New Class

Welcome back to A Summer of Refuge! Just one more month and I will be back in Greencastle in my senior year at DePauw. Exciting, yet sad because it means that my time at Exodus is slowly coming to a close.
This week there was no class because my students graduated and we had a week's break before the next students roll around the corner. While it's nice to have a break to be able to get office work done, the week also goes by much more slowly without teaching. And I really miss my students. It's weird to think that I might not see some of them again, but I hope they went away having learned a lot and having worked their way toward becoming self-sufficient in their new lives.
However, not all the week was filled with office work. The other two LCORE interns and I went on some adventures to take pictures for the new curriculum, like how to cash a check and how to ask for things at the supermarket. Our first stop was Saraga, which is a large international grocery store in Indianapolis. If you haven't been there, you need to go. My favorite part is rummaging around all the aisles looking at things I have never seen before. We got permission from the owner to take pictures, and although we were stared at for a long time by many people, we got the pictures we needed and we had fun doing it! When we were taking pictures at the cash register, a man came to check out thinking that we worked there. Guess we were convincing :)
Our next stop was the bank. Of course, most banks don't let people take pictures inside due to the security risk. We didn't get to do it, either, no matter how legit we pretended to be. But we did park across the street from the bank and take pictures of the outside of the building, which wasn't creepy at all. The worst part was that right now the Muslim community is celebrating Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. This means fasting every day from sunrise to sunset without any food or water. My fellow intern is Muslim, and although I always try to remember he is fasting, I often forget and talk endlessly about food (which I do anyway). So when we were in the international grocery store, I had him accompany me down the aisles, pointing out different fruits and vegetables from his side of the world that I couldn't find here. Of course, he's probably the most polite person on earth, so he was happy to tell me all about them.
It wasn't until later that I thought how hungry it must have made him to walk through all that delicious food without being able to eat it. And after we were done, we stopped to get junk food at the gas station and I ate it right in front of him! Good job, Anna. Good job.
Tomorrow I am doing a bus training to teach students how to ride the bus to English class on the IndyGo bus system, which I have never used before and might not use again. I think we're just gonna wing it and see how it goes. I figure if I'm able to use the micros in Chile and the conchos in the Dominican Republic, a bus in Indianapolis should be no problem. Plus, it will be a good chance for me to understand the city at a whole new level. At this point, I drive everywhere and gas money only keeps going up. Might do me some good to learn how to use the bus so I have a different option available to me.
Exciting day tomorrow...bus training, new students, new week, new class! You'll hear more about it next time