Grades are Done!!!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I guess it’s been pretty busy at Woodstock. Mid-term grades were due this week, so I spent a lot of time getting those ready. Megan and I actually had our grades done by Tuesday night (well, actually I did something wrong with mine, but didn’t find out until today…) so we went out to eat to celebrate. We ate at the Four Seasons restaurant in the bazaar. We had momos (semi spicy steamed chicken dumplings), chicken seekh kababs (spicy minced chicken cooked on a skewer) and vegetable kofta (a random assortment of veggies rolled into a ball with something else that held it together and then mustard colored gravy on top). Before we ate we spent some time wandering around the bazaar. Normally when we go shopping we always have some specific item(s) that we need to purchase. But on Tuesday we weren’t planning on buying anything specific – it made it a lot more fun! We spent a fair amount of time at the “everything store” – I don’t know what it’s real name is, but Woodstock people just refer to it as I did. It has the most random assortment of items you could ever find in a store that is smaller than my last apartment at St. Ben’s. We bought two cutting knives, some floating jelly candles, a cool decorative wood bowl, some sweet elephant and turtle candles AND these awesome beads that are super small, but when you soak them in water they expand and look like multi-colored glass beads that you would put in a fish bowl. And they feel really cool – really slippery and squishy. Now we just have to find a fish bowl or something to put them in. They were 25 ruppees per pack – that’s close to 50 cents.
Yesterday, Mandy (PE teacher) and I had our second rugby practice for students! I actually had to come late, because the music department had recital auditions for our next weekly recital. By the time I got down to the Hanson Field the high schoolers were already playing truck and trailer (that’s not what we called it at CSB, but I’ve done that drill before) and looking pretty good. Mandy had them also doing so basic back line plays and then they played touch rugby. We were supposed to end at 6:00, but the kids asked if they could stay and play until 6:15. We haven’t done any tackling yet, although the students were begging to start tackling! Maybe on Monday we’ll introduce it… Although, it’s going to be difficult to play a tackle game, because there is a big area of gravel/small rocks in the center of the field. There are smaller areas of grass on the edges of the field, so we could practice tackling there, but we are going to have to be creative in order to figure out how to play tackle rugby on Hanson Field…
Next weekend is quarter break! That means we don’t have school on Thursday and Friday. A bunch of us are going to go down to Delhi and stay at one of our friend’s houses for the long weekend. Then one day we are going to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. It will be nice to get away from campus for a while and experience “real India”. Woodstock is definitely its own little community and you can always tell when you exit Woodstock and enter India – even just going into the bazaar is completely different than being on Woodstock campus. Well, I don’t have any good pictures to put up on this blog – I will bring my camera with me to Delhi and Agra, so in a week I’m sure I will have some amazing pictures!!!