It seems there are a lot of holidays in India but not all of them are ones that mean the children get out of all school activities. Whilst there was no assembly and no formal class time there we activities throughout the day for them. I was just about to settle down to update the blog when one of the older boys came to find me and ask me to bring my recorder. I dutifully followed only to discover that I was going to orchestra practice, they were setting up a s...

Thursday morning was a slightly slower start but a number of our students decided to get up and join keep fit and practice their Bengali. The next thing that happened is that Joe and Jack wanted to wash their clothing. I have photographic evidence to prove this but they sat on chairs, over buckets of water and hand scrubbed their clothing, well at least they attempted to do so, when I saw it on the washing line later I wasn’t convinced by the effectiveness of...

After lunch we piled back into the taxis for a very short ride. We pulled up outside a red and green building which one of the students said reminded her of Christmas. It was in fact a museum devoted to Rabindranath Tagore. He was a member of one of the wealthy families in India, making their money through his grandfathers shrewd business sense during the height of the the East India Trading Companies. His father was a man who had a fascination of other cultu...

This is the Mathieson Music School song kindly written out for me by some of the pupils so that our students can learn it and join in at assemblies. Let’s celebrate (2) With Mathieson Music School children today Lift up your voices and join in our song Let’s sing a song come sing along Join in our spirit and spread the good cheer With Mathieson Music School children today Let’s celebrate (2) With Mathieson Music School children today We are the chi...

When I tumbled out of bed at 6am after the second bell of the morning I did expect to be the first one up, however to my immense surprise and to the shock of any parents or college staff reading this (I know you won’t believe me so the photographic evidence will be in the photo section of this blog) 4 of our students - specifically George, Joe, Jack and Brian were all out of bed and sitting at the table practicing the Bengali they had been taught the night befo...