Monkey Alley

Yesterday, Tuesday, wasn’t too eventful, although right as Megan and I were leaving to go to school we saw Emily walking towards our house with an Indian woman. The woman was to be our ayah and apparently she had gone to Emily’s house first, because she didn’t want to come and bother us by herself for the first time. She waited for Emily to get ready (finish showering) and then both of them came to our house. I cannot even pronounce her name right not, let alone spell it… Anyway, we gave a key to our house and then let her begin cleaning while Megan and I went to school. I spent most of the morning cleaning out my office – more specifically going through some instrument repair items and dusting. In the afternoon we had another new staff orientation session which was an introduction of all the new staff and an introduction to the school. At 3:30 Megan and I booked it home, because we had told the grocer that we would be home after 3:00 to receive our groceries that we had purchased the day before. Sure enough, a man came to deliver our groceries not long after we arrived home. He had them packed in a crate and strapped onto this back/head and he must have walked all the way up the hill from Mussoorie – which is a good trek! Later that evening we went to the Hatches for a pot-luck dinner (although we didn’t have to bring anything). There were quite a few people there, mostly the “young people of the east side” – I guess that’s what we are calling ourselves… Emily and Jared had stuff to make BLT’s – I guess you CAN get bacon in India. And then were a variety of other things that people brought. And that was pretty much Tuesday!


Today, Wednesday, I spent a lot of time continuing to clean out my office and sorted through half of the flute music that was stored in a cabinet. Megan and I also took a look at the band room and well, it’s something else… I will have to take a picture of it, because it’s hard to describe. Let’s just say that I like my office/studio better. At lunch we ate with a pair of dorm parents from India, whose children attend the school. They were really interesting to talk to and seem like nice people. Then we had a long orientation session to fill out tons and ton of forms – medical, registration, bank and several other forms that I am not really sure are used for. I spent a little more time in my office after that and discovered why my office is located in what is known as “monkey alley”. It’s on the third floor in the corner of the Quad and there are trees that come up right against the railing of the walkway outside my office. I have to have metal bars on my windows so I can open them and let air in. This afternoon, I was ready to go and wash my hands after handling so much dusty old music, but then I looked out my window and saw two brown monkeys (the not nice ones) sitting right in front of my door staring at me. So I decided to wait a while… Luckily they left fairly quickly!

This evening we went over to Beth and Dave’s house for dinner. Beth and Dave are new Woodstock teacher’s as well and they are from Chicago. Their ayah had come for the first time today and made lasagna for them, so they decided to invite a few people over for dinner. It was really good (no beef though, I think they said their ayah used mutton). Tomorrow morning we have our first department meeting – and the music department is the largest department in the whole school! Quite a change from what I’m used to!