Site Assignment and My Growing Excitement

Yesterday, I received an email from the Reverend Thomas John (my site coordinator in Kerala) with information on my site assignment. I have been placed at Bishop Moore College in the city of Mavelikkara. I will teach spoken English to the college students and to the primary school students who share the Bishop Moore campus, working on the college newspaper (and I thought I was done with journalism), and giving English lessons to the neighboring Dalit (untouchable) community. There are also opportunities to work with the community counseling center and with the local Church of South India congregations. The Young Adult Volunteer who is currently serving at Bishop Moore College is Ariel Givens; you can read her blog here.

The first thing I did after reading the site description was to Wikipedia Mavelikara and Bishop Moore College. Mavelikkara is in the district of Alapuzha, which is called the "Venice of the East" because of all the canals. The city has a population of about 28,000 with 10% of the population under 10 years of age. I couldn't find much information about the local fauna, which I was hoping would include elephants, monkeys and sloth bears. All of these animals--plus tigers which I would like seeing in a zoo but not up close--are native to the Kerala area. Today I'm going to be searching in the Austin Public Library for some books about Kerala (history and culture) so that I won't be totally ignorant when I arrive (like I was in Northern Ireland).

This week I have a small break from Camp Halfblood, so I can pour all my energy into preparing for my YAV year; sitting down and working in air conditioning feels so nice. I'm still getting congratulations cards and contributions to my fund--I've reached the $3,000 mark! Thanks to everyone who has contributed.