Thankful

Last year at this time, we were visiting our friends in Germany during American Thanksgiving. On that trip, we had been the bearers of many great gifts--canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce, etc.--that could not be found in German supermarkets. This year, we decided to host an Thanksgiving dinner at our house for some of our friends. We couldn't find a lot of the staples, but we did the best we could!
The first problem with having Thanksgiving in India is that one cannot find turkeys. We made do with a couple of small chickens. Beth is carrying the one that Umilla made to the table so that everyone could dig in.

Overall, we had a very nice spread. There were green beans, corn, bread, rolls, pomegranates, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetables, fruit salad, and plenty of juice and soda pop to drink. Everyone appeared to enjoy themselves and they all seemed very thankful. We even had a couple of Brits and Canadians at our extravaganza.

Dave made a couple of trips to the table and built himself a few nice platefuls of food.

Of course, after the main meal we went right to dessert. Again, everyone needed to improvise a little, but it was wonderful. We had pumpkin pie, apple pie, shortbread, cookies, Nanaimo bars (one of the benefits of inviting Canadians), apple crumble, ice cream, and caramel. As we were eating dessert, we even switched the background music to Christmas songs to officially mark the beginning of the new season.

This was a very successful celebration. We were able to get a little taste of home, though that makes us look forward to Christmas all the more.

Dave and Beth

MUN

As the middle school social studies teacher, one of Dave's responsibilities is to help organize the Woodstock Model United Nations (WSMUN). This promises to be a great learning experience for the students here. The one problem is, of course, that while teaching in the US and Germany Dave had never organized, participated in, or even seen an MUN conference. This shortcoming was corrected this weekend. Dave left for Delhi on Friday after school with ten ninth grade students and another chaperone. They went to the capital to participate in the Delhi Public School Model United Nations (DPSMUN). This was a very large affair with more than 120 schools and almost a thousand delegates.

Dave spent most of his time observing to get an idea of how an MUN conference is run. The process was quite fun to watch. In the evenings, the conference participants were taken by bus to some of the tourist sites in Delhi. Arguably the best part of the weekend for Dave, though, was the trip to Pizza Hut before taking the night train back to Mussoorie. We don't have any pictures of this weekend yet because Dave left the camera at home. If we can get some from other conference participants, we will be sure to post them.

Dave and Beth

Have a Nice Wisit

The other day, we were looking through the blog of our friend Andrzej Plonka. He is a new teacher at Woodstock this year, as well. We met him on our flight from Chicago to Delhi while we were waiting for our layover in London. He hails from the north side of the Windy City, but we try not to hold that against him. Anyway, we were reading his blog and noticed a wonderful picture which we felt compelled to steal.

It illustrates something that most Indians do when they talk. We don't really understand the reasoning. Hindi does not seem to have a 'w' sound, but it definitely has a 'v' sound. Rather than simply using a 'v' sound when saying an English word that has a 'w' in it, most Indians that we've met switch the two around. So "You are very welcome," becomes "You are wery velcome." Thanks for wisiting our blog!

Dave and Beth

Genuine Animal Milk

We made a very interesting discovery over the course of our activity week earlier this month. We were talking with the other sixth grade advisor teachers about all things Indian and they noted that don't like the way that cow's milk tastes. They said they like milk here much better. We both looked at each other and thought, "What have we been pouring on our corn flakes?"

If you look closely at the carton, you will see the answer. Apparently, most of the milk sold commercially in India is buffalo milk.You can get cow's milk from local guys, but we've been told that they add water to it. We'll just stick with the buffalo, even if it tastes a little funny.

Dave and Beth

Flag Hill

Beth and our friend Emily Hatch went on an early Saturday morning hike to nearby Flag Hill. It was a spectacular clear morning, with great views of the snows!

The spot is known as Flag Hill for obvious reasons. There are Buddhist prayer flags draped all over the hillside. It's only about an hour's walk away from our house and it's a great quiet spot to camp or hike.

From the top of the hill, we had a great view of the Garhwal Himalayas. We think the highest peak on the right in the picture below is called Bandarpunch and it's over 20,000 feet high--take that Pike's Peak! Now that we've conquered Flag Hill, Bandarpunch might be the next summit that we cross off the list... we'll keep you updated on our progress!



Dave and Beth

Bandh

After a week off from regular teaching duty for Activity Week, we thought we were in store for a normal week. It turns out that the BJP called a bandh for the day, so we got to come home this afternoon. Now, our readers are probably as unfamiliar with these terms as we were this morning. The BJP is the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party). This is a political party that used to control the government, but is now in the opposition. A bandh is something like a general strike called to protest something. In this case, the youth wing of the BJP called the bandh to protest recent bombings in the Indian state of Assam in the north east (far from Mussoorie).

The calling of the bandh was a completely political move designed to get people to vote for the BJP in the next election, and Woodstock was certainly not required to honor it. The school talked to our local magistrate, though, and decided that we probably should. Apparently the BJP youth wing has a large presence in Mussoorie and if they had found out we were having school, they may have come up and tried to vandalize us or something. So after first period, we sent all the students down to the dorms for the rest of the day. We went home and played board games all afternoon with our friends, the Hatches. Perhaps next week we will finally have a "normal" schedule for five days in a row.

