Jennie's Blog from India

That Darn Rat!

2010-03-11T09:27:00.000-08:00

Time sure seems to be going quickly this semester! It’s already March and soon it will be quarter break. I can barely remember what has happened over the past month. Last weekend Megan and I went hiking/camping with our neighbor Darab and a group of middle school boys. Most of them were very small sixth graders who each had a pretty big hiking back pack (from the Hanifl center) to carry. It was a fun, but tiring weekend. I did have a chance to climb a few trees on our hikes – and I’ve included a picture that one of the boys took of me in a tree – it doesn’t look like it was that difficult to get into, but it was a little tricky.

The biggest new I have this week involves that rat that has been “living” in my office. I have had suspicions for a while that some kind of rodent has had access to my office (mostly because there was a hole chewed into my ceiling, that gradually kept getting larger and larger and I periodically found ceiling shavings spread on my floor right under the hole). Well on Tuesday I found living proof that a rat had been in my office. I was tidying up my studio in the morning before school, when I heard a rustle in my desk drawer. I opened the drawer and in the corner sat a fat rat looking up at me with its beady little eyes. I slammed the drawer shut and kicked it a few times, in hopes that the rat would magically disappear, but when I opened the drawer a second time, it was still there, huddled in the corner. Now I know that “technically” there is not supposed to be food in the music building, but when my mom sends me packages, they arrive at school and I usually keep a few treats in my office in case there is an inedible lunch. The rat happened to have taken refuge in my treat drawer (although everything WAS sealed, but I guess rats are good at gnawing through things…)

After I realized that the rat was not going to be leaving any time soon, I went downstairs to find Avinash, our music department employee/kind of custodian. He killed a rat for me earlier this year. Avinash came to my office and did his best to get the rat with my backup umbrella (I leave my good one at home). BUT the rat escaped. Then Avinash got a live rodent trap (one where you put a snack in it and when the mouse/rat eats the snack a door shuts behind it and it is trapped inside this small cage) and set it out in my office. The rat didn’t come back while I was at school that day, but I assumed it would come out again at night. I should also say that once Avinash scared the rat out of my drawer, I promptly dumped out all of the granola bars and wood shavings (it had gnawed at the inside of the desk drawer, I don’t know why). However, I did still have a bag full of chocolate and granola bars from my last package, but I thought that it would be best to take most of it home. I did leave 3 granola bars in a bag and tied a sweatshirt around the bag to keep the scent away – the bag had been like this for about a week and the rat had never touched it.

So, Wednesday morning I arrive at school and the trap is empty and the treat is gone! Apparently the rat was smart enough to get it out without getting caught. I went about my day, teaching lessons and then one of my fellow music teachers came by for something and for some reason I need to move the sweatshirt with the granola bag. It was then that I noticed that that stupid rat had eaten its way through the front and back of my Irish Rugby sweatshirt AND eaten its way through the plastic bag, but did not eat any of the granola bars inside!!! That was one of my favorite sweatshirts and my only rugby sweatshirt!!!! It was then that I decided that rat was going DOWN! So Wednesday night I personally set the trap – I made sure to put the treat in exactly the correct spot.

Today when I arrived at school, the rat was in the trap! Avinash had actually already checked my office and put the trap/rat outside around the corner from my door – he told me that he would take care of it later. (last time that meant smacking it with the umbrella on the stairs and then chucking it over the side of railing…) So all day I had this live rat in its cage just around the corner from my office and of course the kids thought it was really cool/cute – so NOT cute! And apparently they tried to feed it, because after lunch there were grains of rice and something that looked like an apple core in the cage. Kids are strange sometimes. In the evening the rat was gone – so I am assuming that Avinash “took care of it” – although I really need to check with him to make sure.

Week on the Beach and Back to Mussoorie

2010-02-01T05:28:00.001-08:00

I am back in Mussoorie after a trip back to Minnesota and then a week on the beach in Goa. Megan and I decided to go back home for Christmas and had a good time with friends and family. We spent the last week of our winter vacation on the beaches of northern Goa – it was a great way to get over jet lag! We actually meant to stay at the same hotel where we were last winter, but we accidentally stayed at another hotel of the same chain. We were very confused when our taxi from the airport took us to the Alor Hotel, but neither of us recognized it! We tried to switch to the other hotel in Calanguente, but it was all booked up. Luckily we were only 3 kilometers away from Calanguete beach – which is where we wanted to be. We spent one week in Goa and then flew back to Delhi and caught a taxi to Mussoorie. Normally we would take the train from Delhi to Dehra Dun, but we were carrying a lot of instruments for the school and it would have been too much of a hassle to deal with all of our luggage on the train.

We arrived back in Mussoorie on Saturday evening and spent a lazy Sunday at Char dukan with some friends. Today was the first official day of work; we have one whole week of meetings – mostly dealing with “the Strategic Master Plan” and the switch to the two school model that will happen next year. I have decided to come back to Minnesota after my contract is up at the end of June, so these topics don’t interest me as much as they would if I were returning next year… The student will begin to arrive over the weekend and then school begins next week. I will be happy to have the kids here; it’s always a little less lively without the students running around campus.

Beginning of the Year to Quarter Break

2009-10-08T22:53:00.001-07:00

The first quarter of school is over and this is only my second blog of the year! I guess things have just been pretty busy and/or the internet doesn’t always work properly.
Since Independence Day, we have had House and Inter School Cross Country Meets, Student Talent Show, Quarter Break and Parent-Teacher Conferences.

The cross country meets were held up at the top of the hill on the Chakkar (figure eight road). For Inter House all of the students had to run for their own house, merlins, condors or eagles and then the fastest students went on to run for the Inter School Meet, where several other Mussoorie schools participated.

I’m sure there are other events that happened between CC meets and the talent show, but I can’t remember them specifically right now. I did lead a middle school hike one Saturday morning, early in the semester. It was funny, because I was the hike “leader” but I had never been to the hiking destination – Bear Hill. I knew where we needed to end up, but I was not sure how to get there. In the end, everything was fine, but the kids had an eventful hike, full of snakes, bees and a few leeches. The students get points depending on how far they hike and all of my students thought that they should get more hiking points for that morning…

The student talent show was just like any other high school talent show I’ve been too – although this year wasn’t too loud, thank goodness. There a few really good acts – singers and then the rest were at least entertaining… I am probably a bit overcritical. Last year the staff talent show took place in the fall and the student show was in the spring. But they swapped the two this year, now the staff have longer to prepare!

Last weekend was quarter break. We had been going straight from August until October without any days off school – so it was really nice to have last Thursday and Friday off from school. A lot of the students were taken out of boarding by their parents and some students went on trips with dorm parents. There were also students who just stayed in the dorm for the long weekend. I took a trip to Rishikesh with two of the other teachers, Kate and Stephen. Kate works in the music department, she teaches piano and voice lessons and went to college at St. Olaf. Stephen is one of the new math teachers. We stayed in Rishikesh from Thursday to Sunday and it was a pretty relaxing vacation – although very hot!!! We went rafting on the Ganges river, did some shopping, ate at new restaurants (I usually eat at the same place when I have gone to Rishikesh in the past), did some yoga, got massages and viewed a ceremony on the river. I’m glad that I had the chance to go rafting, because I will be chaperoning a weeklong rafting trip with grade 10 students for Activity Week in November. The rafting was fun, but we only went for 3 hours. For Activity Week, we will camp out along the river and raft for 4 days, kayak for one and hike for another day. I’m sure it will be fun, but tiring!

Once we all came back from quarter break, Woodstock had parent-teacher conferences on Monday morning. It was nice to see students with their parents, although I didn’t have too many parents to talk to. Then we had lunch and classes resumed in the afternoon.

