Dinner at Tamara's and Staff Talent Show

This past week was the most “normal” school week that we’ve had in a long time! No sports days or international holidays… I actually got to see almost all of my lesson students and band kids. Although, the juniors did miss Wednesday morning because they had to take their PSAT tests and most of the eighth graders were missing from band rehearsal on Friday because they went on a Hindi field trip. I don’t have too much to write about, basically just dinner at our friend Tamara’s house and the staff talent show on Friday.
A while ago, Jeanne introduced us to one of her friends that worked at Woodstock last year. Tamara is now teaching science at another school in Mussoorie. We had visited her old apartment a while back, but she recently found a new place to live in town, so she invited Megan, Jeanne and me over for dinner on Thursday. Jeanne had to run some errands in the bazaar, so she went on ahead on Thursday. But before she left school, she told us that Tamara lived right above Inan tailor in the bazaar, so when we went looking for her house, we should just go into the shop and ask where Tamara lived. And that is exactly what we did – not knowing what a big production it would be to actually FIND her apartment! Megan and I went inside Inan tailor and asked the two men in the back if they knew where Tamara lived – I don’t think they really spoke English, but after some pointing and repeating Tamara’s name, they got the idea. One of them took us around the back “alley” and up some winding stairs to a house, he knocked on the door and another man came out to greet us (I’m pretty sure he was Inan, the tailor) he spoke English and asked what we needed. We told him we were looking for Tamara, so he went back in his house and brought his son, who was probably 10 or 11 years old. He told us his son would show us where Tamara lived. So off we went, following this little Indian boy up around buildings, underneath drying laundry and up twisting staircases. After we had made our way through a maze of houses that were well up above the main street of the bazaar we reached a large flat area that had houses on the left side and an amazing view of Mussoorie on the right side. All of a sudden Inan’s son took off sprinting across the cement towards a specific house! Megan and I quickened our step to try to catch up to him, but that’s not what he wanted, because he ran inside the house and came right back out with a girl about his age. The two children ran back to us chattering in Hindi. We took off again, now following two small children, on the quest to find Tamara’s house! The kids lead us up more winding stairs and through narrow corridors and every once in a while the little girl would turn around and say something to me in Hindi and point at the ground- apparently she was telling me to watch out for the random pipes that were sticking up from the cement floor. Finally the boy and girl stopped at a set of blue doors that were propped open and bit and went inside. We had found Tamara’s house! Tamara thanked the kids for bringing us up there and then they scampered off, probably back to their homes. We had a great dinner at Tamara’s house – even if we hadn’t it was a fun little adventure trying to get to her house!
Friday was the Woodstock Staff Talent Show. It was pretty fun and the students really got into it, screaming and cheering for their teachers and other staff. A month or two ago, Mandy, the PE teacher thought it would be fun if a group of us did a dance using the evolution of dance music (if you haven’t seen it, look it up on youtube – it’s a comedian going through a bunch of different songs). We ended up with a group of nine of us and Mandy worked out the dance moves and had us practice quite a bit. In the end, it turned out pretty cool and I think the kids liked it. Another set of teachers put together a random assortment of instruments last minute (like on Thursday…) to do a version of “Jammin” – Emily did some sitar improve, Megan played her horn, I did some clarinet and “played” a trombone… Some of the other acts included a fan dance, storytelling, another band, the employees did some kind of traditional Indian dance with drums and very brightly colored costumes that was pretty cool. Our music department employee took part in that and it was fun to see him all dressed up in yellow and green. The grand finale to the talent show was a bollywood dance that included about 20 or more staff members. I didn’t do that one, mostly because I just never made it to any of their practices – maybe next year… It was pretty cool to watch though and the students went wild over some of the teachers dancing!
Now it’s Sunday and I am just waiting for our groceries to be delivered… they “supposed” to come around 12, but this is India (it’s now 2:30…) After they arrive, Megan and I are going to go eat up at the top of the mountain at Chardukon. It’s a really nice day out, so I might take some pictures and include them in this blog.

