Diwali and Halloween

This past week seemed pretty crazy… Probably because it was Diwali on Tuesday and then Halloween on Friday! In case you’re not sure what Diwali is, it is one of the most celebrated Hindu holidays during the year. It is referred to as the festival of lights – it marks the return of Lord Ram after defeating the evil demon kind Ravan. Everywhere you look there are decorations, lights and candles burning to symbolize the victory of good over evil (light vs. darkness).

The normal sights and sounds of the hillside were replaced with flashes of fireworks and booms of fire crackers going off at all times of the night. The actual holiday of Diwali was on Tuesday. Megan and I were invited to our friend, Jeanne’s ayah’s house for dinner. Her name is Shivchandi (I have no idea if that’s how you spell it…). Anyway, the three of us walked down to her house at about 7:00 on Tuesday evening. Shivchandi’s husband came to meet us part way to lead us to their house –he is an employee of the school, so the family lives in a building that houses several other Woodstock employees. There were people, especially children, everywhere outside lighting fire crackers and playing in the paths. We entered Shivchandi’s house and took off our shoes. We introduced ourselves to her and her two daughters, Sarita and Sangeeta. They lead us into the main room of the house. Shivchandi has five people in her family, herself, husband, 2 daughters and a son. For five people, they have a closet sized kitchen and one room – their whole house is about the size of my bedroom at my parents house. That’s smaller than my bedroom here!!! But this is “good living” on a typical Indian standard. They don’t have a bathroom (or at least they didn’t have one for their family, maybe there is one for the whole group of employee families that live in that area). The main room was taken up by a larger bed and one small bed, pushed together. Sarita told us that Momma, Papa, Sangeeta and herself all sleep on the big bed and then their 23 year old brother gets the small bed to himself. Sarita is 16 and Sangeeta is 20 and they are both in grade 10 at a school in Mussoorie. We mostly talked to the girls, because they could speak some English and Shivchandi was busy cooking and preparing dinner in the kitchen. Sarita showed us her school books and we even looked at her English book – one of the “stories” she had read was the Christmas Carol. Sangeeta served us dinner on the big bed (there was no dinner table and not even room to sit on the floor to eat). The food was amazing. Shivchandi had prepared paneer (like a cross between cheese and tofu) pumkin, salad (which does not include lettuce – it’s usually diced cucumbers and tomatoes), puri (the really puffy fried bread – but it was way less greasy then when we have it at school!), rice, raita (a kind of yorgurt – it helps to cut down on spices) and of course chai and for dessert we had Divali sweets. We convinced Sarita and Sangeeta to eat with us, but Shivchandi was going to wait and eat with her husband later. After dinner the girls played some of their music for us, this included some Bollywood songs and Akon as well as some good old Backstreet Boys! It was pretty entertaining! I think we ended up leaving around 9:00, because we had school the next day. But before we left we invited the girls to come eat dinner and watch an English movie at our house. All in all, it was a pretty sweet Diwali and I had a blast being invited to Shivchandi’s house!


Friday was Halloween. The holiday is not really celebrated in India, but Mandy decided that some of the teachers should create a haunted house for the kids in the high school boys old, abandoned dormitory. She had this idea a while ago, but everyone has been so busy that we really didn’t have time to put it together until Friday evening. There were about 7 teachers that showed up and we pretty much just dressed in black and put on some face paint. I did rat Megan’s hair, so it looked really creepy… We all hid inside the dorm and Jeanne had the job of bringing kids through the haunted house. I’m not really sure if all the kids (they were high school kids) got scared, but at least they all enjoyed it. We even let some of the first group of students stay and help scare the rest. Hostel (that’s the dorm’s name) itself is pretty creepy – it’s really old and no has lived there for a year. My job was to stay behind a door and scream at kids as they walked by, but soon it evolved into grabbing their legs and eventually trying to take off their shoes. It was pretty fun, because none of the students could figure out who I was – I had my hair over my face. We guessed that about 80 students came through the haunted house and I think it was a success, even if it was rather last minute! Next year we’ll have to plan better and make it REALLY scary!

This coming week we do not have school, due to the fact that it is activity week. All the students and teachers go on an activity week trip somewhere in India. Some of the trips include places like Rajasthan, going to a village, Rishikesh and Corbett. I am going with the 7th grade to Derha Dun – that is the capital of our state. The kids will be staying in a hotel and doing different services projects during the week. Megan went with a group of ninth graders to a village, they will be camping and experiencing real village life in India! Megan’s group left this morning and my group will leave tomorrow morning. It should be fun, although I wouldn’t mind having a normal week of school this week… Some of my students have music exams coming up at the end of November and I would appreciate another week of rehearsals. But it will be fun to spend time with students outside of Woodstock!