We're Back In Mussoorie AND Independence Day 09

2009-08-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

Megan and I arrived back in Mussoorie on July 23rd. This was the day before our weeklong staff workshop began. We are now living in a different house than we had last year. We ultimately decided to move because if we had stayed in our old place, Suncliffe, we would have had another roommate assigned to us. So Megan and I moved to South Hill, where Emily and Jared Hatch lived last year. They even left their projector here, so now we can watch movies on a “big” screen!
Students began arriving on August 1st and 2nd and school began on a Wednesday, August 5th. It’s been great to see most of the old faces we got to know last year and there are also quite a few new students. The Intermediate Band grew this year and it’s up to 53 students – we have 14 flutes, yikes!!! This year I am also teaching Beginning Band. At the end of last year, Emily and I had all the students that were interested in joining band come and try out the different instruments. There were more than 40 students that wanted to join last spring, which was almost double what the Beginning Band had been last year. The only problem was that Woodstock did not have enough instruments/working instruments for all of those kids to join band. Megan and I decided to take a bunch of instruments (17) home to get fixed AND some students were able to purchase a personal instrument over the summer break. So this year we have 39 kids in Beginning Band and I believe I could accommodate all of the interested students.

On Friday of last week, I handed out instruments to all the kids – with the help of one of our new music teachers, Harvey. It was pretty chaotic, but the kids were excited.
There are a ton of new staff this year (and it’s pretty cool not to be new this year and know what’s going on!). They all seem pretty cool and there are a lot of younger staff to hang out with. We have new neighbors, who are living in our friend Jeanne’s apartment from last year. Chris and Nicole are the neighbors and Nicole works with me in the music department – she teaches elementary general music and middle school choir and piano lessons.

Yesterday was India’s Independence Day. Every year, Woodstock holds a big ceremony – usually it is outside by the school flagpole, but yesterday it was raining, so it was held indoors in Parker Hall. The student who has been attending Woodstock the longest gets to raise the Indian flag, this year it was a senior named Aradhana who plays flute in Advanced Band and will be taking lessons with me this year. She has been at Woodstock for 14 years (her parents work here and she started in ECP at a very young age). After the Indian ceremony, all of the Korean student mounted the stage to perform their national anthem and a dance/game to celebrate their Independence Day (India and South Korea share the same date of independence). We have a LOT of Korean students, so it was nice to see them in their national dress – I have posted some pictures with some Korean girls in their dresses.

After the Korean performance, Woodstock sponsored a fine arts group that performed a karnatic dance to a Hindi poem set to music. It was a little difficult to understand the overall meaning of the performance, because I have not learned Hindi…

After the dance was the best part of the day – FOOD! The school had different Indian food stalls set up in the decorated quad area. There were kababs and naan, potato patties (I forget the name), channa and puree (spell?), chicken and paneer, masala dosas and gulab jammin and jilabies – again I have no idea how to spell these things… I had the kababs (tasty, but a bit spicy) and naan, masala dosa and gulab jamming. Although I was bit greedy with the gulab jammin and attempted to have more towards the end of the day, but I ended up spilling it all over my sari – I took it as a sign to stop eating and leave the festivities. During the meal, it was fun to go around and see all of the students and staff dressed in mostly Indian or Korean national dress. I took a lot of pictures and you can also see students dressed in Japanese Kimonos, Tibeten Chupas and other forms of national dress.

I have also included some pictures of my new sitar! And some pictures of the inside of our new house.

End of the School Year

2009-05-30T02:45:00.000-07:00

I know it has been a long time since I have done any blogging. Here is a quick update as to what has been going on in the past month or so.

My parents came to visit and it seems like they had a pretty good time, even if the traffic did scare them a bit. We went to Delhi and Agra over quarter break. Now I have seen the Taj Mahal twice in one year! I did enjoy staying in fancy hotels and eating nice food.

This last quarter really seems to be a blur. It has been filled with getting kids ready for recitals and concerts and attempting to find a way to purchase new band instruments in India (that part didn’t go very well).

Megan and I have had a few opportunities to take students out of boarding for dinner. One night we had some middle school Korean students over and they brought ingredients and made kim bab for us! It was VERY tasty. This coming week, two of our friends from college, Nick and Emily, are arriving to visit Woodstock. I think we are going to make sure we have more students over for dinner, so our friends can see how talented our students are (and not just at music).

Jazz Jam happened a couple weeks ago. This is where the quad area of the school is transformed into a kind of “jazz club” and the jazz band performs a few sets of music. Megan has been directing the jazz band this year, but I ended up getting to play bari sax for this event. I thought it turned out pretty well.

This week has been full of performances from most of the ensembles at Woodstock. The elementary tabla, elementary choir, beginning strings, beginning band and junior strings all had their end of the year concert on Wednesday. Last night was middle school choir, intermediate band and advanced orchestra and tonight will be high school choir, intermediate orchestra and advanced band. The seniors graduate in a couple weeks and some of them will be performing solos on the senior recital or at the baccalaureate and graduation ceremonies. We are also having an informal quad school concert for parents the day before the students have to leave school. There are still a lot of things happening before the end of the school year, but it is approaching quickly!

The Rents Come to Mussoorie

2009-04-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

Here’s a really quick blog:
Saturday was my birthday and I celebrated by going down to Dehradun to pick up my parents from the train station. We went out to eat at the Black Pepper restaurant and then drove back up the mountain to Mussoorie. I am pretty sure the drive freaked out both my mom and my dad – especially after we saw a car hit a scooter near the bazaar (I have not seen an accident here until now!)
For birthday dinner, we had food delivered from the Rice Bowl and I got to “open” some birthday presents, including American twix bars, cheetos and jello (all things I’d asked for!)
My mom and dad spent the first two nights at our place and tonight they are spending their first night at Hotel Shiva. They came to school today to watch my Intermediate Band rehearsal and then had tea with me while I ate lunch. I think tomorrow they are going to wander around the bazaar and then Wednesday they will come back to school and have a tour. After school on Thursday, we will leave for Delhi/Agra and come back to Mussoorie on Monday.

School's Back In Session

2009-03-08T00:40:00.000-08:00

We’ve been back at school for about a month now. The semester is flying by! There hasn’t been anything too exciting happening. It did snow in the fist week or two of school. The kids thought this was great and the quad was a dangerous place with snowballs whizzing past your head. The snow only lasted until mid-afternoon and then it all melted.
I have decided to discontinue my Hindi lessons and begin learning some classical Indian music (that’s more up my alley anyways – I was never any good at learning languages – that’s what I have Megan and Jeanne for). Anyway, I’ve had two “lessons” on sitar with Aloke, our Indian music teacher. It’s pretty cool, but very difficult AND my leg gets tired from balancing the instrument. Right now I am just working on the basics – the major scale. Eventually I will attempt to learn a rag.
This weekend Megan and some other teachers and students went on a big hike. I stayed home and ended up chaperoning a high school CARE trip to Dehradun. It was actually pretty fun. Oh, and Jeanne and I had one of the senior girls cut our hair for us in the afternoon. It was like a show – a bunch of girls gathered around to “watch” first Jeanne and then me get our hair cut.

A Bit About Winter Vacation

2009-02-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

I know that it has been a long time since I have posted a new blog... Megan and Jeanne and I got back from 28 days of traveling around India last week. We did so much that it seems like a big chore to try to write a blog about everything. So I will just write a little bit right now, with more to come...
Basically we traveled from Delhi to Lucknow to Varanasi to Calcutta by train and then flew down to Goa and then Kerala. Some of the highlights include our hilarious and awesome auto rickshaw driver, Pappu, from Varanasi, riding elephants in Lucknow and Kerala and spending the last true night of our vacation on the sweetest houseboat EVER.

