Diwali

As we write this blog post tonight, it feels a bit like we live in a war zone. Fireworks have been exploding in the surrounding area nonstop for the last couple of hours. This is, of course, in celebration of the festival of diwali. This "Festival of Lights" is a Hindu occasion marked by decorating homes with lamps and candles, setting off fireworks, and distributing sweets and gifts. It is celebrated to mark the victory of good over evil and the end of spiritual darkness. Even though this is a Hindu festival, it has become something of a national holiday in India (much as Christmas has become secularized in the US). The first thing that we did for diwali was buy a new saree for our ayah. Here you can see Beth and Umilla with the saree and some bangles to match.

Last night we went into the bazaar to see a bit of what was going on. Last night was chhoti (small) Diwali, when the fireworks and mischief are not quite so bad. We saw lots of shops decorated with lights and flowers and selling metalware, clay lamps, and small banks.

This morning, the sixth grade students from Woodstock when down to the bazaar on a fieldtrip. Dave had a chance to go with them because he teachers sixth graders in the morning. The students had directions to practice their Hindi and ask questions about diwali to the shop keepers. Two of the most important shops during this season are the sweet shops and the fireworks.

Dave was able to resist the temptation to blow things up, but did partake of some sweets. The example below surprisingly had the consistency of fiberglass insulation and was not terribly tasty.

With our camera, Dave was able to get some video of the two biggest sweet shops in the bazaar. They are across the street from each other, but Dave mostly stayed near the laddus which were his favorites.

Since Woodstock is a Christian school, we did not give our students the day off today. To make that up to our Hindu pupils, the school provided a professional fireworks display this evening. Some of the kids did not think it was that great, but we both found it to be quite impressive.

The video that Beth took also turned our quite well.

We stayed out of the bazaar tonight because we were told that there are occasionally hooligans that throw firecrackers at people that look different or out of place. It has hard to look much more different than a tall American with an orange beard, so we tried to light our own fireworks at home after the school demonstration. Here, you can see Beth unsuccessfully trying to start a fancy sparkler that we bought in the bazaar. It never worked, but it was only 2 rupees, so it's not a big loss.

Finally, here is a nice example of the decorations that people place outside their homes. Most houses had strings of lights like Americans use at Christmas as well as oil lamps and candles. These were on the windowsill of our neighbor.

Remember this for next year...to see a nice cultural display, you can visit us during mid-October.

Dave and Beth

Party and Monkeys

After our CARE trip this morning, we went into the bazaar to get some shopping done. Our main task was to get a saree for our ayah. This traditional Indian outfit is a gift for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights that happens this Tuesday. We got our gift and took a few pictures of the preparations going on in town. Most of the shops had strings of lights on their awnings and there was lots of decoration over the street.

Most of the shops were also selling fireworks and metal goods. The fireworks are an obvious necessity for the festive occasion. The metal goods are apparently an auspicious thing to buy and sell at this time of the year. Diwali is the time that Hindus celebrate the goddess of wealth and buying metal means that both consumer and producer should be blessed with some of that wealth.

After our walk through the bazaar, we made our way up to the elementary school dormitory. They were having their big open house this afternoon, and it turned out to be a rather large party. There were lots of food vendors selling their goods and there were even some guys painting mehndi on hands. Beth got one of these temporary henna works of art.

We also got to try some panipuri. Literally translated, this means "water in fried bread." It's made of a round, hollow dough that is fried and filled with a watery mixture of tamarind, chili, spices , potato, onion and chickpeas. In this photo, Dave is trying to get it down before the water leaks through.

The most exciting part of our day took place as we were leaving the dorm. On our way home, we were walking with a group of middle school students and we saw a group of monkeys on the fence ahead og us. These were the rhesus monkeys that are not very nice. We were waiting patiently for them to pass when one came from the buildings above us and ran right at us. It swerved before reaching us, but was waiting ominously behind us.

A moment later, a really large male came off the same building above us. He looked down at us menacingly and we realized that monkey number one was edging closer to us from behind. The entire group started to get pretty nervous and this was justified when both of the monkeys started running towards us. One of them grabbed onto Dave's leg, but he shook it off and no one else was really touched. After a few attempts to breach their defences, we finally made it to the path home. Eventually, we got back and vowed never to leave the house again. It's entirely possible that we've made the "attack" worse in our minds than it actually was. But we've now officially survived our first monkey scuffle. Anyone want to come and visit?

Dave and Beth

CARE

Here at Woodstock we have a program called CARE. This is an acronym for Community service And Restoration of the Environment. We plan activities for students to do these things. This morning, we had a chance to help restore the environment. In an effort to slowly counteract deforestation on the hillside, we were working on some nursery beds of trees at the Hanifl Center on campus. This is our outdoor education center and we were in charge of half of the sixth grade students today. The first step was collecting seeds from the ground around the center.

This being India, we were periodically interrupted by cows from the surrounding villages. For the most part, they just sat there but every once in a while they started head butting.

After collecting the seeds, we had to get them ready for planting. These students are taking some alder seeds and getting them prepared.

From there, we went to the terraces where the beds had been prepared. In this picture, Darab is showing us how to plant the alder seeds.

Now digging around in the dirt for an hour is fun all by itself. Here at Woodstock, though, we have the added benefit of being in the mountains. Even when we're gardening, we still get fantastic views of the valley.

Overall, the kids had fun. We planted several different kids of trees and the students are now part of a long-term project that is bigger than them. These seeds will grow into seedlings that will grow into trees that will help promote returning wildlife and help keep the hillside pristine...and they got to play in the dirt.

Of course, the fruits of this labor will not be seen until most of these students have graduated, but it was still a great experience, and we were done in time for lunch.

