Me and Sylvia are now nearly half way through our stay here and we can safely say we have been faced with a few challenges! The accomodation in the beginning was not as we expected and 3 changes of room later here we are! As the title suggests we (well actually just Sylvia) have mastered the art of haggling! We have made some killing deals in our time here! Staying in a convent has been interesting to say the least. The nuns are lovely and look after us very well but as they never leave the convent it was difficult to find anyone to show us around. They also like to tell us horror stories about the area and beg u
s not to stay out after 6! Everyone here is very friendly. The other day one of my students mother took us on a 10 hour tour around Bangalore which involved elephant rides, palaces and one very patient rickshaw driver. Another family keep inviting us round to stay in their lovely house and making us feel more than at home. We are also very lucky as we can do lots of practice (if we wake up on time!) which i think is starting inspire some of the teachers and students! So everything is going well now and we have really started to work on the key areas we think the children are lacking in.The first week was mad. As Sylvia has accurately described, Bangalore has taken alot of getting used to. Infact the initial journey from the airport was probably one of the most scariest experiences of my life. I thought we were dead. But nonetheless we have lived to tell the tale! After a strike, many school exams and busy teachers we finally managed to get something organised in the way of workshops. The main problem we have faced is lack of enthusiasum from the schools. When we arrived no one really knew what they wanted us to do and why we are here. Everytime we tried to organise something, everyone was busy. I think the schools here are very different from the other schools that people have been posted in. As far as I can tell the kids just turn up as and when they can and then the teacher rotates round them showing them what to do and the students copying. This means that many of the children cannot read music and their understanding of the printed score is very limited. This is actually the biggest problem facing us. Trying to get the students to actually read the score. Most the time they either copy or just guess. A great example of this was in one rhythm workshop where we were playing a game that involved them clapping rhythms off the board and when we counted them in they all clapped whilst looking at us! Obviously it was a complete shambles and took about 5 attempts before they all actually read it off the board!
The students often travel a very great distance to come for lessons and so cannot make it in more often that once a week. This posed a difficulty in itself. After waiting for a couple of weeks for the teachers to sort something out we decided just to post up a list of workshop dates and wait and see who turned up. We expect about 5- 10 as the room we have to teach in is tiny. So when on the first day over 30 kids turned up we were a little overwhelmed. However now, 5 workshops later we feel that the students are really starting to understand the fundamentals of score reading and rhythm. So plenty of games and laughs later all the students can now read 
music to an acceptable level. Phew... So next week we can actually get on to teaching them what actually matters. The playing level of the teachers themseleves is not very high here. Infact I gave a teacher a lesson last week who was studying for her grade 5 and another who skipped from grade 1 straight to grade 5 and is now teaching grade 5 students which is scary. Luckily he doesnt teach in any of our schools!
Clapping game in the Rhythm workshop
Oh also if this isnt enough we are also doing violin workshops. And after not picking up a violin in about 5 years it could be a laugh!
Teachers workshops are not going down too well here. No one is up for it. But thats not something that is going to stop us two! We have become like mean, lean workshop machines. There are also lots of concerts in the pipeline and hopefully workshops in state schools also. We are still trying our best to make some new contacts but the pace of life here is very slow and it can take weeks just to get one piece of information out of someone but we are really sta
rting to feel like we are moving forward.
Hope the other WAMers are having fun and are getting better weather than us in the south!
From a very cold and soaked Rosie
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