Speaking Spanish in India

by HouseBoy

Audrey and Evan have switched from taking Hindi to learning Spanish since being enrolled at the American Embassy School. Although Spanish is probably the more practical of the two languages for our eventujal return to Texas, Mom and Dad miss learning the weekly Hindi vocabulary...
This week both Audrey and Evan had presentations in Spanish Class. Each of them had to learn lines of dialog, lyrics to music and present some of their projects to parents.

Audrey's class was the first to present. Their teacher, Mrs.Shrivastava, had the kids work as a team of "International" weather reporters, researching a presenting facts about the weather all over the globe in Spanish speaking countries. The video was set up like an evening news report.

Audrey was one of the "on-location" reporters detailing the weather from high atop famous Machu Picchu in Peru. Audrey had a great idea for her spot. She brought in a couple of hats from Nepal that actually look a lot like the traditional hats worn in the Andes Mountains. The video shots on video looked pretty convincing!

Audrey's class then shared computer projects with parents - these included a written report about the Incas and a description of a monster the kids each designed. The report and descriptions were recorded so we could listen in on how well words were pronounced!
The following day we attended Evan's class.

His group sang a series of songs in Spanish as a large part of their project. Then each child also presented some dialog.  After Evan's class entertained us with words and song, we again got to see and hear some of the children's work on computers. This time the subjects included a report on he Mayan civilization, and a description of the kids' monster creations. 
The kids had a great time being creative and having an opportunity to use some of their developing Spanish-language skills - all right here in the heart of New Delhi!

Taking Care of the Horses

By HouseBoy

Audrey and her friend Mariam had the opportunity to take care of some of the horses they ride at the Delhi Riding Club this week.

Ms. Beeru, the Club's proprietor, gave them a nice long list of chores to accomplish early Monday morning.

The girls helped clean the stables. They worked on grooming the horses, braiding the animals manes and tails. They also made sure each animal had water.

The most interesting chore involved learning how to prepare and mix the horses' morning feed. The feed is a combination of cut grasses, oats and barley, graham, corn and rock salt. 

The girls had to mound these ingredients up in one of the stables and thoroughly blend the mixture by hand.  Then Mariam and Audrey had to carry large galvanized bins of the feed to each of the nine horses. Great job!

Many thanks to Ms. Beeru for letting them learn more about the horses they ride.

Only in India

by HouseBoy

Evan was invited to a friend's 9th birthday party over the weekend. The weather was beautiful - February is by far the best month to be in India with temperatures between 60F and 85F degrees.  There were seven or eight kids attending the party. Of course pizza, sweets and birthday presents were all a part of the agenda. Evan told me the boys spent time playing soccer in a neighborhood green space and later had a "treasure hunt" in his friend's yard.

But the highlight was definitely the elephant. Only in India is it so easy to hire a Mahout and his Elephant for almost any occasion.

First the kids fed this giant, gentle, girl a big bunch of bananas as a snack. Then they all climbed aboard for a ride through the neighborhood...

On "Safari" in Jor-Bagh Enclave.  Very cool!

My Trip to Buffalo, Part 2

By Evan Sayer

The “Great Wolf Lodge” is a partially expensive hotel with an inside water park(exciting!). We went to the water park and did some fun things there for example: water slides (there was a big giant orange one, a roller coaster one, and a toilet bowl one.), wave pool etc.. After that we took our dinner (as the Indians say). We ate at a buffet that had goldfish snacks, chocolate pudding and much, much more! We went back up to our room which was on the third floor to go to bed. I slept pretty good through the night, of course I had a little jet lag.

When I woke up it was about six in the morning, that's when I got up and started to read a book called “Ripley's Believe It Or Not,” which is a book like “The Guinness Book of World Records.” Eventually my whole family joined in reading the book while we all waited for my grandma to wake up. After a little while we snacked on some rolls and went to the water park to swim a little bit, then checked out.
On the way back we had fun looking for gazebos and singing songs like “We are Cookies.”  (There seem to be a lot of gazebos in Canada.)
When we got home my mom and my dad unpacked the stuff that we packed up to go to the “Great Wolf Lodge.” Then we got ready for Christmas.

My Aunt Heidi was supposed to come the next day but she surprised us and got there that night!

The last thing I did when I was in Buffalo that was fun was sledding on a big hill called, Chestnut Ridge. Even my Mom and Dad went down the hill with us! It was very fast and icy.

THE END well, not really...