Dave and Beth

Free Publicity

If you go to this page on the Woodstock School website, you should see someone that you know. Apparently, Dave was just crazy enough at the inter-house sports day two weeks ago to get us some free press.

Dave and Beth

Other Wildlife

One problem that we have in Mussoorie is stray dogs. When we first arrived, everyone warned us not to pet them because they probably had rabies. Lately, though, we've been seeing a lot of puppies. The other day one followed Beth up the hill from the school gate. It was very cute and Beth was quite sure that it wanted us to adopt it. Unfortunately for Puppyji (as he had been named), Dave was not quite ready for that responsibility. We heard it once the next day outside our door, but it hasn't been back since.

Periodically we have other guests in our house that are even more unwelcome. The spiders here in the Himalayas grow quite large. The one below showed up the other morning in our bedroom.

Later it, or its relative, arrived next to our couch. You can see it below next to a standard 1 liter water bottle for scale.

In order for us to be comfortable while watching TV, we needed to get rid of this giant spider. You can see the lengths that we went to in order to rid our home of this probably harmless visitor. We had to take our couch apart and it took several minutes of work, but it was worth it.

When you come and visit us here in India, we'll make sure to sweep for spiders and puppies before you get here.

Dave and Beth

Where have you been?

Since we moved to India, we've been hearing rumors of mountains to the north of us. For our first three months, all we could see was a cloudy mist with no evidence of Himalayas. The past two Sundays have been quite clear, so we've taken an early walk up to the top of the hill before church and we've actually been able to see the snow-capped mountains in the distance. Rather than bore you with commentary, we'll just let our pictures do the talking.

As you can imagine, these photographs do not do justice to the world's highest mountain range, but it is the best we could do. If you want better views, you are simply going to have to come visit us.

In addition to mountains, we also saw some langur monkeys (the nicer ones), so we thought we'd share some photos of them, as well.

It's still a little hard to believe that we can see all of this on our walk to church.

Dave and Beth

The Talents

Yesterday the staff of Woodstock School had a chance to show off their many talents to the community. Every year, there is a staff talent show and this year it was a great success. There were, of course, some faculty and staff that were truly talented. In the pictures below you can see some dance numbers and musical groups.

These all got the students really excited.

Not surprisingly, though, the most popular acts were ones which displayed very little talent at all. Below you can see our friends James and Jared discussing the enlarging machine that they have invented. The end on the skit involved Jared pushing James into the machine. Dave then emerged as a larger version of James and chased Jared off the stage.

Dave was also able to demonstrate his own musical abilities with a kazoo jam session on stage.

The final act of the show was a large Bollywood dance number involving much of the staff. This involved a group dance and several smaller dances with couples or small groups. We danced to the song Gustakh Dil Tere Liya for our piece and it was quite enjoyable. The students enjoyed seeing us make fools of ourselves on stage, and the cheering made us feel a bit like rock stars.

We are hoping that we'll be able to get a video of this wonderful performance before too long so we can show everyone when we get back to the states.

Dave and Beth

Sports Day

This past Friday, we had another interesting event here at school. Several weeks ago, we held an inter-house cross country day followed by an inter-school cross country day. Now we've had our inter-house sports day. By sports, we mean track and field events. It was a very long day, but it was pretty fun. All of the events took place at Hanson Field. This is one of the lowest spots on campus and it is also one of the few flat open spaces on the hillside. A track was marked out as well as a long jump pit, high jump pit, and shotput area. The view was also quite nice.

There are three houses in the school into which students and staff are randomly placed. We have been made Merlins (the bird, not the magician), so the students naturally asked Dave to be the middle school Merlin mascot. The result was not necessarily intimidating, but it was amusing.

He did succeed in getting the students excited to varying degrees.

Overall, the Merlins did very well. We won the competition in both the high school and the middle school. The Merlin below is also in our advisor group. We were very proud of our students (even the ones that were in other houses).

In the end, the principal gave out individual and team awards.

By the time it was all over, we didn't really feel like walking all the way back to our house and we hadn't even run any races. Thankfully, we had a full weekend to recover.

Dave and Beth

Walking to School

Since we've moved to India, we've been able to show you all pictures of our classrooms and our home. Today, we thought we'd show you a bit of what lies between. On our walk to school today, we took a picture every few steps to give you an idea of what it's like living in the foothills of the Himalayas. We feel quite blessed to live above school rather than below. It is much easier to rush down if you are running late and trudge up after a long day of school. We'll let the pictures do most of the talking here. The first picture is taken from our front door.

(The view off our terrace was a bit foggy this morning. Sorry.)

(Behind the fence in the picture above right, you can see the site of our new gym. This is supposed to be completed before the end of our contract, but we're not holding our breath.)

(In the foreground of the picture above left, you can see some evidence of the mules being used to build the gym from the previous picture. It is important to watch where you're going on the way down.)

(Straight ahead in the picture above left is the kitchen with its big exhaust vent. Above the kitchen is Beth's art room. The scooters to the left are a very popular and practical form of transportation with our narrow roads.)

(Above, the kitchen is to the left and the dining hall is straight ahead. Our path down to school takes one to the back of the main quad.)

(Only a short walk through an inside hallway and one enters the quad. The middle and elementary schools are here with the high school up another big ramp.)

(The middle school is primarily on the third floor of the quad. So after a long walk down, we need to walk back up three flights of stairs. Be sure to note the Indian directional notices on the stairs.)

The door to the right in this final picture is Beth's English room. To the left, you can see the windows of Dave's social studies room above the lockers. Hopefully you've enjoyed this little tour which we take every day. The walk back up is much less enjoyable...

Dave and Beth