this event. Leila, the woman who has helped us with our living arrangements here, is a huge Obama supporter, though she lives thousands of miles from the US, and knows that Dave and I are both also huge Obama/Biden supporters. She gave us a phone call in the morning just to make sure we were watching the coverage on television. Though we could not be in the US, we did watch the polls and also watched Obama’s speech in Grant Park. We were both filled with immense joy, when we shared the news to our students. I wasn’t sure how much they knew about the US election, but all of the students seemed to be familiar with Obama. I have gathered from news coverage on various Indian channels, and from speaking to students and other locals, that India has quite a favorable impression on our new president. In general, there is a hopeful air, and I think many here see Obama being in office as a step in the right direction as far as India’s relationship with the US goes. Listening to opinions from several locals made me happy that I did get to be here in India during the election, to see the perspective from another country.

The students never run out of questions to ask us about American culture. They are also just as eager to share their own culture with us, especially when it comes to discussions about food, music, and dance. When asked to share about American culture, Dave and I have been quick to reply with information about current politics, historical figures and events, food, and popular culture. We played some Elvis and M.I.A. for them. And for the boys I also played them Lupe Fiasco, a Muslim hip hop artist from Chicago, who they enjoyed. However, after some girls shared some traditional Indian dance moves, some asked me what types of traditional music and dance we had in America. I felt frustrated that I was so hard-pressed to provide them with a solid answer. Discussing with Dave, the closest we could think of to any type of traditional music or dance that was specific the the USA was country music, or perhaps folk music, the likes of what would have been heard at Woodstock. And perhaps rock n’ roll? But these still wouldn’t be considered traditional, by any means. In contrast to the extremely defined and rich traditions of Indian culture such as music and dance, that of the US may seem slightly sparse. However, I also thought about the fact that there is a good-sized community of almost every race you could possibly think of living in the US. And though it has taken us this long to finally elect an African American president, we have finally reached that point, and continue to grow as a country of many different races. It’s hard to define an identifying culture in music or dance for Americans, but I do believe that it does at least have the ability to attract other cultures and therefore promote sharing and understanding amongst them.