Playing dough

We stopped being sick and spent an amazing week in our institutions.

Each Saturday we’d creative craft activities with the blind school students, namely the paper hats, massage sessions or Classical music. That Saturday we had to keep 20 children busy in the “morning time”. What we did was the playing dough sculptures.

However, before the actual proceedings, we needed the playing dough itself, which cost around 3 times more in the Indian market compared to Lithuanian enterprises ;))
Anine found a smart way round the problem:

1) 2 cups of flour
2) 1 cup of salt
3) Spoon of baking soda
4) 2 spoons of vegetable oil
5) Water

We haven’t made it before, and obtained the necessary ingredients on the last hour before the actual activity time. So, we didn’t take risks and made the playing dough ourselves, 2 kg at a time! :]

After evenly distributing round sticky balls of dough to the children, we explained them and the teachers, how to make “art” out of it.

Explanations apart, children weren’t as engaged and “talented” as might had expected before. Probably, they have never played with it before and in the first few minutes we found a handful of chapattis rather than pieces of art.

Wait a few minutes though, and keen children will deliver it. Some rolled the “chapatti” between their palms and ended up with a sausage. The others erected it – “Here stands my tower!” - thought Gotham.

It was interesting to observe the children’s adaptation skills developing in front of our eyes. “Impromtu artists” hastened to show off their masterpieces to us: “M’aaaaaaaam! SIIIIIIRRRR!!! Dikhaeeeeeeeeeee!!!!” So that we could reply “Anjee, ye kye ha? (what’s this?)” .

However the totally blind ones still didn’t surpass themselves, or at least that’s what I firmly believe. So, let’s wait for tomorrow’s session and give it another try.


Other highlights

As for the Nepali school, children were happy to see us both together again, following a short Anine’s absence due to the illness. Girls (we mostly work with them, and yes, girls are smarter than boys. Full stop) absolutely adore Anine for her kindness and smile, I don’t know if they like my let’s-get-this-work-done-now approach and general strictness…

But students occasionally do abuse our lenient approaches and lose concentration or even leave the classroom. It is by no means eccentric in Indian “terms”, yet I always take it personally. Apart that, those 4-5 girls are utterly knowledgeable and eager to learn.

After a regular English class, Anine did some song reading and drawing activities, which were a smashing success.

However at once I got terribly startled, when one of the girls asked about the superlative adjectives of “good” once again told me the same old story of “gooder” and “goodest”! We found the correct words in her exercise book, which she has noted down last week. =] I shouted at her, and think to myself now, do I really have any rights to shout at these students.


The drug de-addiction center thanks Peter Wilson for his “balls”. We managed 5 different balls at a time and will try adding more next week. Also, now there are 60 of us, the center received 10 new guys in less than 2 weeks period. Due to Diwali and Dussehra celebrations maybe? ;) So they were asked to choose between playing with my balls or braiding Anine’s yarns ;D Most surprisingly only half of them stayed with Anine.