Teaching Music at Woodstock

I guess I haven’t really gone into much detail about teaching music in India/Woodstock. Woodstock is definitely not what you would imagine typical India to be. I feel like I’m in India once I step off school grounds and go into the bazaar or travel someplace else. The school itself is made up of a small community of people and for the most part the buildings and supplies are nice and more westernized than Mussoorie itself. Of course there are exceptions, but overall people living on Woodstock campus have it pretty good compared to the majority of India. We have computers and internet to use at school. I have my own studio/office to teach lessons in. We have a nice staff lounge where we are served tea every after noon (and we have a rotation to bring tea snacks for morning tea within the music department – I bring something every other Thursday). BUT it is still not like anything I have ever experienced in the states (not that I have loads of experience…)
Some of the things I really enjoy about teaching here would be the students; most of them are willing to work and excited to be in band and/or taking lessons. It’s been fun getting to know my students especially when you see them outside of class. Because this is a boarding school, students are everywhere. In fact just this past weekend, our friend Jeanne had four of her students over to edit the documentary they are making. There were three girls who slept over and then they walked the boy home late at night. Megan and I went over there to crash their editing party for dinner and it was a ton of fun to be able to relate with students on a different level than in the classroom. This kind of thing has happened quite a few times in the past couple months. It’s pretty typical for teachers to have their students over for dinner or to take the OB (out of boarding). It can be really nice for the kids to get away from their dorms, since they are there so much of the time and don’t have their families close by.
Another cool thing about teaching music here is that the students get practice time scheduled into their school day. If a student is in band or orchestra, he or she has two practice blocks per week. If he or she is taking lessons (they have to be in an ensemble to take lessons) then they get 4 practice blocks per week, but one is used for a private lesson. So a student can never use the excuse of “I didn’t have time to practice!” Although there is a down side to this, the practice times generally take up a slot that the student would have had for study hall, or potentially another class – this means that they have to be somewhat committed to an instrument in order for them to choose music. Of course this is a problem wherever you go – music can get put on the back burner behind the academic courses.
One of the biggest frustrations that I have been having so far is instrument repair. There are no instrument repair shops or people that come to your school to collect instruments that need to be fixed… I have been doing my best to make things work, but some of the school owned instruments are awful. Emily has put together some “Frankenstein” clarinets (as she called them) for the beginner band kids and there are some other very questionable instruments that I can’t fix to sound great… Emily is pretty good at being creative when it comes to instrument repair – about a month ago a clarinet player’s thumb rest cracked off. I tried looking through our box of clarinet parts to find a thumb rest with matching screw holes, but none of them were even close… So Emily fashioned a “thumb rest” out of the corner of a cardboard box and taped it on! It doesn’t look pretty, but it works! And the girl hasn’t had any problems with it yet.
One other random, “interesting” thing here has to do with the monsoon and reeds. Because we are in India and in such a remote place, it takes a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time to get supplies , like reeds. I actually have a pretty good stock pile of all kinds of reeds in my office. But they were not stored in a sealed container during the monsoon season. Due to the high moisture content in the air, a lot of the “new” reed got pretty moldy… Now I found this to be disgusting and personally would have a really hard time allowing myself to play on a moldy reed. But, prior to my discovery of all these “new” moldy reeds I had had several students come to me with the moldy reed problem and they all seemed to think it was normal to just use sand paper to sand scrape away the mold. I did this a bunch of times for several different students. So once I realized that there were quite a few “new” reeds that had mold growing on them I decided that if students were ok with it, I would save these reeds by scraping off the mold! It took me a couple hours to go through all of them, but now all my different types of reeds are mold-free! That is definitely something they do NOT teach you in college/ I didn’t learn in student teaching…

