More Monkeys

Note: This entry is actully from yesterday, tuesday august 12th:

Well a lot has been happening around here, although most of it is related to school… We started lessons and ensembles this week, so I have actually been doing some real teaching. It’s still pretty crazy and somewhat unorganized. Megan teaches the jazz band and advanced band before school and I have the intermediate band during lunch time.
Our national clothes that we are going to wear on Friday for Indian Independence day arrived yesterday. I got a saree and salwar kamise and Megan got a saree- but neither of us has any idea about how to tie a saree, it’s super complicated! I think someone is going to give us a tying lesson before Friday.
Today, I gave a lesson after school and then I was planning on sticking around for a while to play some clarinet and clean out my studio (it somehow got incredibly messy within the last few days…) I decided that I needed to go brush my teeth before they locked the doors to the good water (I usually walk down the third floor walkway to the middle school and brush my teeth in the “safe” drinking water there, but they lock the middle school doors around 5:00). I was on my way back, rounding the corner to my office when I saw a herd of monkeys hanging around. They did not look like they wanted to be disturbed (and I didn’t have my umbrella or anything to throw, beside my toothbrush), so I decided to go back through the middle school and take the long way around the second floor music room with computers. I had been in the computer room for a few minutes, when the phone rang. I answered it and it happened to be Maureen, the choir teacher, whose office is right next door to mine on monkey alley. She was calling to see if our music custodian/assistant was around to come scare away the monkeys outside her studio. Apparently she had been giving a lesson and one of the monkeys had tried to open her door, not once but twice! He would have been successful if Maureen hadn’t been right there to slam it closed. She said normally she just opens her window and growls at them, but today that wasn’t working. I went to go look for Avinash (our music assistant) but instead I came across our head of the department, Ravi. When I told Ravi that Maureen was trapped upstairs in her studio, he grabbed his umbrella and set off for the stairs. But by the time we made our way up to Maureen’s studio, the monkeys had scampered off to the other side the music building and Maureen was on her way out.