Update 3...

Hello again!

its been 3 days since my last update....i think....think yourselves lucky! today is tuesday as you know and our first proper day of 'work'. yesterday was spent chatting to becky (chennai co-ordinator) about things and planning for teaching today. Oasis do this teaching program called Jacobs Well, and for one yesr they come into the office each day and learn to sew/etc etc and when a team like us is here, learn english and maths. its had to explain to an indian without much english that you did english 'literature' at 'college' and thats different from 'language'. i also think that they think 'college' means we are now qualified teachers.....so basically im now the jacobs well english teacher. yay. today was my first lesson and though i thought i stuffed it up good and proper, luke said he thought they all responded really well (which they did, always doing tasks etc) had fun (lots of laughter, probably directed at me!) and that it all went nicely. so that was encouraging. they only have one hour long session a week, 2 english, 2 maths and one 'hobbies. luke is taking maths, while steve is helping with english and sharing hobbies and 'lifeskills' with me. i have exciting plans do do some simple geography with them in lifeskills maybe. yes to me that is exciting! the rest of today was spent visiting the new community/slum whoch oasis plan to help in for the next five years. now, youd be right thinking that when you start in a new place you want to start really effectivly, with trained experts etc etc, cos you want to get decent foundations laid......well, for the first month, we 3 are in 100% charge. thats a 2 hour session every day for a month. its not that bad thought really, when we visited friday they had remembered my name from friday which was nice! there must be over 100 kids in there though. and they are all happy and energetic all of the time, and very easy to play with. i must have set some kind of hand shaking record today with them, as they all wanted to shake hands at least 3 times! lots of adults called down from their windows shouting "hello how are you what is your name goodbye" not at all interested in you responding!

had driven to the slum on the back of thomson (yes his first name is thomson! nice guy, son of a pastor) 's motorbike. love riding through the indian streets so much, especially on motorbikes and autos. ive found the best auto drivers are the ones who have a tendancy to swap using the brake for long blasts of the horn, have no inhibitions about going round blind corners on the wrong side of the road, and are generally crazy. also if they have flames painted on them thats a good sign of a fast driver. if they dont use ther horn, then theyre not going fast enough, is my own 'philosopy' about it! great fun are the roads here.

after a lazy day on saturday, we decided to venture out of our a/c island and go to the cinema. walked 10 mins to a big mall (there are loads popping up all over chennai) and had supper there -no cook on the weekends!- and got an auto to a cinema with english films, only to find that our first choice, 'meet the robinsons', was sold out, as where all other random english films at the same time. blagged my way inside anyway in search of popcorn. paid 70 rupees for a 'large' box, and got a box the size of ummmm two large english ones! popcorn itself not brilliant, and soon gave it to a local loitering youth, who had been eyeng it up while steve bought some 'limea', an amazingly refeshing lime dink. went back to flat and watched shawshank redemption on steves ipod. much better thn the robinsons! sunday went to the fabled "Powerhouse" church, located in an old cinema of the abirami mall when we had supper trhe previous evening. not packed out, but decent worship and message. the pastor, 'jake' (short for jakeamasthrasanmhratohasomething) was very welcoming, as were the rest of the congregation, inluding a american missionary with his 7 kids. nice guy. then met an english (cockney to be exact) business man. this guy, called paul willaims, we found to be an amazing guy. his company -of which we managed to pry out of his humble self later he is the ceo- finds and builds western style etc office space in cities, particulary eastern/developed world. it is an entirely christian organisation, and does huge amounts of good stuff. i cant explain it all now, but basically he is extremly passionate about chrisitans in business and really in touch with God. steve really encouraged, as he is doing product design at uni, and feels that he cannot use this to serve God, and to see someone who is doing so in a 'normal' career etc. his company is 'mls business centres". then we went to lunch at a great place called sparkys, where paul paid for our lunch out of the blue, very generous. american style restaurant which is will describe at a later date! but one comment is that i had one of the best ever burgers there, absolutly incredible! hehe

yesterday attempted the cinema again, and got to see the film. not bad, though not at all great. indian cinemas have an interval in the middle of it which is different, and some very extreme and crazy adverts!

anyway, that is all for now, hope you enjoyed, see you all again sometime this weekend!

josh