Update on the project for family, donors & people who have supported the project in other ways as we've been too busy to set up the blog we said we'd set up...

We've spent 2 weeks working on movement & improvisation and on Monday we start devising the performance for the girls to perform in 2 weeks in front of 250 children from other homes in India. With one of the older girls translating every session, we led a discussion for the girls to decide the story for the performance: characters, the problem, the journeys, the solution and moral etc. We then wrote the story last night. Narrated by an old lady, it is the story of a little girl called Bella whose mother is poorly. She cannot read and her parents can't afford to send her intelligent sister to school. One day her pet dragon goes missing and she has to go on a quest where she finds out that although she can't read or write she has other very important skills that she uses to save the dragon, make her mother better & send her sister to school. Included in the story: a magic old lady, an alien, a magic dragon wand, a dragon, an evil sea mongoose and his army of snakes (obviously). We're all very excited to start working on the performance, using choreography and movement as well as acting. Varsh & I have laughed until we've cried imagining us on eachothers shoulders running around the home performing as a giant evil mongoose but I don't think health & safety or the girls will allow that... (we've probably gone a little bit hysterical/cabin fevery too, which would partly explain why the concept of an evil mongoose is beyond hilarious to us).

Today we're off to the science museum with everybody and have 24 hours to learn Hindi as tomorrow we are all off to the cinema to watch a Bollywood film. It's hectic, we're struggling to balance uni assignments with teaching the girls english and planning and delivering workshops. Howeverrrrr we're having such a good time and they're all really looking after us.