Before Megan and I left Mussoorie in December, we met a woman who had recently been to Varanasi. She gave us the phone number and email address of a great auto rickshaw driver. So we emailed him and he was ready to spend the entire four days of our Varanasi stay with us. Pappu loves "making new friends". The first night he took us around he had to show us his photo album and journal of all his international friends. He took special care to make sure we read the entries written by Americans. Anyway, he took us around the whole city - to the silk factories, where we all bought pure silk saris, to the Ganga and various other places. On our last day in the holy city, we were invited to his home for chai. We met his wife and three sons and had moong dal and masala chai. It was a blast! Pappu made our trip to Varanasi!

We also had the chance to meet up with some students and their mother in Lucknow. The family drove us over three hours to see the jungle that borders Nepal. We didn't see any tigers, but we did see crocodiles, river dolphins and fit nine people on an elephant! It was my first elephant ride - but not my last!

We also rode an elephant, Maria, in Kerala. Although this time it was only Jeanne, Megan and me - much more comfy. We also had the chance to pose for a picture with Maria after our ride and apparently she had a cold or something, because Maria sneezed on me! It was more of a spray than anything else (like snot...) but still pretty disgusting. I definitely took a bucket bath that night!
But my elephant sneeze experience was made up by the sweet houseboat that we had! On our last official night (not counting the final night in Delhi) we had the opportunity to sleep in a houseboat! The state of Kerala is known for its natural beauty - including the backwaters that are made up of a huge freshwater lake and many little rivers and canals. Our houseboat picked us up from our hotel and spent the afternoon cruising around the rivers. We enjoyed fresh coconut milk as well as Kerala chicken curry and seafood (for Jeanne and Megan) that was prepared by our own cook on the boat.

I have a lot more to say about our travels around India, but that's all for now! I'll post some pictures soon too.

Christmas in India

2008-12-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

This was the first time I have ever spent Christmas anywhere else than in Minnesota. It was quite a bit different, especially without any snow!
On Tuesday night, some of our “neighbors”, Polly and Jim hosted a white elephant party. This is where everyone brings a gift/something than you don’t want anymore and then each person opens a present or steals an already opened one from someone else. Some of the interesting gifts included a very tacky, red and blue blinking Taj Mahal, a hand puppet of a rabbit in a top hat and some snowmen earrings. It was really fun and a everyone seemed to really get into it. One of the best parts of the night was when we realized that one of the most sought after gifts (a bag of broccoli and chocolate- not mixed together) was not meant for the exchange. One of the partygoers had actually brought that for a specific person and somehow it ended up in the white elephant pile!

On Christmas Eve, Megan and I went into the bazaar to pick up some last minute items for our lasagna. We spent our Christmas Eve night making/eating lasagna (without ricotta cheese though…) and talking to friends and family back home on skype. It was pretty low-key, but fun.
Christmas Day was a whole different ballgame. There were still quite a few families on the hillside for Christmas, so everyone took part in a traveling feast/progressive dinner. There were five stops on our mountain. We began with starters down (quite a ways down) at the Huswaite’s house around 1:00. From there we moved the farthest, almost to the top of the hill to Polly and Jim’s house for soup. After soup, we had the main course of ham, peas, corn and sweet potatoes at Judy and Dana Crider’s house. From there we mostly traversed across the hill to the Swanson’s for desert (this was by far my favorite stop!). There were a TON of deserts there, including chocolate cake, lemon meringue, cheesecake and brownies. After dessert we sang some Christmas carols that unfortunately included BOTH ‘Go Tell it on the Mountain’ AND ‘Little Drummer Boy’, but I got over it. After dessert, most of the people dropped off and went home, but there were a few of us brave souls that made it to Pete and Dot’s house for what was supposed to be tea and a movie, but ended up being snacks, wine and chatting. The wine was to celebrate two of the staff that got married the previous weekend.

Tomorrow, New Year’s Eve, Megan and I are headed off to Delhi to begin our winter vacation traveling. Our friend, Jeanne, is already in Delhi waiting for us. We will spend two nights in Delhi and then take the train to Lucknow. We’ll stay there for a few days and then continue on the train to Varanasi. We will spend a couple more days in Varanasi and then finish our long train journey be ending up in Calcutta. We have a couple friends from the music department who have offered to show us around Calcutta, including attending a classical Indian music festival on January 12th! We fly out of Calcutta on the 15th and head to northern Goa. We will hang out on the beach for a week there, before we head over to Kerala for the last bit of our trip. We will spend another week in Kerala AND stay in a house boat for one night! Then we come back to Delhi/Mussoorie on January 28th. I am currently charging both of my camera batteries, so I can take lots of pictures!

Hospital Visit and Kids Are Gone!

2008-12-16T03:50:00.000-08:00

Today was the last day students were on campus. This morning Emily invited Megan and me to the elementary school Santa Breakfast (technically we do not teach elementary kids, but Emily needed “help with the music” and by help with the music, I mean she needed two people to make sure she still got all of the good food…). I did a very nice job of making sure she had scrambled eggs, sausage, ham, fruit, croissants and cinnamon rolls on her plate! The Santa Breakfast was the elementary school’s final assembly of the semester. All the children were dressed up in Christmas colors and the fifth graders were wearing elf costumes, because they were the servers. Santa even made an appearance! After each class had sung a song, Santa gave each student a little present. After Santa Breakfast, the middle and high schools had their final assemblies (which were not as much fun or delicious…). Now it is about 4:30 in the afternoon and almost all of the students have gone down the mountain, either with their parents or on the bus to Delhi. The campus is eerily quiet…

Yesterday I had the exciting experience of going to the Landour Community Hospital! It’s not too dramatic, I have just been sick/lost my voice for over a week and so the health center nurse recommended that I see the doctor at the hospital.
At 10:00 Monday morning, I went to the health center to hitch a jeep ride to LCH. It turned out I got to travel with a little third grade boy, Reuel ( I think) who had a big bump on his head from a fall the day before. Well, after our lovely jeep ride to LCH, we followed the employee from Woodstock, who appeared to know what was going on, into the hospital. I am extremely grateful that we had a Hindi speaking adult with us, because I had absolutely no idea what was going on! He took our records (which are basically a little notebook, where I had written allergic to sulfa drugs on it) and told us to sit in the “waiting area”. The waiting area was full of plastic deck chairs and quite a few people -including a mother with two young children, wearing matching sparkly sweaters that kept playing games and running around in circles. I thought it was kind of funny, but the mom kept yelling at them in Hindi. Reuel and I talked about Christmas and how he hoped all his presents were soccer related to keep from getting too bored. After a long time, we were told we could move into the hallway that was right next to the waiting room. There looked to be four doctor’s offices in the hallway. Reuel’s doctor was towards the end, so he went to sit on a bench farther down. My doctor’s door was right across from the billing window, so the hallway was crowded with people. Again I had absolutely no idea what was going on. There were some benches lining the hallway and after a spot opened up I decided to sit down. But about a minute after I sat down next to a rather frail looking Indian woman, another woman squeezed her way onto the bench which pretty much just pushed me off. I decided standing against the wall was better.

