Welcome to another edition of my travails in the "Unemployed Youth chicken and egg center" locality. When I reached the school today it was already 10:45. Kids were just breaking for lunch. There was general excitement because the school was exploding with visitors. Folks from GE were constructing a toilet - much to the amusement of the children, they were actually hauling the granite stones and cementing stuff under a mason's direction. Then I met Ms Usha, the volunteer for Sikshana who works with this school. It was particularly fortuitous since I am doing a site visit for Asha-seattle in Kanakpura of all Asha adopted schools supported by Sikshana. The difference between the rural schools supported by Sikshana and our Chandranagar school is enormous. Sikshana has hired a COO and I quizzed him about the difference I saw. Sikshana has only been supporting the two teachers in this school and not much else. Whereas the other rural schools I visited get notebooks, papers, writing stuff, library, computer/laptop etc., there is nothing of that sort here. Due to the *poor* response of the HM of this school Sikshana is not providing them with the entire gamut of resources as they normally would. This is a tangent to my visit ... I would love to follow it up with those who are interested on this. After lunch things has settled down a bit. The word on the street is that the GE folks were constructing a toilet for a the girls. Right now it's co-ed. Since the school already has 3 perfectly working toilets I didn't quite understand the need for a 4th one just here. Sikshana has identified this school and are working with GE on it. I spent some time with Mr. Shekhar's (Asha teacher) class - 4th standard. There are two sections crammed into one classroom with blackboards on either ends. While one section is learning from the blackboard, the other section copies notes. There are two class teachers. Mr Shekhar seems a well loved teacher. At least unlike the teacher for the 3rd graders I saw before this class, he wasn't wielding a long bamboo stick. I quizzed the children in small math questions and they were quite good. I found this class easier to handle than the normal 7th standard that I have been visiting. Sumona joined me later and together we interacted with the children. In spite of not knowing kannada she was able to make progress with the children. I still haven't had a chance to procure more flash cards - the specific distributor doesn't have what we need in stock. I was also unable to find a good store for the models Mr Shivkumar has asked for the 8th standard class but this time I was able to get the name of the store from him. So, I'm off to avenue rd to make these purchases this week. Overall, I feel like I needed to have gone in better prepared with a game or idea. I'm not sure how much it benefits the kids to simply show up for a chat. Last sat the HM was not in the school and he was keeping to himself today. Mrs Padmaja was handling the general toilet commotion and managing a class. As usual both Mr Shekhar and she said everything was going ok. Megha