Family time and the kids

So Rising Star is a boarding school, and all the kids live in "families" in the hostels on one side of campus. There are four boy families and four girl families. Every evening they have "Family time," and the volunteers go over and hang out with the kids before they go to bed. It's really just a time to hang out and have fun. I also do some reading with one boy, Arun, who's struggling a bit with his english, so I read with him for 10-15 minutes every night just to give him a chance to practice a bit more. I'm living in the Tamil Nadu district of India, and here everyones first language is Tamil. Thats pretty much the only language that the leprosy patients speak, and the younger kids really don't know a whole lot of english yet. Learning english is a very important part of their education. I'll have to post a good picture of Arun sometime. He's my buddy. He's a really good kid.

Anyway, so the other day at family time, I learned how to play Carrom Board. One awesome kid, Steven, kept telling me to come over so he could show me "cannonball" at least thats what I thought he was saying, and I was very confused. Turns out he wanted to show me this Indian game called Carrom board. It's kinda of like a variation of pool or billiards, but instead of balls you have little discs that you flick with your fingers. Here's the board when its set up to start playing. The white disc is the shooter, and the kids let me "break". I shot the disc at the pile and made the discs go flying.

The kids were really great at teaching me how to play. There are four players. One on each side, and when its your turn to shoot you place the disc somewhere along the bar on your side of the board. The first game I played, I lost terribly! (surprise, surprise). But the kids want me to come back and play with them some more (probably so they can beat me).
Since I was so bad, ne of the boys was always on my team helping me set up my play and telling me which disc to aim for. They were awesome. They actually had me play a whole game by myself just so I could have more chances to practice. They were really cute. and the game is fun!
I also see the kids during school. I'm with them Monday-Thursday teaching English, supervising their computer class, tutoring math and teaching dance. It's a busy schedule, but I'm enjoying it so far, and I have a lot to learn about how the school operates. Still learning my schedule for sure. A couple times during the day, we take a break, and these two girls decided we should take some pictures posing. I don't really know them yet, and I can't even remember their names. IT's so hard to learning 180 indian children's names!
These are 2 of the girls who are 5th standard. I teach them english. They can be trouble makers, but I look forward to working with them and teaching them.
So those are a few of the kids. More to come I guarantee :)