Camels, Camels, and More Camels

The next stop on our tour was the city of Bikaner. This was a smaller and more relaxed urban center in Rajasthan, but it had one of our most unique experiences. To begin with, we visited the old fort that the rulers of the area used to occupy. It was really well preserved and the audio tour was quite nice.

After that, we went to the annual Bikaner Camel Festival. This was quite an experience! We were met by hundreds and hundreds of camels and camel drivers. Most were decked out in their finest.

There was an amazing parade of camels around Bikaner's municipal stadium. One of the best parts was that this event was not too touristy. The vast majority of the spectators seemed to be Indian with a few scattered Westerners. It was wonderful to see the camel beauty peagant.

There was also a contest to see who could shave the best design into their camel's wool.

We also really enjoyed the Mr Rajasthan contest that was held. I don't think that this little boy won, but it may have been a result of his attitude.

We spent a couple of hours in the hot sun, but it was definitely worth it. The only sad thing was that we had to miss the camel races that were organized for the next day because our train left too early. Oh well...maybe next year...

If you want to see more picture of these crazy camels, check out our website.

Dave and Beth

Block Printing

The second stop on our whirlwind tour of northern India was Jaipur. Again, this is a place that we've been to before, but we wanted to be sure that Emily got to experience it with us. To make us all happy, we visited a block-printing factory that we didn't have time for a year ago. Block printing is a beautiful traditional Rajasthani artform. You can buy these fabrics all over the place in Jaipur and we want to see some of it being made. It is a very labor intensive process that involves several different impressions with various patterns using different colors.

This man was a true artisan and made some beautiful pieces of fabric.

We also took a quick trip over to the palace of the winds. We saw this pink edifice from the outside when Dave's sister visited last year, but we actually had time to go inside this time.

It was a great chance to go to a place that was somewhat familiar, but see some new and interesting things. The rest of our trip to Rajasthan, though, is all uncharted territory for us.

Dave and Beth

Agra...again...

So the first trip on our travels with Beth's sister, Emily, was Agra. We arrived in Delhi and picked Emily up late before heading off to see the Taj Mahal for the third time. This first picture is about the only time that Dave left the hotel room because he got sick.

For Beth and Emily, though, the Taj was beautiful, as always. People were disregarding signs as is common practice in India, and they were able to find someone to take a picture of them.

The other mandatory stop in Agra is the great Mughal fort. Again...Dave was sick in bed, so Beth and Emily had to find someone else to take their picture in this red sandstone window.

This may have been our last visit to the Taj Mahal for a while, but it was nice to share the experience with Emily.

Dave and Beth

Hiatus

Those that read our blog may have noticed that we have had a bit of a hiatus over our winter break. The initial break came because we were busy traveling around India. After we returned to Mussoorie, it was simply a matter of laziness. We just started school today and are now back in the swing of things. The plan is to work through our backlog of blogging now that we are in working mode. We'll back-date them so that they are listed in approximately chronological order. Hopefully, we'll get caught up in the next couple of days and then start talking about our new things.

Dave and Beth

Road Trip

Well...actually we're going on a bit of a rail trip. Now that our Christmas celebrations in Mussoorie are over, we're going to be doing some traveling around the country. Beth's sister will be visiting us in a couple days and we'll spend two weeks with her. When she leaves, we will spend three more weeks traveling around southern India. It should be a great experience and we'll be sure to post lots of pictures and stories as we're able and definitely when we return after Christmas break is over. Have a happy new year!

Dave and Beth

Christmas Mountains

After our big haul on Christmas morning, we were off to the house of a friend for a potluck Christmas dinner. Most of the Woodstock staff that are still on the hillside went over to share some Christmas fellowship. We took the long way aound to their house because it brought us within view of the snow-capped Himalayas and because we wanted to wish our ayah a happy birthday and a merry Christmas (Beth baked her a birthday cake).

