That Darn Rat!

Time sure seems to be going quickly this semester! It’s already March and soon it will be quarter break. I can barely remember what has happened over the past month. Last weekend Megan and I went hiking/camping with our neighbor Darab and a group of middle school boys. Most of them were very small sixth graders who each had a pretty big hiking back pack (from the Hanifl center) to carry. It was a fun, but tiring weekend. I did have a chance to climb a few trees on our hikes – and I’ve included a picture that one of the boys took of me in a tree – it doesn’t look like it was that difficult to get into, but it was a little tricky.

The biggest new I have this week involves that rat that has been “living” in my office. I have had suspicions for a while that some kind of rodent has had access to my office (mostly because there was a hole chewed into my ceiling, that gradually kept getting larger and larger and I periodically found ceiling shavings spread on my floor right under the hole). Well on Tuesday I found living proof that a rat had been in my office. I was tidying up my studio in the morning before school, when I heard a rustle in my desk drawer. I opened the drawer and in the corner sat a fat rat looking up at me with its beady little eyes. I slammed the drawer shut and kicked it a few times, in hopes that the rat would magically disappear, but when I opened the drawer a second time, it was still there, huddled in the corner. Now I know that “technically” there is not supposed to be food in the music building, but when my mom sends me packages, they arrive at school and I usually keep a few treats in my office in case there is an inedible lunch. The rat happened to have taken refuge in my treat drawer (although everything WAS sealed, but I guess rats are good at gnawing through things…)

After I realized that the rat was not going to be leaving any time soon, I went downstairs to find Avinash, our music department employee/kind of custodian. He killed a rat for me earlier this year. Avinash came to my office and did his best to get the rat with my backup umbrella (I leave my good one at home). BUT the rat escaped. Then Avinash got a live rodent trap (one where you put a snack in it and when the mouse/rat eats the snack a door shuts behind it and it is trapped inside this small cage) and set it out in my office. The rat didn’t come back while I was at school that day, but I assumed it would come out again at night. I should also say that once Avinash scared the rat out of my drawer, I promptly dumped out all of the granola bars and wood shavings (it had gnawed at the inside of the desk drawer, I don’t know why). However, I did still have a bag full of chocolate and granola bars from my last package, but I thought that it would be best to take most of it home. I did leave 3 granola bars in a bag and tied a sweatshirt around the bag to keep the scent away – the bag had been like this for about a week and the rat had never touched it.

So, Wednesday morning I arrive at school and the trap is empty and the treat is gone! Apparently the rat was smart enough to get it out without getting caught. I went about my day, teaching lessons and then one of my fellow music teachers came by for something and for some reason I need to move the sweatshirt with the granola bag. It was then that I noticed that that stupid rat had eaten its way through the front and back of my Irish Rugby sweatshirt AND eaten its way through the plastic bag, but did not eat any of the granola bars inside!!! That was one of my favorite sweatshirts and my only rugby sweatshirt!!!! It was then that I decided that rat was going DOWN! So Wednesday night I personally set the trap – I made sure to put the treat in exactly the correct spot.

Today when I arrived at school, the rat was in the trap! Avinash had actually already checked my office and put the trap/rat outside around the corner from my door – he told me that he would take care of it later. (last time that meant smacking it with the umbrella on the stairs and then chucking it over the side of railing…) So all day I had this live rat in its cage just around the corner from my office and of course the kids thought it was really cool/cute – so NOT cute! And apparently they tried to feed it, because after lunch there were grains of rice and something that looked like an apple core in the cage. Kids are strange sometimes. In the evening the rat was gone – so I am assuming that Avinash “took care of it” – although I really need to check with him to make sure.

Week on the Beach and Back to Mussoorie

I am back in Mussoorie after a trip back to Minnesota and then a week on the beach in Goa. Megan and I decided to go back home for Christmas and had a good time with friends and family. We spent the last week of our winter vacation on the beaches of northern Goa – it was a great way to get over jet lag! We actually meant to stay at the same hotel where we were last winter, but we accidentally stayed at another hotel of the same chain. We were very confused when our taxi from the airport took us to the Alor Hotel, but neither of us recognized it! We tried to switch to the other hotel in Calanguente, but it was all booked up. Luckily we were only 3 kilometers away from Calanguete beach – which is where we wanted to be. We spent one week in Goa and then flew back to Delhi and caught a taxi to Mussoorie. Normally we would take the train from Delhi to Dehra Dun, but we were carrying a lot of instruments for the school and it would have been too much of a hassle to deal with all of our luggage on the train.

We arrived back in Mussoorie on Saturday evening and spent a lazy Sunday at Char dukan with some friends. Today was the first official day of work; we have one whole week of meetings – mostly dealing with “the Strategic Master Plan” and the switch to the two school model that will happen next year. I have decided to come back to Minnesota after my contract is up at the end of June, so these topics don’t interest me as much as they would if I were returning next year… The student will begin to arrive over the weekend and then school begins next week. I will be happy to have the kids here; it’s always a little less lively without the students running around campus.