Dave and Beth

Happy Pepero Day

In much of the world, 11 November is set aside to commemorate the sacrifice of citizens in the arms forces. We have Veterans Day in the United States, they celebrate Remembrance Day in the UK and the Commonwealth, and Armistace Day in some continental European countries. There are even some nations that celebrate their independence days on 11 November (Poland and Angola). Today, though, we were wished a Happy Pepero (빼빼로) Day by some of our Korean students. Being a social studies teacher, Dave was a bit embarrassed because he had not heard of this great national holiday. After a bit of research we learned that Pepero is a Korean snack made of a cookie stick dipped in chocolate. Korean kids give these two each other on 11 November because they look like ones (11/11/08).

This day is not unlike our Valentine's Day so it wasn't a great social blunder to forget about it. Some of our Korean students gave us each a pack to share with each other. It may be a holiday that was invented by a snack food company, but we won't pass up free chocolate.

Dave and Beth

Activity Week (4)

The final full day of our Activity Week saw us white water rafting on the Ganges River. It was only a short car ride from our camp to the point where we got in the water.

As we were coasting along the water, we saw monkeys coming down to shore to have a bath and a drink of water. In addition to this, the Ganges is a holy place for Hindus. In fact, good Hindus do their best to be sure that their ashes are immersed in the River after they die. These facts and the general condition of water here in India made us a little timid about getting in the river.

In spite of all this, we still took several dips. Hopefully we didn't swallow too much water as we were splashing about. It was quite an adventure getting Dave out of the water, but we didn't snap any pictures. You can probably imagine how difficult it was by looking at the process performed on a sixth grader.

This first day of rafting brought us right into the center of Rishikesh. We floated under the two big pedestrian suspension bridges in town and saw lots of distinctive buildings on both sides of the river.

We had a lot of fun racing the rafts, splashing each other with our paddles, and jumping from raft to raft. Since our students were only 11 or 12 years old, we did not attempt any very difficult rapids on our trip. It was pretty tame and gave us time to try balancing on the sides and other fun activities. The guides were really good at keeping us busy between the rapid sections of the river.

The kids seemed to have a good time in and out of the water.

We were even able to see the temple complex where we had watched the aarti ceremony a couple of nights earlier.

After rafting, we made out way back to Camp Panther. The early afternoon was spent relaxing, or playing sports, or swimming in the pool. Mostly, it was just a chance to rest up for a couple of hours. After tea, we all headed over to the camp's climbing wall. It was about 28 feet tall and looked pretty imposing from down below.

Just about all of our students at least attempted to climb the wall. Some made it very close to the top and three of them actually made it all the way. The first two that made the summit were girls. This put a lot of pressure on the last sixth grade boy to try, but he made it up to the top in record time to safe face for his fellow guys.

All of the staff members gave it a try as well. This was the first time that Beth had been on a climbing wall since her fall in Germany. It was almost three years to the day after she broke her back in that climbing gym, but she was a trooper and gave it a shot. None of us staff members made it to the top, but we all had a good time.

As we said, this was our last full day of activities. The following morning, we did a second round of rafting. We didn't take our camera with us, but it probably looked quite similar. The rapids this second day were a bit rougher and we didn't go all the way into Rishikesh, but it was still very fun.

After lunch, we loaded back into the bus and made the trip back to Mussoorie. The students were generally disappointed that the week was over and they had to go back to dorms. We, and the other chaperones, seemed a little relieved that we got to get back to our own beds and relax for a couple of days before school started again on Monday. It was a great experience, and we're looking forward to the new adventures that we get to have during next year's activity week.

Dave and Beth

Activity Week (3)

The following morning, we packed our bags because we were leaving Camp Bear Stream. We had plans to drive to another area for a short hike to a temple and then to another camp where we would do some bike riding. After the cycling, we were to head to Camp Panther, where we would be spending our final two nights. The drive to our temple hike was a bit wild. The last half-hour was on a poorly-paved jungle "road." Most of us were in a bus, so the ride was very bumpy. Beth was in the back and nearly hit her head on the ceiling a few times. In the end, we stopped near the stream pictured below. If you look closely, you can see our bus and the two jeeps that we took.

To get to the temple, we had to walk through the stream. We were all prepared with our sandals and had our pants rolled up to our knees.

Eventually, we made it to the top of the hill and the temple. It was quite small, but we got a nice explanation from the resident priest of the goddess that was being honored. We spent some time walking around and looking across the valley. We even saw a mountain goat or two in the distance. Apparently, there are seven temples in a row in these hills each dedicated to a different deity. Every April, devout Hindus make a pilgrimage walking to all seven to honor the gods.


After we left the temple, we made our way back through the stream to the bus. We gave the students some time to play in the stream. Some had fun splashing around in the water while others made a game of collecting as many frogs or crabs as they could. Hopefully, all of these prisoners were released before the bus pulled away.

