Language struggles, and return of the monkeys (Journal Entry)

Today, I went to Deepa’s, and there were some guests there- a youg girl, about 12 grade, and her mother I think. They were from Kahan, (i.e., the city) and acted like it. They had proud attitudes, and I felt very uncomfortable while I was there. The girl was noisy and asked about the computer we had. The Aunty asked me where I was from and how great Becca was and mentioned about pictures, etc. She then asked if I was going to pay Deepa for teaching me. I pretended not to understand. Deepa seemed uncomfortable too. I finally said, “we’ll see…” Later, she asked Deepa how much I would pay her, Deepa said, “ask her, yourself.” So she did. I again said, “We’ll see.” A few minutes after that, I said, “Okay, I’m going now…” They all acted very surprised and said, “Where are you going?” I said, “home.” They thought I was mad, but I explained it was because today was Saturday, and so I only had half a lesson. I also said to Deepa- you have guests, so I’ll just go, it’s okay. She realized they were disrupting things and probably being a little pushy too and said, “They can go sit over there…it’s okay.” But I didn’t want to stay there any more.

Plus, the lesson I had planned for that day didn’t go well either and I found that out after coming back home. The kids and Jyoti and Bicky helped me translate a story faster and more accurately than Deepa did. The could hardly even understand her story. Granted we tried to take the story (a few sentences) in English and put it into Kahani. When I was with the kids, we took it from Hindi into Kahani. It was more of a direct translation, where as I was trying to go for the “Story” effect with the other one. Both attempts came out with different results, but both weren’t very good, and not what I was hoping for. This story-crafting business is going to be difficult!

In the afternoon, the monkeys returned for the second time. This time, I went with the kids and chased them all over the field!!! It was a lot of fun, but also tiring. We took sticks and stones and ran all around- jumping from terrace to terrace. It was funny because the monkeys were about as big as the kids. The kids would run after them and most of the time the monkeys would run away, but sometimes the big ones would turn towards the kids and then the kids would turn around and start running away!!! It was quite a sight! It was fun to be a part of it this time, though probably not the most appropriate thing for a young pahardi (mountain) girl to do!!! All well!