Change is Here!

Sinking into the Indian culture has finally begun in earnest! Ha, the adventures to tell! My Hindi is still quite poor, but I'm getting better every day. I'm just doing my best to surround myself with the local people. I walk everyday to a suburb outside of Varanassi called Nagwa. The walk would be about 45 minutes but now I have to give myself at least double that to talk with everyone that I know along the way. I bought a dhoti, basically what we'd call a sarong. Indian clothing is often more than not just different sizes of cloth wrapped around the body. Really it's pretty ingenious because they become multi-purpous to the imaginations end. Just wearing the dhoti means that people just assume that I know Hindi! haha, which really I don't but it's awesome to have people start conversations with me in Hindi. Yesterday a man just stopped me in the street and told me (in Hindi) that can come to his house any time!? Indian people are amazingly open and inviting. The last two adventures I've had I just said yes two invitations, even though I had no idea what was going on.
I would love to stay in this city, Varanassi is absolutely amazing in a way that I've never felt before. This city is alive, an entity. I'm reading a book about the city now and the stories surrounding this city are inexhaustable. Sadly, the volunteer work that I'm doing isn't the most rewarding. I'm volunteering totally unsupported and well, without a cirriculum to teach on and kids that only ant to learn the way that they've been taught. Makes an extremely difficult challenge for someone like me, who isn't really a teacher. They have been taught to copy what they see, I keep them occupied in class by just writing things in english on the board and having them copy it. I've tried songs and other things but they won't have any of it( it ended with me locked into the classroom).
The kids themselves are not street kids. I've been invited into one families home, another story entirely, and the family refers to what I'm doing as coaching. The kids go to school during the day and then in the afternoon they come to Saraswati education. This of course isn't necessarily the case for all the kids but the situation I've described is for most of them I'm sure. This really doesn't change anything though, because these families live on maybe a couple U.S. dollar a day, if even that.
I'm going to stay in Varanassi until the second of march when the Shivaratri festival will happen. The festival is devoted to the god Shiva who is this cities principle deity. After that I'm not sure where or what next but I'm looking for other volunteer opportunities!