India Week 4 -- Kids, Music and St. Paddy's Day

Here are some of the students at Shanti Bhavan on their Sunday nature walk.

One of my little projects while I'm here will be to update the Shanti Bhavan kids' blog with some photos or little videos, so I should have something new posted here soon http://sbchildren.blogspot.com/

The kids are really fun to teach and play with. Every morning when I walk to breakfast I hear the piano students practicing Mozart and other songs and it is really beautiful and inspiring to hear and see what these children are capable of.


Here's me playing the sitar last weekend at a little music shop outside Pondicherry. I've been listening to some Indian music and I learned a Tamil (the local language in Tamil Nadu) song on guitar which I've been teaching to my guitar students. They are really excited to learn how to play some music that they already listen to and love, since most of the music that they typically learn from volunteers is just western music.

St Patrick's Day was this week and I did a little presentation and Irish music concert for the whole school which was well received. Steve, another one of the volunteers, also plays guitar so he learned a couple of the songs and tunes and played and sang with me which was great, and Amanda, another volunteer, played flute on one of the tunes... so we held what was probably the first ever Irish music session in this part of rural India! Happy St. Paddy's Day!