So this time I will tell more about what I do mostly: going to Bangalore International School as a student-teacher. In school we deal with the heat daily by struggling with fans which blow away all the papers and filling up water bottles after each hour and reminding children to drink, these became our daily habits.

Every morning the children arrive at school by coming with the yellow school busses. Fortunately for us it is only a 2 minute walk to the school and when we arrive we get greated by happy children faces saying "good morning miss". They are full of energy and that gives me a positive energy boost to start the day.

Here at the school they have subject teachers and so I am together with 2 mentor teachers who teach math and social studies in grade 1, which means that the children are around 6 and 7 years old. It’s so funny and cute how openly they react on visible differences. The first thing which they found very interesting about me was my blond hair. I got all kinds of reactions on it like “where did you get your yellow hair from?” and “your hair is like gold, like in the movie tangled”. Besides, I also got the question “miss, why is your face red?” and so I explained, a for us common and known fact which is strange to them, that our skin reacts to the heat by turning red, especially here when the temperature goes up to 35 degrees. It is funny how you get unexpected questions from young children, they just ask anything which pops up in their minds.

The children are also gladly advising me on their Indian food, like what is too spicy and what isn’t. Besides, while they are eating with their hands so naturally they find it quite funny to see me, their teacher, struggling with it and so you can see the smiles appearing on their faces. I was also very happy with how helpful the children are, especially in the beginning, when I still had to find my way around the school. They were so proud to help their “lost” teacher and of course they used shortcuts which I later on learned that they were not supposed to use.

The building is very big and the structure of the school is also very different; the school is all open and there are plants and trees growing within the school. The centre consists of a big area where the whole school comes together during assemblies or other events. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday are morning assemblies and these differ each time, we have seen dances, listened to songs and speeches and they even sing the national anthem. Singing the Indian national anthem is quite common here we realized. We once went to the cinema and right before the movie started everybody had to stand up and they played the national anthem. (A funny thing to add is that the movie which we went to was in Hindi and without subtitles, so we had no idea what the story was about. Instead we tried to be creative and think of a storyline on our own. But I must admit that the seats were very comfortable, and we had some moments in which we almost fell asleep)

Yes, loyalty to the country and sticking to the hierarchy are very important values here in India and we can sense that at the school as well. It is very clear who is in charge over who and you can sense those positions quite well. The principal is a person who is very much respected by both the staff members and the children. “Do we want to make the principal proud?” is a common sentence said within the class when the children are not behaving as they are supposed to do. Although the children are very polite the classes can be quite chaotic and there is some kind of lack of structure (by looking at it from a western perspective). We are amazed by how things go here and we are trying to adjust to this Indian attempt of ‘structure’, which still does not really make sense to us. My mentor teachers are really helpful and they explained a lot about how the school system works here in India. It is fun to plan lessons together with them and to do the activities together with the children. In the meanwhile we already completed our 3^rd week of teaching practice and I am more used to this new daily routine. Looking forward for how the next following weeks will be.