February 17, 2008 - Tamil Nadu, India

The George Foundation – Shanti Bhavan

The dormitory extension has been ringing with the unmistakable sounds of Shania Twain’s ‘Man, I feel like a Woman!’. This would be because Evy and I have been teaching the 3rd Grade class, in what was meant to be a ‘top-secret’ fashion (by student request), a line dance. Do Evy and I know how to line-dance? Well, it’s debatable. We could remember the basic beginning steps (the grapevine, the heel-toe-touch-turn, etc.), but after making a full circle once and only 45 seconds into the song, we realized that we didn’t know the rest. Stunning choreographers we may not be, but with a little strategic shortening of the song (I cut out the last 2 minutes) and some long hours of brainstorming, we managed to pull something together.

We may never want to hear that song again, but the kids seemed to enjoy it immensely as they presented it to the school today. They even went to great effort to have plaid skirts and shirts (girls & boys respectively) and looked great. The minor issue of performing the first 20 seconds off-beat was quickly amended, and we’ll definitely never forget seeing 20 kids performing the ‘lassoing’ and ‘riding an imaginary horse’ moves we created in spur of the moment desperation. Perhaps one day we’ll even start a dance school – it turns out it’s kind of amusing to call out ‘5, 6, 7 8’ with authority, even when you have no idea what you’re doing…