The next stop was Camp Tusker for a couple hours of cycling. This was one of our favorite parts of the week. We do not have bikes in Chicago, so we don't get a chance to ride very often. It was great to zip around the paths looking for birds, elephants, and other wildlife. We ended at another small stream where elephants are known to get their water, but there were none there when we stopped. We did see some leopard footprints in the sand, though. We didn't take our camera along with us on the bike-riding trip because we didn't want to risk a fall along the way. We both made it through safely, but you'll just have to imagine what it was like.

Our final stop for the day was going to be our home for the next two nights. It's hard to believe, but Camp Panther was even nicer than our last camp. Here we got a nightly visit from a staff member to turn down our beds and put a mint on our pillows.

You can see that we even had a fan in our "tent" in case it got too hot for us. It didn't, but it was nice to know that it was there.

Dave and Beth

Activity Week (2)

After our first night of sleeping at Camp Bear Stream (in our warm cots) we woke up to students that had a lot of energy. Our plan was to rouse them out of bed at 7:00, but most of them were up and about by 6:30. We used some of that energy to play some sports--football, badminton, cricket, rugby, etc.

We also had a chance to do some birdwatching. We can't remember what all of these pictures show, but we saw kingfishers, peafowl, white-tipped water red stars, crested Himalayan bulbuls, and several others. Beth remembered to bring our binoculars and the students had a fun time running around looking at the different birds.


After breakfast we went on our big hike for the week. We rode on the bus for about 20 minutes to the trailhead and then spent a good bit of time walking up a hill. The camp's naturalist came along with us to point out different things of interest. He pointed out different spiders and their webs, evidence of leopards nearby, catepillar eggs wrapped in leaves, and some edible plants.

At the top of our hike, we had some very nice views of the गंगा (Ganges) valley. This, however, was not the highlight of our trek that day.

Slightly below the highest point on the hike, we came to a roaring waterfall. The last little rise to the falls were a little slippery, so our guides set up a small rope to guide us up.

The students and staff came prepared to the waterfall. We were told to bring sandals, a towel, and a change of clothes. As you can see, everyone had a great time playing in the water. It was quite a cold shower, but it was a lot of fun.

We even got most of the members of our advisor group to stand still long enough for a quick photograph. Dave has his mouth open because he's gasping for air from the cold water. Hopefully he didn't swallow too much in the process.

After we made our way back to camp to shower and dry off, we had some lunch and then got back on the bus. We were off to Rishikesh to attend a traditional aarti ceremony. Rishikesh has two pedestrian suspension bridges. We were dropped off at one of them and walked through town to a temple just past the other. One thing that struck us in Rishikesh was the number of white people that we saw. This is much more of a foreign tourist destination than Mussoorie, so it's understandable. But many of these people looked like they lived and studied in Rishikesh. For those of you that may have been born to late to remember, this was the sight of the ashram of the Maharishi that the Beatles came to visit for a few months. It is now the center of hippie culture in India and a number one stop for those seeking enlightenment, yoga training, and illicit drugs.

We simply came to get some Indian culture. The aarti is a Hindu ritual that involves singing a lot of songs and lighting a lot of fires. We were not given a lot of background information before going, but we did know that they were supposed to light hundreds of lanterns and lay them into the Ganges. We mostly just sat back and watched as different people sang and lit things on fire.



In the end, we left before most of the lanterns were lit in the river. We only saw two, but it was still a great cultural experience for us and the students.

When the ceremony was done, we had to work our way back to the bus. We made it successfully with all 29 students. We drove back to the camp and went to bed for the second night on our comfy, warm cots. Not a bad day at all.

Dave and Beth

Activity Week (1)

It's been several days since the last time we posted anything on our blog. The main reason is that we have been out of town for Activity Week. This is a chance for students to get off campus for a week and do some learning outside of school. We accompanied the sixth grade class to the Rishikesh area to do some "camping" and adventure sports activities. We started on Monday morning at 10:30. This allowed our students to sleep in so they were prepared for their 4 hour bus journey. Luckily, we were able to stop for lunch along the way.

We finally made it to our first camp. It was named the Himalayan Bear Stream camp for obvious reasons. You may have noticed the quotation marks used above around the word camping. The term was used very loosely during this activity week. The natural setting was very beautiful, but the tents were a bit too comfortable to truly be called camping.

Each of the tents had cots in it that were fairly comfortable. We also had a bathroom attached to the tent. There was a western style toilet, a sink, and a shower for each of us. They even provided soap, bedding, and towels for us.

When we arrived at the camp, we took a few minutes to unpack and then went for a short hike. We had to cross the stream and climb up the hill on the other side to get to a small village.

As you can see from the picture below, the residents of the village came out to see what this group of 30 kids was all about. The cows also seemed quite interested in us.

When we got back to the camp, we had a very nice dinner of pasta. Again, we were definitely not roughing it, but it was a nice meal after a long day of traveling.

We also played some games and sports to pass the time before the staff at the camp set up a "merry campfire" for us.

Overall, it was a wonderful start to activity week. As we work our way through the pictures and videos that we took, we will add some more updates about our other activities from this past week.

Dave and Beth