Now normally when I have gone to the doctor in Minnesota, you go to the front desk and sign in and give them your insurance information. Then you go to the next desk and sign your name and they call you in an orderly fashion. Well, apparently in India, it is not first come first serve, the amount of time you have to wait is directly correlated to how many times you open the doctor’s office door and bug them. I think I spent a total of about 3 hours at the hospital, and while waiting in that hallway, there were 3 or 4 men and women that kept opening the doctor’s door and trying to get the doctor to see him or her sooner (I think – because everyone was always speaking in Hindi), no matter if the doctor was in the middle of seeing a patient or not! Well, I really didn’t know if I was supposed to do that, but luckily the Woodstock employee was still around and he would periodically poke his head in the door and then relay to me how much longer I should have to wait. Finally, he told me that I would be next. So, once the next person came out of the doctor’s office, I went in, but I was followed by an eager Indian woman, who was speaking rapid Hindi to the doctor. The doctor said something to her and she left. The actual doctor visit was fine, she spoke English and it didn’t take very long. She ended up telling me that I just needed to rest my voice and then I might need some antibiotics, but they should do a blood test first to find out. Then I had to get my bill stamped and find the lab. I could go into detail about this too, but it’s pretty much along the same lines of you have to be pushy to get what you want. I was still not prepared to be pushy; especially since I cannot speak Hindi (I think I’ve only had 3 lessons…). Luckily I also ran into Bunti – one of the cab company owners in Mussoorie – who I knew, so he was pretty helpful. And the Woodstock employee was still there, so he knew what to do as well.
Anyway, it all turned out fine; I got my antibiotics and went back to school in time for lunch. But I can say that I will not go to the hospital again, unless I am very, very sick.

Thanksgiving, ABRSM exams and Concerts

2008-12-10T06:31:00.000-08:00

The end of November and beginning of December have been a blur. Once we got back from activity week, it felt like a race to the finish… We had Thanksgiving, ABRSM exams, music evaluations, end of semester concerts and now finally, grading.
I guess I’ll start with Thanksgiving. This was the first time in my whole life that I had to go to school on Thanksgiving – it was pretty strange. Although the school did make a “special lunch” for the holiday. It was roast chicken and potatoes. It was alright – the gravy was definitely Indian gravy… The kids all knew it was Thanksgiving and some of them thought we shouldn’t have to have band rehearsal because of it--- I squashed that dream right away. That night the Bovens had invited a bunch of the “younger” teachers to their house for a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. Beth and Emily/Jared made chicken (you can’t really get turkey here) and there were mashed potatoes, green beans, bread, more potatoes – I made stuffing (way too much of it) and lots of other things. It was a really fun night, there were probably about 12 people there. The only bummer was that we had to go to school the next day, no shopping here!
Also during Thanksgiving week, the music department was hosting ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) examinations. An examiner flew all the way from England to spend Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday testing our students. There are eight basic levels of examination on all the different instruments – plus a few higher levels that correspond to the university level in the UK. We had students testing from level one, all the way up to the diploma level (beginning of university). I had three clarinet students and one flute player testing at level three, on sax student on level four and two flutes and one clarinet player at level 5. Each student had to prepare three pieces of contrasting styles that came from the ABRSM list (two with piano and one unaccompanied), memorize selected scales and arpeggios, be able to sight-read at the appropriate level, and have a certain level of proficiency at a number of aural skills, including melodic memory and sight-singing. I believe all but one or two of our students participating passed and all of my woodwind students passed – several with merit and one with distinction. I was a little worried about instrument troubles going into the exam week, but I only had two minor catastrophes. The first one happened to the most adorable little seventh grade clarinet player on the night before her exam. She had been having problems with her barrel getting stuck on her clarinet and it happened again that evening and THEN her moveable thumb rest was extremely loose, because the screw had been stripped. We managed with her barrel and then, as much as I hate to admit this, I glued her thumb rest to her clarinet… Her exam went fine the next day. The other instrument problem happened to a 10th grade flute player in the middle of her exam. She was in the hall playing her scales for the examiner, when suddenly her flute “stopped working”… Luckily, it was nothing too difficult, one of her key adjustment screws had been bumped or something. So all I had to do was grab a little screw driver and put it back in place and then she continued her exam. BUT for the first couple seconds before I figured out what was wrong, I was pretty nervous about having a “broken” flute in front of me while this student was supposed to be in her ABRSM examination…
The next week was music evaluation week and concert week – BUT before that, Megan, Jeanne, Mandy, Stephanie, Tamara and one student went to a village wedding that Saturday night. It was a double wedding and I did not know either of the brides or grooms, but we all got invited through Tamara – who taught at Woodstock last spring. It was pretty fun, even if the cab ride down made us all a little sick…
When I say we went to a wedding, I really mean we went to the wedding reception. Traditionally, the ceremony takes place in the girl’s village in the morning and then the bride and groom make their way to the groom’s village for the festivities of the reception. Someone said that there were over 1,000 people at the wedding reception, it could very well have been true, because everywhere you looked, there were people. I didn’t get any pictures, because my camera battery had died – but I think Megan got a couple. It was pretty amazing to see the brides and grooms process in with people pushing and shoving all around them. Both of the brides looked exhausted and not very happy. I asked Tamara about this and she told me that they probably were very tired and they were not supposed to look happy – for two reasons; one being that they should be sad that they had to leave their family and old village to come live with a husband and new family that they didn’t know and two; if they showed even a hint of a smile it would mean that they were happy about consummating their marriage that night – and that would be BAD.
The majority of the night was spent waiting for the brides and grooms to arrive. Apparently, even the younger groom and his bride had to wait outside the village for a while until the older one (the grooms were brothers) arrived. Once there got there they processed into the village where they could sit in their “thrones”. There was a TON of food, we had the chance to eat inside someone’s home, which was nice. The food wasn’t great… most of us found goat hair in with our meat, not so appetizing… but I did kind of like the paneer. After we had eaten, a lady (maybe the grooms’ mother?...) ushered us into a small room where the two brides were sitting. They wanted to get a picture with all the “important” white people, even though they had absolutely no idea who we were… lol. Then as we were trying to leave, Jeanne encountered some people from another village that she visits often. They wanted to have some pictures taken AND one of the women “gave” some puffed rice snack mix to us – aka poured a bunch in each of our hands and then tried to shove more in our jacket pockets. I did not eat mine, because it really didn’t seem very sanitary, but both Mandy and Stephanie said it tasted like stale dry rice…
Ok, so the next week began with music evaluations. These were a little bit like juries in college. The students who had not performed at a recital or taken the ABRSM exams came in to play scales and perform a piece for a panel of music teachers. It was kind of fun being on the other side of the table for something like this! Although I didn’t have a chance to see all of the students that I teach, because we had two separate evaluation rooms ( I guess you can do that when you have 8 music teachers!).
Then it was time for concerts. Wednesday was the beginner concert, beginner orchestra, beginner band, elementary choir and junior strings. This year Emily is teaching beginner band, so I didn’t conduct anything in this concert. Friday’s concert included intermediate band, middle school choir and advanced orchestra. Saturday’s concert was intermediate orchestra, high school choir and advanced band. All in all, I think the concerts went pretty well. It’s difficult to know exactly how the groups (especially the ones Megan and I are doing) did, because we are not quite sure where they were last year. But I was happy with the results and I think the kids were too. (Although I did have to tell one girl that she could not play in the concert on Friday, because she skipped our compulsory dress rehearsal… I bet she won’t do that again…)

Activity Week - Dehra Dun with Grade 7

2008-11-12T02:39:00.001-08:00

I spent last week with fifty seven grade students during activity week. To be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to activity week for a multitude of reasons – one being that going to Dehra Dun seemed kind of lame compared to what other students and teachers were doing for the week. BUT I had a great time with the students and our trip was better than I anticipated. Many of the other activity week trips focused on hiking or adventurous things. Our trip was service based. Apparently our students had been doing some research on different disabilities within their advisor and homeroom groups. The point of our trip was to visit and interact with students from Dehra Dun that a variety of disabilities. The seventh grade class was divided into four groups and each group traveled to a new school during the week. The schools were the school for the blind, early childhood intervention center, Karuna Vihar School and Karuna Vihar Vocational Center. The school for the blind is pretty self explanatory, but the other three might need a little explaining… They are all schools/centers for children and students with a mental disability. The early childhood intervention center is a place where young children – toddler-aged- can get one on one attention and therapy from trained teachers and physical therapists. Karuna Vihar School is for elementary and middle school-aged children. There are four or five different rooms and several different teachers to work with various ability levels of the students. Karuna Vihar Vocational Center is a place where young adults can come to learn numerous life and vocational skills.