Beginning of the Year to Quarter Break

The first quarter of school is over and this is only my second blog of the year! I guess things have just been pretty busy and/or the internet doesn’t always work properly.
Since Independence Day, we have had House and Inter School Cross Country Meets, Student Talent Show, Quarter Break and Parent-Teacher Conferences.

The cross country meets were held up at the top of the hill on the Chakkar (figure eight road). For Inter House all of the students had to run for their own house, merlins, condors or eagles and then the fastest students went on to run for the Inter School Meet, where several other Mussoorie schools participated.

I’m sure there are other events that happened between CC meets and the talent show, but I can’t remember them specifically right now. I did lead a middle school hike one Saturday morning, early in the semester. It was funny, because I was the hike “leader” but I had never been to the hiking destination – Bear Hill. I knew where we needed to end up, but I was not sure how to get there. In the end, everything was fine, but the kids had an eventful hike, full of snakes, bees and a few leeches. The students get points depending on how far they hike and all of my students thought that they should get more hiking points for that morning…

The student talent show was just like any other high school talent show I’ve been too – although this year wasn’t too loud, thank goodness. There a few really good acts – singers and then the rest were at least entertaining… I am probably a bit overcritical. Last year the staff talent show took place in the fall and the student show was in the spring. But they swapped the two this year, now the staff have longer to prepare!

Last weekend was quarter break. We had been going straight from August until October without any days off school – so it was really nice to have last Thursday and Friday off from school. A lot of the students were taken out of boarding by their parents and some students went on trips with dorm parents. There were also students who just stayed in the dorm for the long weekend. I took a trip to Rishikesh with two of the other teachers, Kate and Stephen. Kate works in the music department, she teaches piano and voice lessons and went to college at St. Olaf. Stephen is one of the new math teachers. We stayed in Rishikesh from Thursday to Sunday and it was a pretty relaxing vacation – although very hot!!! We went rafting on the Ganges river, did some shopping, ate at new restaurants (I usually eat at the same place when I have gone to Rishikesh in the past), did some yoga, got massages and viewed a ceremony on the river. I’m glad that I had the chance to go rafting, because I will be chaperoning a weeklong rafting trip with grade 10 students for Activity Week in November. The rafting was fun, but we only went for 3 hours. For Activity Week, we will camp out along the river and raft for 4 days, kayak for one and hike for another day. I’m sure it will be fun, but tiring!

Once we all came back from quarter break, Woodstock had parent-teacher conferences on Monday morning. It was nice to see students with their parents, although I didn’t have too many parents to talk to. Then we had lunch and classes resumed in the afternoon.

We're Back In Mussoorie AND Independence Day 09

Megan and I arrived back in Mussoorie on July 23rd. This was the day before our weeklong staff workshop began. We are now living in a different house than we had last year. We ultimately decided to move because if we had stayed in our old place, Suncliffe, we would have had another roommate assigned to us. So Megan and I moved to South Hill, where Emily and Jared Hatch lived last year. They even left their projector here, so now we can watch movies on a “big” screen!
Students began arriving on August 1st and 2nd and school began on a Wednesday, August 5th. It’s been great to see most of the old faces we got to know last year and there are also quite a few new students. The Intermediate Band grew this year and it’s up to 53 students – we have 14 flutes, yikes!!! This year I am also teaching Beginning Band. At the end of last year, Emily and I had all the students that were interested in joining band come and try out the different instruments. There were more than 40 students that wanted to join last spring, which was almost double what the Beginning Band had been last year. The only problem was that Woodstock did not have enough instruments/working instruments for all of those kids to join band. Megan and I decided to take a bunch of instruments (17) home to get fixed AND some students were able to purchase a personal instrument over the summer break. So this year we have 39 kids in Beginning Band and I believe I could accommodate all of the interested students.

On Friday of last week, I handed out instruments to all the kids – with the help of one of our new music teachers, Harvey. It was pretty chaotic, but the kids were excited.
There are a ton of new staff this year (and it’s pretty cool not to be new this year and know what’s going on!). They all seem pretty cool and there are a lot of younger staff to hang out with. We have new neighbors, who are living in our friend Jeanne’s apartment from last year. Chris and Nicole are the neighbors and Nicole works with me in the music department – she teaches elementary general music and middle school choir and piano lessons.

Yesterday was India’s Independence Day. Every year, Woodstock holds a big ceremony – usually it is outside by the school flagpole, but yesterday it was raining, so it was held indoors in Parker Hall. The student who has been attending Woodstock the longest gets to raise the Indian flag, this year it was a senior named Aradhana who plays flute in Advanced Band and will be taking lessons with me this year. She has been at Woodstock for 14 years (her parents work here and she started in ECP at a very young age). After the Indian ceremony, all of the Korean student mounted the stage to perform their national anthem and a dance/game to celebrate their Independence Day (India and South Korea share the same date of independence). We have a LOT of Korean students, so it was nice to see them in their national dress – I have posted some pictures with some Korean girls in their dresses.

