Our adventrue into Indian culture

Obviously Arin’s ancestry does not lie in the hills of Germany, as most of the sunscreen-loving members of our family do. Arin is from Kolkata, India, and we do our best to make him proud of that. After looking at some Rupees I had laying around a number of months ago, each of which featured Mahatma Gandhi’s picture. We launched into a month long research mission into who Gandhi was and his significance to India. Even Todd and I had the chance to watch the Gandhi movie, look online, and talk to friends to learn about him ourselves (he is not exactly an important enough figure to America to be delved into in a typical education). All of this culminated in our hosting “Gandhi Day” for our homeschool group. We talked about where India was, Arin explained some significant things he did. We did a science experiment to see how salt could be extracted from water (referring to the salt march Gandhi instigated), and we clothed little Gandhi paper dolls (while talking about how Gandhi made his own clothes)

Lately we have finally made a friend in the Indian community who is happy to share her experiences growing up in India with us. Last Saturday Shubha took us to an Indian restaurant, and ordered for us, thank goodness. We are so inexperienced with Indian food. We tried a number of dishes, and only Nina left hungry. Then Shubha took us to an Indian store. We got some Indian snacks, a coconut, and looked at all the Indian goods. We walked by small statues of Ganesh and Krishna. Arin and I actually learned a lot of what we know about Ganesh by watching “Cheetah Girls, One World” in conjunction with factual bits from the internet. I saw that the movie was filmed in India so we watched it together. Arin really wanted a statue so Daddy got it for him. We also got Nina some Bindhis to wear. We had a great time talking to Shubha about differences between our cultures. She is so open with us, and we are grateful to her for her honesty, and introspection.

Chess Club

Evan is playing chess with his teacher below while he waits for other boys to finish. The game on the top ended in a draw mostly because Evan kept saying "Are you sure you want to do that?", and "I know if I do this then you are going to come get my..." whatever. He was just thinking out loud, and being nice, but we are going to have to work on Evan's poker face.




My kids have participated in typical American extra curriculars like Evan with his soccer and Nina with gymnastics, but Evan has also shown interest in chess, and he has been playing with Daddy for a couple of years. About a year ago I was flipping through our Raleigh parks and rec programming guide when I spotted a FREE chess club at one of the community centers. I called about it and Evan has been participating every other Saturday for probably close to a year now. The teacher has taken time each week to show the kids how chess works and some strategy, so now when I play Evan he uses words I don’t understand. Evan is getting much better. I actually didn’t play him for a long time after he started chess club because I knew soon the day was coming when he would beat me and I was trying to put off that day for as long as possible (hasn’t happened quite yet).

Recently the teacher began keeping track of points and ranking the chess club members in anticipation of a meet he is organizing with a local charter school. The boys get half a point for playing a grown-up, a whole point for winning, etc. Evan has been doing well and as of last week he was ranked number one. The chess club is for kids from ages 5-12 and Evan has beaten kids that were older than him, but he also has the advantage that many of the very good players have not been attending recently and the kids get half a point for attending. So the boy who came one day and beat everyone he played still would not get as many points as Evan if Evan came and played grownups consistently. At the same time if we get to the meet and Evan is ranked number one he will most likey get whupped by the number one player on the other team. The teacher is doing his best to even out the odds and bring back some of the stronger players before fall. I am glad Evan found this niche, just as I am happy that Arin found X-men, and Nina is a good helper.