Our students went to one school/center every day. I went to both of the Karuna Vihar centers and the Early Childhood Intervention Center. It was necessary for the chaperones to go to certain places more than once so that there could always be one leader that was familiar with the particular place. That is why I went to the vocational center two days In a row and did not go to the blind school. For the most part, the Woodstock students did a fantastic job of playing and working with students at the schools. At the beginning of the week one of the goals was to go back to Woodstock having made some new friends. Towards the end of the week I asked some of the kids if they had some new friends and each student I talked to told me some names of the other kids they met. I could go into more detail about each place and what the kids did there, but instead I’ll just post some pictures. The pictures I have are from the walk down to Dehra Dun, the first place we stayed – TorchBearers, the Karuna Vihar School and the Vocational Center. The other two big hits from the students point of the view was the trip to the water park and eating dinner at McDonalds.

I really enjoyed getting to know the students of grade seven a lot better. I only have five or six seventh graders in band and woodwind lessons. I had to learn lots of new names, but it was great to hang out with some new kids. There were also six other teachers along to chaperone the trip – three of the ESL teachers, the religion teacher, computer teacher and the head of the middle school. The music department is almost like its own school at Woodstock, so even though I am technically a middle school teacher, I rarely see or get a chance to chat with the other middle school teachers. It was great to be able to get to know my colleges a bit better. I also had the chance to witness several different courses of mediation between students. When seventh grade girls are “forced” to stay in a hotel room with their peers the drama starts to unfold… Sanjaya is our head of middle school and she dealt with most of these “dramatic” situations. I learned so much by watching her interact with kids and help to fix each problem as it arose. It is obvious that she really cares about her students and it seems like she is able to find a solution to anything!

Well, I had a great week, but I was certainly ready to be back home on Friday evening! This week was supposed to be a “normal” week of school. BUT today, mid morning, all of the students were called to an assembly and then released from school back into dorms. Apparently there is a political group protesting and all of the schools in India were called upon to not be in session today. The students were all very happy be get a day off school, but I really wish we could have continued with the normal schedule for the rest of the day!

Oh, I should also mention that I enjoy reading the comments that you all write on my blog and I really enjoy them! If you ever want to send me an email, I will definitely respond back!

Diwali and Halloween

2008-11-02T04:08:00.001-08:00

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!

Dinner at Tamara's and Staff Talent Show

2008-10-19T02:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-12T03:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Grades are Done!!!

2008-09-18T19:03:00.000-07:00

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!!!

Woodstock Cross Country Race

2008-09-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

Today was Woodstock’s school cross country race. The entire school hiked up to the top of the hill to the “racing area” which is really a road called the Chuker (I’m not sure how to spell it) the winds around in a big figure eight. The scenery up there is awesome and once monsoon is over (which should be pretty soon!) you can see all the way to some of the snow capped peaks of the Himalayas.
The elementary school kids went up in the morning, while the rest Woodstock had normal classes. The little kids had a short distance to run ( I don’t know how long it was). Then the middle schoolers went up during the last part of their lunch time and they did not have class for the remainder of the day. I did have a slight problem with this, because several of my inter band kids thought that they did not have band today – which they did. I dragged some of them out of lunch to come and practice, but I coud not find them all. I had to lecture them again, so hopefully everyone will be in attendance on Friday. We also did not have band on Monday due to a shortened school day. The past week or so has been frustrating in the fact that I haven’t been able to really rehearse with this band.
Anyway, then the high school students went up to the top of the hill during the last period of the day to run their races. They had four groups, 9th/10th grade girls, 9th/10th grade boys, 11th/12th grade girls and 11/12th grade boys. I think I mentioned before that each student and staff member is placed into a house for sports. The races from the entire day are put together to determine the cross country house winner. It was fun to see all of the students in their different colored shirts and face paint etc. Merlins are red (Megan and I are Merlins), Eagles are blue and Condors are green. Each student gets at least 3 points for finishing the race and then I think it was the first 10 places get more points for their house. Staff can run too, although no matter what we only get one point for our house. Megan and I were going to run with the 11th/12th grade girls, but then the Phy Ed teacher convinced her to run with the boys instead, because they had a longer distance. I decided to stick to my original plan of running the shorter one with the girls – I am NOT a long distance runner, I never have been and I never will…
It was pretty fun, although it’s a lot different running up at a high altitude vs. running in MN. After the races were over, a bunch of teachers decided to go eat at Char Dukan (in Hindi, that means “4 stores”). On one side of the figure eight road there are four little café places and it is a popular place for staff and students to go, especially on the weekends. We went there, but it was really busy, so Megan and I decided to walk back. We both had to go back to school before coming home, so we thought (well Megan thought) it would be a good idea to go the short cut way called the “zig zag” path that we came up with all the students. Well after about 20-30 minutes of hiking up and down random paths, we realized we had no idea how to get back to school from there. So we went back up to the top of the mountain and took the longer path that we were familiar with. I have never been good at directions, I still get lost every time I try to go to Sell’s house.

Friendship Day

2008-08-30T04:28:00.001-07:00

I know it’s been a week since I last posted a blog. This week was another pretty busy one. Wednesday was one of the new staff, James’ birthday. So that evening we had 23 people at a restaurant called the Tavern in the bazaar. We pretty much took up the whole place! Thursday was “friendship day” at Woodstock. This meant that the seniors all had a freshman that they had to dress up in ridiculous costumes. Some of the costumes I saw included pokemon, a giant foot, an i-pod, a tea pot etc. It was pretty funny to see all the ninth graders dressed up for the whole day. But I was not very happy when 10 of my band students skipped band during the lunch period to continue to take part in the friendship day festivities. I will be having words with these kids at our next rehearsal, which unfortunately isn’t until Wednesday because we have a shortened class day due to teacher meetings on Monday morning…
We also did not have class yesterday. Instead we had an assembly in the morning. Apparently there have been some violent actions taken against Christians in Orissa (which really isn’ t very close to us). But all of the Christian schools in India were taking a stand and protesting by not having school yesterday.
So far I have had two Hindi lessons from Zeenat – the hindi instructor/assistant. She is really nice and a very patient teacher. At our first lesson, two Thursdays ago, we went over a basic introductory conversation – here’s what it looks like with Arabic letters (I don’t know how to use sandskrit on the computer)
Namastay -Hello
Aap Kaisay (see) hai? - How are you?
Mai theek hoo – I am fine
Aur aap kaisee hai? And how are you?
Aapkaa naam kyaa hai? - What is your name?
Mayraa naam Jennie hai - My name is Jennie
Aap kahaa say hai? -Where are you from?
Mai US say hoo? - I am from the US
Aapsay milkar khushi huee - Nice to meet you
Phir milenge - see you again
This past week we went over the vowels and consonants and Zeenat had me practice writing some of them and putting them together for pronunciation practice and then she would tell me if it was a word or not. Some of the words I stumbled on through this process were, cut (which sounds exactly like it does in English), juice, a sound that means talking – kind of like blah blah blah, the buzz that a bee makes, lost, desert and hair. It was actually kind of fun… Yesterday I came home after our morning assembly and our ayah was still here working in our house, so I tried to use some of limited Hindi to communicate. It kind of worked, but I think I need a lot more practice!
Yesterday and today we went jogging up at the top of the hill on what’s called the Chuker. It’s a figure eight road that has a bunch of amazing views. I guess once the monsoon is over, you can see the some of the snow covered peaks of the Himalayas from there. The students (and teachers if they want) have their big cross country race up there on Wednesday. The school is divided up into three houses for sports (kind of like Harry Potter, but without quidditch). The houses are Merlin, Condor, Eagle. Megan and I are both in Merlin. Each age group has a different distance to run. And if they make it in a certain time, then they earn points for their house.
Today we are also going to go down to the bazaar and pick up a rolling pin, baking pan, some groceries and other things. I am going to attempt to make chocolate chip cookies too! Everyday either at 9:35 or 10:30 we have a minute tea time. The music teachers all take turns bringing snacks for that tea time. So far I have only brought snacks that are packaged, but if I can figure out how to make cookies in our toaster over, then next time I’ll have a homemade snack to bring!