After the Korean performance, Woodstock sponsored a fine arts group that performed a karnatic dance to a Hindi poem set to music. It was a little difficult to understand the overall meaning of the performance, because I have not learned Hindi…

After the dance was the best part of the day – FOOD! The school had different Indian food stalls set up in the decorated quad area. There were kababs and naan, potato patties (I forget the name), channa and puree (spell?), chicken and paneer, masala dosas and gulab jammin and jilabies – again I have no idea how to spell these things… I had the kababs (tasty, but a bit spicy) and naan, masala dosa and gulab jamming. Although I was bit greedy with the gulab jammin and attempted to have more towards the end of the day, but I ended up spilling it all over my sari – I took it as a sign to stop eating and leave the festivities. During the meal, it was fun to go around and see all of the students and staff dressed in mostly Indian or Korean national dress. I took a lot of pictures and you can also see students dressed in Japanese Kimonos, Tibeten Chupas and other forms of national dress.

I have also included some pictures of my new sitar! And some pictures of the inside of our new house.

End of the School Year

I know it has been a long time since I have done any blogging. Here is a quick update as to what has been going on in the past month or so.

My parents came to visit and it seems like they had a pretty good time, even if the traffic did scare them a bit. We went to Delhi and Agra over quarter break. Now I have seen the Taj Mahal twice in one year! I did enjoy staying in fancy hotels and eating nice food.

This last quarter really seems to be a blur. It has been filled with getting kids ready for recitals and concerts and attempting to find a way to purchase new band instruments in India (that part didn’t go very well).

Megan and I have had a few opportunities to take students out of boarding for dinner. One night we had some middle school Korean students over and they brought ingredients and made kim bab for us! It was VERY tasty. This coming week, two of our friends from college, Nick and Emily, are arriving to visit Woodstock. I think we are going to make sure we have more students over for dinner, so our friends can see how talented our students are (and not just at music).

Jazz Jam happened a couple weeks ago. This is where the quad area of the school is transformed into a kind of “jazz club” and the jazz band performs a few sets of music. Megan has been directing the jazz band this year, but I ended up getting to play bari sax for this event. I thought it turned out pretty well.

This week has been full of performances from most of the ensembles at Woodstock. The elementary tabla, elementary choir, beginning strings, beginning band and junior strings all had their end of the year concert on Wednesday. Last night was middle school choir, intermediate band and advanced orchestra and tonight will be high school choir, intermediate orchestra and advanced band. The seniors graduate in a couple weeks and some of them will be performing solos on the senior recital or at the baccalaureate and graduation ceremonies. We are also having an informal quad school concert for parents the day before the students have to leave school. There are still a lot of things happening before the end of the school year, but it is approaching quickly!

The Rents Come to Mussoorie

Here’s a really quick blog:
Saturday was my birthday and I celebrated by going down to Dehradun to pick up my parents from the train station. We went out to eat at the Black Pepper restaurant and then drove back up the mountain to Mussoorie. I am pretty sure the drive freaked out both my mom and my dad – especially after we saw a car hit a scooter near the bazaar (I have not seen an accident here until now!)
For birthday dinner, we had food delivered from the Rice Bowl and I got to “open” some birthday presents, including American twix bars, cheetos and jello (all things I’d asked for!)
My mom and dad spent the first two nights at our place and tonight they are spending their first night at Hotel Shiva. They came to school today to watch my Intermediate Band rehearsal and then had tea with me while I ate lunch. I think tomorrow they are going to wander around the bazaar and then Wednesday they will come back to school and have a tour. After school on Thursday, we will leave for Delhi/Agra and come back to Mussoorie on Monday.

School's Back In Session

We’ve been back at school for about a month now. The semester is flying by! There hasn’t been anything too exciting happening. It did snow in the fist week or two of school. The kids thought this was great and the quad was a dangerous place with snowballs whizzing past your head. The snow only lasted until mid-afternoon and then it all melted.
I have decided to discontinue my Hindi lessons and begin learning some classical Indian music (that’s more up my alley anyways – I was never any good at learning languages – that’s what I have Megan and Jeanne for). Anyway, I’ve had two “lessons” on sitar with Aloke, our Indian music teacher. It’s pretty cool, but very difficult AND my leg gets tired from balancing the instrument. Right now I am just working on the basics – the major scale. Eventually I will attempt to learn a rag.
This weekend Megan and some other teachers and students went on a big hike. I stayed home and ended up chaperoning a high school CARE trip to Dehradun. It was actually pretty fun. Oh, and Jeanne and I had one of the senior girls cut our hair for us in the afternoon. It was like a show – a bunch of girls gathered around to “watch” first Jeanne and then me get our hair cut.