Whew

This week, I’m going to be pretending that I know Hindi. I’m not so much doing a Diwali/Deepavali presentation as I am rehashing parts of the India culture lesson I did in January (I doubt they’ll remember a lot anyway, and there are new kids in 5 out of my 6 classes) and teaching the kids how to write their names in Hindi (thanks, Ankur!). I think that for little kids, it’d be a lot easier for them to write in Hindi than in Tamil–and their mouths can handle Hindi sounds far more easily than Tamil (my mouth, too, regretfully–I wish I could handle the pronunciation, but it’s really difficult). It also helps that Hindi matches up with Japanese sounds remarkably well.

I also finally made it to Hashikura Temple today (I left a little too late yesterday, and tried to hike, but by the time I made it halfway up the mountain, about 30-40 minutes after I started, I realized that I would have no time to actually see the temple before I’d have to leave again, so I gave up and came back down)…I now understand why its Lindsay’s favorite. It’s gorgeous! I almost wonder why it isn’t one of the 88, since Kobo Daishi was so impressed by how mystical the area felt that he decided to have a temple built there…but it kind of feels more like western Tokushima’s little secret this way, and I like that. The 88 temples are, as far as tourist attractions go, very much not–but Hashikura-ji still felt a lot more intimate. I guess the lack of tour buses and being on top of a mountain will do that.

And my Amazon package came tonight! I’m really pleased with Yamato/Kuroneko’s service. My shoulder bag will be quite heavy tomorrow…various folders full of notebooks and papers with Hindi characters and Deepavali images, some of my usual phonics stuff in case we inexplicably have a ton of free time, and my brand-new Kaplan GRE Verbal prep book. And, maybe after lunch, my laptop, to use the PDF-format GRE Quantitative prep materials. It’s really time to get in gear.

It’s also time to get to sleep. Starting a week off with under 6 hours of sleep isn’t really smart…but oh well, I’ll manage.

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