2008-08-23T02:28:00.001-07:00

This past week has been crazy! It was the first full week of school. The couple weeks before were 3 and 4 day weeks. I finally got to have lessons with all of my students. It was also wildlife week at Woodstock. We had a couple of all school assemblies with a few speakers etc. They had students reading books aloud about Indian wildlife during lunch and of the classes did face painting for the younger students. The school also had some optional sessions during the school day that teachers could take their classes to if they wanted.
Last weekend megan I went to the bazaar twice. On Saturday we went with our friend Jeanne to a friend, Tamara’s apartment for lunch. Tamara taught science at Woodstock for a while last year, but she wanted to work in an Indian school so now she teaches in a school right in Mussoorie. She made an awesome lunch of rice, paneer, mushrooms and beans, chipati and some yogurt/chick pea thing that I don’t know the name of… Her friends Lorie and Kunwar also came to lunch. Lorie is from Canada and is doing research in the villages of the hillside and Kunwar used to be the pridant of a number of villages around the area. It was really interesting talking to them and they invited all of use to come and visit their village some weekend.
Sunday we went to visit Megan’s third cousin’s friend that lives in Mussoorie. His name is Ganesh and it was great to talk to him and his family about India and traveling. He has been all over India and has written books and included AMAZING photographs from around the country. He gave us some great suggestions of places to travel.
The rest of the week was basically filled with school. We did go into the bazaar again on Wednesday to pick up some new clothes – I got two more salwar kamises, but I haven’t taken them into the tailor yet… Today I haven’t done much yet. But there have been a couple Langur monkeys playing jungle gym on our balcony outside our living room. The Langur monkeys are the “good” ones; they are less aggressive than the other ones, even though they are bigger.

Independence Day

2008-08-15T03:03:00.000-07:00

This week was our (meaning the music department) first week of really having class. It was great to actually start ensembles and lessons and meet some of my students. Most of the kids I have for lessons seem to be very dedicated (with a couple exceptions…). In fact I even have three students coming in before and after school to have lessons and practice because they can’t fit it into their schedule otherwise! And when I had each kid write down some goals they had for the semester, almost all of them said that they wanted to work on scales! I even hated practicing scales in college (sorry Bruce). Anyway, it seems like they are willing to work hard. All of the students taking lessons have three other practice periods scheduled into their school week – so unless they are messing around in the practice rooms, they should be improving every week…
Today is Indian Independence Day. India broke free from Britain 61 years ago. Today we did not have school; instead we had a ceremony outside the high school and then an awesome lunch in the quad (where the middle school and elementary school are located). Everyone was supposed to dress up in Indian dress – so both Megan and I wore our new saris. Although saris are very complicated to tie (they basically consist of an underskirt (petticoat), a short blouse (that really only comes down to the middle of your ribcage) and then a very long piece of fabric (I think this can be anywhere from 4 to 7 meters long- mine seemed REALLY long!)). Fortunately, one of the librarians (also the wife of the head of the music department) Esther offered to help us tie our saris today. Megan and I went over to her house at about 8:30 this morning and she took time with each one of us to get ready. From what I understand, you have to put on your blouse and petticoat and then you tie a knot into one end of the sari. Then you tuck that into the side of the petticoat and wrap the fabric around your waist once. Then you tuck it in again at the same place and wrap it around one more time (but this time you are going to leave a bunch loose at the front to put in pleats). On this time when you’re wrapping it, you go around your front (with the loose part) and then the back and then bring up the rest of the material across your chest and throw it over your left shoulder. You adjust the length of the shoulder piece and then find out how much material you have, to do pleats with in the front of the skirt part. You fold the pleats with the extra fabric and then tuck it into the front of your petticoat. I think that’s about it… It seems pretty confusing at the time, I just tried doing it myself right now (with a t-shirt and pants on) to make sure I was describing it correctly. Hopefully sometime soon I will be able to do it myself and have it look decent enough!
Once Esther tied our saris for us, Megan and I went up to school and then at 9:30 we had a ceremony in front of the flag pole at the high school. The elementary school children we seated in front on the ground, while the staff sat in chairs on the side. The rest of the kids were standing all around the rest of the courtyard. Aloke, the Indian music teacher, led an Indian staff choir that sang some national songs. The orchestra also played the national anthem and everyone sang along. I only know the end of it, where the words repeat over and over again - I’m working on learning the rest… The principal said a few words and they also had a speaker who talked a little bit about freedom.
After the ceremony was over, the younger students went down to the quad for food, while the high schoolers hung around and did some dancing in the auditorium. It was really cool to see everyone dressed up in national clothes. Most people were in Indian clothes, but it is also the Korean Independence Day, so a lot of the Korean students were in their national dress. Megan was disappointed that she didn’t bring her hanbok (just kidding). By the time I made it down the quad for food, it was pretty packed. They had different stations set up outside with options for food. I had some momos (veg and mutton), dosa and one other thing that I don’t know it’s name. There were a few other things that I didn’t try, mostly because I didn’t want to wait in more lines and I was full. The momos are kind of like dumplings with vegetables or meat inside. They can be fried or steamed. They are served with sauce that is usually very spicy. The dosas are kind of like a big really flat pancake and then they are folded and have a mixture of potatoes and spices inside. They are served with a kind of soup, red chutney (spicy) and coconut chutney (which is my favorite chutney so far!). Dosas are actually a south Indian food, and apparently they are much better in the south than here in the north. But I’ve never had “authentic” south Indian dosas, so I thought it tasted just fine! The other food that I tried was some kind of little fried potato patty and then mint chutney, white and red sauces were poured over it. It was good and a little spicy. To drink there was water and of course chai!
During the festivities today, someone told me that the new phy ed teacher (who just arrived yesterday) played rugby. While I was eating I had a chance to meet her and talk for a bit. She said she was having three rugby balls sent here and she wants to start a 7’s side. There is also a new dorm parent who played rugby in Indiana who was really excited to start a team. After being here for a few weeks I was sure that I would not be playing rugby for at least two years, but now it sounds like we are going to try to get a team started!!! Amanda, the phy ed teacher, said we should try to get some of the high school girls involved too and maybe we could do some inter-school matches! I might be sending home for a package of cleats, rugby shorts and a mouth guard soon…

More Monkeys

2008-08-13T07:16:00.000-07:00

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.

