Dampness That You Can't Escape

Even though today was Friday, we were free from all school related obligations. Woodstock gave us today off so that we could continue to settle in here in Mussoorie. Just the same, Beth woke up bright and early to get some work in at school. She was rewarded with some remarkably clear views of the valley from our porch. The first one shows more ranges of hills than we knew existed because the constant fog and mist and rain have clouded them. The second one shows the city of Dehradun off in the distance. This is very similar to the night view that we showed in our previous post. All of these views are generally to the south of the hill where we live. We've heard that a short hike of a couple miles will bring us to views of the snow-capped Himalayas to the north. Those won't be visible until the monsoons end in October, but we're definitely looking forward to them.

Dave finally got out of bed and walked down the hill to get some work done, as well. After we did that, we had lunch in the dining hall. As usual there was rice and dall with some veggies and bananas. After eating, we went into the bazaar with Jared and Emily Hatch. They are another young married couple who have been at Woodstock for a year. They've got most of the basics figured out, and agreed to show us how to do some of things that we haven't gotten to yet. First on our list was clothing.

Indian independence day is fast approaching (15 August for those that haven't started planning their BBQs yet). One thing that is assumed of all staff is that they will wear some formal Indian dress on that day. First we stopped at the fabric store that Jared and Emily like. Dave picked out a nice fabric for his new dress kurta and some pants. He also got some material for a couple of more casual kurtas. Beth got some nice prints for short kurtas, as well. We then took that material to one of the tailors in the bazaar. He measured us up and hopefully, we'll have our new clothes in plenty of time for the holiday. Beth also has a formal saree in at the tailors which should look very nice when completed.

The major purchase of the day was our new tumble dryer. We are very excited about this because Mussoorie is very damp in the monsoon season. There have been a couple days where it has rained nonstop. It is very difficult to get things to dry in that sort of condition. There is simply a constant, damp mustiness that permeates everything. It will be nice to throw our towels in so we don't have to dry off with wet ones after our showers in the morning. It also works well because our neighbors have a washing machine that our ayah uses for our clothes. Now she can wash all our clothes over there and dry them all over here. We paid for the dryer down in the bazaar and a man carried it up to our house using a strap around his head.

On our way out of the bazaar, we caught this wonderful view of campus. The round building near the center of the photo is the middle school girls' dormitory. Just to the left of that is the middle school boys' dorm. The building farthest to the left is the high school girls' place.

And finally, to keep everyone happy, we've added a little video of a langur monkey that was sitting just outside our house. There was a whole family feasting on our trees, and Beth got a nice, up close and personal video of a few.

We're sorry that this post was a little wordy. We'll try to include even more pictures next time. We love you and miss you.

Dave and Beth