Rishikesh and Sports Day

I have been getting worse and worse at keeping my blog up to date! In the last couple weeks I have been to Delhi and Agra (to see the Taj Mahal) and Rishikesh. There was a group of six of us that went to Delhi for quarter break a couple weeks ago. We stayed at our friend Saahil’s house and took it kind of easy. We did some shopping ( I bought shoes FINALLY – and yes I can find shoes that fit my rather large feet here!) We also went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which was really cool. Although I would really like to go back to see it at a different time of the day. We went at about 1:00 pm and it was really hot. They say if you come at sunrise or sunset, the taj changes colors and it’s gorgeous. When we saw it, it was pretty much white.
Last weekend Megan and I went with our friend Jeanne and her sister along with three other friends to Rishikesh. This is a super hippy town about 2 hours away from Mussoorie. The city is built along side the Ganges (Ganga) river. Every evening at sunset people come to participate in a ceremony for the dead. This basically means they light candles and then let them float down the river. I’m not really sure what happens to all the candles once they float away, I suppose they end up sinking and flow on with the water… The Ganga is considered a holy river, but it is also extremely dirty, I’ve been warned by several people not to swim in it. Because Rishikesh is a city that has strong ties to yoga and vegetarian cuisine etc. it attracts a lot of free spirited people – meaning we saw a ton of people with dreadlocks in their hair. Now, I have never been a person who could really pull-off dreads, but if I was ever going to get them in my hair this would be the perfect point in my life! I mean I’m in India! While in Rishikesh, I was really tempted to have my hair dreaded, BUT unfortunately Woodstock does not allow students or staff to have dreadlocks. So I decided to get my hair put into little braids instead. It turned out alright. While I was getting my hair braided, Megan, Jeanne and her sister, Diana all got massages at a very clean, professional (for India) looking place. Next time we are in Rishikesh, we will definitely go back there! I also bought a few things at the shops there, including a singing bowl (so cool!), finger cymbals, a wood carved flute and some crazy, but unbelievably comfortable pants. I really wanted to buy a pair of “Aladin” pants (the really poofy ones that almost look like a skirt), but all the clothes were premade and none of the pants I found were long enough for me. If I thought I was tall in the US, I am REALLY tall in India. I’m very noticeable as the “tall, white girl”! In fact in one of the first shops we stopped at, the store owner was very interested to know where I was from (I’ve gotten used to this by now) and he wanted to shake my hand, but he didn’t bother to find out anything about Megan, Jeanne or Dianna. As soon as we left the shop, it dawned on me! Out of our small group, I was the only white person! Megan is adopted from Korea, and Jeanne and Dianna are Chinese, but born in the states. There wasn’t anything much more exciting that happened on our trip to Rishikesh, although we did stay in a very sketchy hotel, cheap, but still sketchy. For a double room, it only cost 350 ruppees per night, that’s less than 10 US dollars…
Today was Inter House Sports Day. Basically it was a Woodstock track and field meet between the three houses, Eagles, Merlins and Condors. The Inter Band acted as the pep band and we played some pep tunes and the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana. It was a rather big ordeal, because that meant we had to bring all of the instruments, stands and equipment down (that’s right down the mountain) to Hanson Field and then bring everything back up immediately after we were done playing. It was a very interesting experience and Megan will get to do the same thing with the Advanced Band in a week and a half, but she will have to bring everything to a nearby school for Inter School Sports Day. The kids all did a nice job participating in the track and field meet, although it was often apparent that the students hadn’t had a lot of training on how to perform specific events – at least not compared to what I’m used to in the states. They didn’t really have much time to prepare and practice for the meet. The middle schoolers had try outs for events last week after school, but as far as I know the high school house captains just pick who they want to participate in each event. It kind of made me wish that they had a track and field team that practiced regularly so I could do some coaching! At the very end of the meet, there was a staff 4X100 meter relay. The women Merlins put together a team at the last minute and we won our race! Our team was me, one of the middle school dorm parents, Mrs. Jung, the HS art teacher, Christina and another middle school dorm parent, Jen. It was pretty fun – but strange being that we had no starting blocks, and the 200 meter track was just grass and dirt with line painted on it.