Our First and Better Be LAST Scorpion

2008-08-04T07:50:00.003-07:00

In my mind, the big news from the last couple days is that I had a scorpion in my bedroom. This happened two nights ago.
I was minding my own buisiness closing my curtains before bed, when I noticed a huge nasty spider on my window. There have been a couple of these so far in our house, so I followed proticol and immediatly yelled for Megan to come and kill the spider. She came fairly quickly, while I went to find something for her to kill it with. On my way back, toilet paper in one hand, keen sandal in the other, I spotted it... On the floor right in front of my closet was a SCORPION!!!!! I had heard about these discusting creastures and we even had a dead one passed around in a plastic container in one of our orientation sessions, but nothing could prepare me for just how completely repulsive this thing was. I screamed for Megan to get over to the closet. We then proceeded to both freak out, while Megan took my sandal and repeatedly hit the scorpion. With each strike, its skeletal body convulsed and we screamed. Finally after about four or five blows the beast was defeated. And we, aka- Megan, got it into an empty toilet paper roll and dumped it into the toilet. I pushed the lever to flush it down to it's watery grave.

I Guess Monkeys Get Sick Too!

2008-07-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

So far this week has been taken up with a lot more staff meetings and orientation. Although on Monday we went to the bazaar again after school and I picked up my new pants from the tailor. They are super comfy! Then Megan and I went to see if the fabric man had some new rag quilts (Emily had clued us in that he might be getting a big shipment). He didn’t have any of that particular kind, but we did get some other rugs and towels and new shower curtains!
Last night we were invited over to Jeanne’s house for dinner- her ayah had made chicken curry and vegetables and rice and dahl. The chicken tasted great! However, on my way over to her house I ran into our ayah (socombri- I don’t know how to spell her name) and her husband, Delip – who can speak some English. The day before Megan had talked to Delip about having Socombri possibly come 5 days a week and do some cooking for us. Last night they had come to talk to us about that situation and after several minutes we came up with a system that a blue dot on a piece of paper meant that we would like our ayah to cook for us that day and a red dot meant that she didn’t need to. Later that night after eating at Jeanne’s, Megan and I realized that we didn’t have any markers or way to tell Socombri that we did not need her to cook the next day (and she really wouldn’t have been able to, because we didn’t have enough ingredients for her to make anything). This morning, Megan decided to be very creative to formulate a blue dot. I guess that when Socombri had washed one of Megan’s new blue kurtas that it had dripped some blue ink on the floor. It had already dried, but Megan got some water to wet the ink and then slapped a piece of paper over it to create a very large, misshapen blue circle… Anyway, it must have worked, because it didn’t look like our ayah tried to cook anything for us!
Also yesterday- but earlier in the afternoon- I think a monkey was throwing up outside my office/studio door. I was in my office sorting through music, when I heard this nasty coughing/barfing noise. Sure enough as I looked out my window, a monkey was walking (which is strange because they usually run and chase around) on the sidewalk. Every few steps he would stop and make that sick noise… I didn’t see any chunks, but there might have been some sort of liquid left over- I didn’t really look too closely.

Weekend of Shopping...

2008-07-27T00:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a shopping weekend! (although that sounds more fun than it really was) Friday most of the new staff went down to the Carleton for lunch. This hotel (more like a bed and breakfast) used to be some old French estate and now people can stay there if they are vacationing in Mussoorie. We had some really sweet food there, including mutton kabobs, some appetizer made out of a huge leaf from the forest, spring rolls, plum juice, rice and dahl of course, sesame green beans, honey chicken, fish, cinnamon mutton and curry, sour potatoes with spinach chapatti and mango puree. It was amazing! And because the estate was over a hundred years old they had one room in the place that was being preserved from its original state. This room had two stuffed tigers and a bunch more tiger pelts. Apparently one of the stuffed tigers had killed 65 people during its life, so the government gave permission for someone to kill it. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera, so I don’t have any cool tiger pics…
After eating a massive lunch, the school bus took us to the very end of what’s called Library Bazaar in Mussoorie. I guess the bazaar is divided up into different sections and I had never been as far as Library Bazaar. I walked through entire length of shops and all the way back up to school with some other people. I ended up buying a good knife and cutting board and a rug. And then I also stopped by the tailor and picked up my 5 kurtas (my pants and pillow cases were not ready yet).
Saturday the bus and some taxis took a bunch of the new staff down to Derha dun to shop. It takes about an hour and a half to get to Derha dun from the school if you are riding on a bus. We started out a “department store”, which I was ignorantly hoping would be air conditioned because it was so blasted hot and humid. However even though the store had 4 stories, it was open to the street and did not have air conditioning… Collectively, Megan and I bought a big non-stick frying pan, a large pot, a pressure cooker, some big spoons, a dish drying rack and then we each got a clothes drying rack. We actually spent the majority of our “settling in money” that the school gave us at this store. We then proceeded to walk to a south Indian restaurant; I think it was called Kumars. Here I had marsala dosa and it was really good. A dosa is like a huge flat pancake and rolled up inside of it was the potatoes and vegetables with marsala spices. It came with some kind of soup and then coconut chutney, super good!
After lunch Jim took us to an electronic store so we could get outlet strips with surge or spike protection as they call it in India. And then we were going to this ice cream place that everyone raves about, but apparently the owner had just died the day before and they shut down the shop in memory of him. Instead we went to McDonalds (yes they have McDonald’s in India, but instead of hamburgers you can get veggie or chicken burgers - there is also a Dominos in the bazaar in Mussoorie). A bunch of us were going to get ice cream there, but there were out of ice cream. I just drank some Fanta instead, but it definitely wasn’t as good as ice cream would have been…
We had a fairly long bus ride back to Woodstock (although it is was so much fun to watch the scenery as we climbed up the mountain). Megan and I ate dinner at school – not very tasty- with James and Saahil, who are both are age and Julie and Ray (the couple from Ireland). Then we just had a relaxing night hanging out at our place for the night! Today, one of the families is hosting “high tea” in the afternoon and I will probably continue cleaning and organizing my studio.

Monkey Alley

2008-07-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

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!

2nd Blog

2008-07-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

Today, Monday, we had our first official work day. I was going to wake up at 8:00, but instead I woke up around 7 and could not go back to sleep – maybe that’s because it is really like 9:00 pm in MN time. Anyway, I decided to go out and finish washing some dishes in the kitchen. While I was doing that I noticed through our kitchen window that a man was knocking on one of our neighbors doors. When Andrew answered the door, I heard the two mention cinnamon and I knew that this was the bread man that Emily had told us about the day before. I got really excited and made Megan come over and watch. We kept trying to get Andrew’s attention through the window to tell him to send the bread man over to our house, but sadly he didn’t see us. However, the bread man rang our anyway! I was so excited that I raced to open the door, we ended up buying two loaves of freshly baked bread, one cinnamon and one white, for 75 rupees – which is less than 2 dollars. Megan and I started our day off with fresh cinnamon bread and mango tea – it rocked!
After our breakfast, we went off to school for our first day. It was basically just staff meetings and tours of the schools etc. I am going to be teaching the woodwind lessons and directing the intermediate band and pep band. This means that I am technically a middle school teacher (even though I will also have high school students). So I went to the middle school meeting this morning at 9:00 and then the principal gave the new middle school teachers a tour of the school. Later I met up with the current chair of the music department, another strings teachers and the choir teacher. The chair took me on a brief tour of the music building and I found my office – which is sweet! It is on the third floor and the door opens to the outdoor balcony, it has windows on both sides that look out over the open air quad and the mountain. Also the floor is wood from trees that fell down after a huge storm that happened a few years ago. My office is way better than Megan’s – although hers is closer to a lot of the instrumental music things, like the ensemble room and instrument storage.
After checking out my office and all the sweet woodwind repertoire then entire faculty met for lunch in the middle school cafeteria. Then the new principal addressed everyone, which was pretty boring. And THEN the new teachers had to sit through an hour and a half of “computer training” which consisted of getting us logged onto the network and getting into our email. This really should have only taken 10 minutes, but somehow they dragged it out for 90… Thank goodness Emily and her friend Laura volunteered to take us to the bazaar after our workday. Megan and I both had a list of items we wanted to purchase – although we definitely did not get through everything. It takes about 15-20 minutes to walk down to the bazaar in Mussoorie, but it was so worth it. There are so many little shops just lined up along this tiny “road” and Emily knew all the best places to buy what we wanted. We walked a ways down the bazaar as she pointed out various items until we got to her grocery store (which is maybe a little bigger than my bedroom at my house in Annandale). Here she introduced us to the store owner and then we picked out what we needed. Tomorrow someone from the store will deliver our groceries to our house. Then we moved on to the place where she gets her fresh produce. Megan and I bought 3 mangos, 4 apples, ½ kg of potatoes, ½ kg of onions and 1 clove of garlic for 73 rupees (again, less than 2 dollars…) We had to carry those along with us for the trip (and by “we” I mean Megan carried everything in her backpack…) Then we went to the fabric store and picked out what kind of fabric we wanted to make our clothes (and my pillowcases) with. I brought along a pair of pants that I wanted copied and Megan and I both picked our fabric to have kurtas (the long Indian shirts) with and our neighbor James was also with us and he bought some pants and kurta fabric. Then we walked back to the tailor and described what we wanted with each fabric and then were measured. We will be able to pick up our clothes this weekend- I’m very excited! Tomorrow is another day of meetings ect. I think I might also bring my clarinet to my office and play through a bit of the solo/lesson music that is there.

First official blog from India!

2008-07-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, first blog entry from INDIA. It is currently Sunday, July 20, 2008 (although we don’t have internet access yet, so I am really writing this on word and then it might not really be posted until Monday or Tuesday…) Megan and I made it safely all the way from the Minneapolis airport to our new house/apartment at Woodstock school.
Wednesday my family and Andrew and I all left my house in Annandale around 3:30 (well really 3:45 or so) and got to the airport around 5 am. Our flight left at 7:00 and we arrived in NYC at 10 something and then Megan and I had to spend 9 hours at JFK to wait for our Air India flight, I would not recommend that… We boarded our next flight and left at 7:45 and the plane was pretty sweet. Thank goodness for individual tv screens in the back of each seat and a wide selections of movies, tv shows, music etc. We knew our plane needed to stop to refuel in London, but we did not know that everyone had to get off the plane and go through security again. I had been lucky so far that no one question my rather large carry-on and “purse” (aka, my clarinet). However, apparently to the Brits, my clarinet looks shady. I had to wait a long time for them to get to my questionable bag and then after they looked inside, decided it was fine. BUT, once we were boarding the plane it was decided that my other large carryon bag was too big and had to be checked, I was not happy. Anyway, we boarded and had another long flight to Delhi (about 8 hours, the first leg had been about 6.6). We arrived in Delhi at about 11:00 pm (this is Delhi time- which would be 12:30 pm MN time) on Thursday evening. It took a while to get our luggage and then we went through customs, which was surprisingly easy. Polly, Jim, Pete and Dot (from the school) were all waiting for use when we came through with all of our bags and soon we got a on a bus that took us to our hotel.
I forgot to mention that as Megan and I had been traveling we slowly found/met other teachers that were going to Woodstock for the first time. At the New York airport Beth and Dave introduced themselves to us. They from Chicago and Beth is going to be teaching elementary art and Dave is doing middle school social studies. Then in London we met Andrew, who will be teaching high school English and is also from Chicago. Immediately after we exited the plane in Delhi and we waiting to go through security we met Alison who is going to be a dorm staff member for the elementary school dorm and Stephanie who will be working in the high school girls dorm. We met the rest of the new faculty after receiving our luggage and going through customs. There is a family from St. Paul who has three young children, Lily – 8, Ella – 5 and Mohali – 3, Scott will be teaching ESL and Angie will be teaching 9th grade science. We also met James who is from Illinois as well and will be teaching high school chemistry. There were a few more teachers new to Woodstock, but we met them later at our hotel.
While en route Andrew had told us that he had checked out the hotel we would be staying at on trip advisor and all of the reviews were not good… After hearing this I was a little worried, but once we got to the hotel it really wasn’t bad. The first night we sat up with some of the new teachers and had lime soda and some food which I don’t remember the name… The next day was a free day. Some people went shopping in Delhi, but Megan and I opted to sleep in and stay in the hotel (mostly because is was ridiculously hot and soooooo humid – way more humid than MN outside!!! At 6:30 we all met for dinner at the hotel restaurant and then we basically went to bed.
The next morning, Friday, we woke up at 5:00 am so we could leave our hotel by 5:30 to catch the train in Delhi. Driving in India is insane, by the way. I knew that it would be, but still…. We made it to the train station at around 6:30 and the place was just packed with people. I am so glad that our train car was air conditioned! We spent 8 hours on the train and then got off in Dehra dun. We ate lunch as a group in Dehra dun and then divided up to board the small bus or taxis to ride up the winding mountain road to Mussoorie. I rode the bus and sat and talked to Pete and Dot (hr people from the school ) and Sawml, who was coming to work with IT for the next sixth months. Sawhl had actually attended Woodstock for 6 years as a student before moving to London with his family. So he knew exactly where we were going and everything. I was going to try to take some pictures, but I guess nothing really shows up during the rainy season, because it is so foggy/misty all of the time.
We arrived at school and went straight to the Quad building. Here I found my buddy, Emily Hatch and her husband Jared. Megan was already there with them (she had taken a taxi up the mountain) and Emily’s friend Laura was visiting her this week, so she was there too. We sat and talked for a while and then we got the keys to our new home. Emily, Jared and Laura took us to our apartment/house and apparently we have one of the best views from our place out of the whole school. AND even though it is monsoon season, when we go to our house, the fog and mist had kind of cleared away, so we could actually see down the mountainside! It was insane! I did get some pictures, so everyone can see the view from our house. Our apartment is pretty nice, it has three bedrooms each with their own bathroom, a living room/dining room and small kitchen. Megan’s room is upstairs and my room is right underneath hers. We might be getting another roommate for the third bedroom, but we really don’t know. Emily and Jared made grilled cheese and tomato soup and mangos for us for dinner (they thought that we might be a little sick of Indian food by now – which was correct). And they showed us how to work some things in our house, like the water purifier and stove etc. They also brought us a bunch of stuff, like an electricity stabilizer and converter as well as some good food. They kept saying that they wanted to be good buddies and they definitely were! After dinner, they went back to their house and Megan and I put all of our belongings away and watched a friends episode and then went to bed.
Today, Sunday, I slept until after 11:00, I know shocking… and Megan made some eggs and toast for lunch/breakfast. Later we might go over to Emily and Jared’s and then also might go into Mussoorie to check out the bazaar and buys some things for our house and clothes (I barely brought any clothes with me). Well, that’s about it for now!

From Minnesota - Not India...

2008-05-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

Here is my first blog entry and sorry to disappoint, but it's not from India. I am currently still in Annandale, MN and will be until July 16th when I leave for Woodstock school in Mussoorie, India. I graduated a couple weeks ago (although I did not attend my graduation ceremony-instead I chose to go on a band/choir tour with the school where I was student teaching). So far I have been doing some beginning band testing for Eckroth Music and I had the chance to sub for the elementary school music class and tomorrow I get to sub for the high school band at Annandale. Other than that I have just been hanging out in Annandale or St. Cloud and trying to figure out what I need to do to get ready to leave the country for two years. If anyone has any advice - feel free to let me know!!!