As you can see, the mountains looked breathtaking. We haven't posted many pictures of them of late, so we thought we'd give some here.

Even when we got up to the potluck, you could still see the mountains peaking through the trees.

But once we got to the dinner, no one really noticed the mountains because there was so much wonderful food to share.

It is always amazing how people can improvise here and make things that transport us back home to North America.

We spent a lot of time playing games and there was even a Christmas movie. On our way home, we stopped to take one last panarama from the top of our hill. It shows most of the mountains that we've seen from there. You will have to click on it to be able to see it more clearly.

Dave and Beth

Christmas Morning

We were watching closely online to see where the big guy was on the NORAD Santa Tracker last night and it seems that he found our house without much trouble. We finally opened the package that Dave's parents sent and were excited to find individually wrapped presents inside. We got cappucino mix, chocolates, books and other goodies from Santa (via the Bovens).

It was great to open these up beside the Christmas tree on Chistmas morning, but it did leave a mess.

Thankfully that mess was able to be put to good use. We threw it all into our wood stove and had a little fire to take the edge off the cold this morning. The Bovens probably didn't know what a great present that would be when they shipped it over (we burned the cardboard box, too).

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Dave and Beth

200

We were about to make a nice post about our Christmas morning, when we realized that this is our 200th post. It is amazing to look back on the experiences that we've had here in India and we hope you've enjoyed reading them as much as we've enjoyed recording them.

Dave and Beth

Midnight Mass

Since we went back to the US for Christmas last year, we weren't able to experience what the holiday was like here in Mussoorie. We just got back from the midnight Christmas Eve service at one of the local churches. First, though, we went out to dinner at a restaurant near the church.

We got there at about 9:00 but the place was still packed, because that's right about Indian supper time. It was also nice to watch a little cricket on Christmas Eve (India won the series if you didn't watch it).

After dinner we all walked over the the church to attend the midnight mass. We didn't want to turn the flash on to disturb the other worshippers, so the pictures that we took were either dark or blurry.

It was a great chance to remember the reason that we celebrate with a very international group. After the service, there was tea, coffee, and cookies and some good fellowship. Now that we're home...we're ready for bed.

Dave and Beth

Everyone Loves Parcels

We went down to school today to print out some train tickets. We thought we'd check our mailbox while we were there and found a great package from Dave's parents (our students would generally call this a parcel instead of a package).

Little did the Bovens know that this would cause some serious tension between us. Dave has had his eye on the box since it arrived, but Beth has assured him that Santa Claus would want us to wait until Christmas morning. We'll have to wait and see who wins.

Dave and Beth

Monkeys Grow on Trees

It's true, of course, that money does not grow on trees. The other day we saw a tree that was loaded down with monkeys. It's been a while since we've made a blog post about our furry friends, so we thought we'd post some images of the langurs that we saw along the path.

These little ones were playing on the big water tank near our house. The langurs have very white fur when they are young. They also enjoy playing, jumping over each other, and pushing leaves off the top of the tank.

Remember that langurs are the ones that we like more. We still get rocks ready if we see the brown rhesus monkeys around because they're a lot more aggressive. Hopefully we'll be able to enjoy walks on our days off without being accosted by mean monkeys.

Dave and Beth

One Last Party...

Though the kids have all gone back home, we couldn't leave Woodstock for the winter without one last party. Our staff banquet occurred last night and Dave was given the honor of MCing with our friend Greg.

The invitations that we received from the social committee said that it was a Christmas fiesta. It seems that they were just trying to find another word for "party," but Dave and Greg decided to give the evening a Latin American theme. Greg lived in Mexico for a year, so he new just was we needed. This, of course, included a piñata full of candy.

Aside from the other festive events that we planned, it was a great chance to have some closure for the semester.

After our last meetings this morning, we were officially done for the semester. We're definitely ready for our break!

Dave and Beth

Symbolism

As we mentioned before, school is out for winter. We now have a lot of time to sit, relax, and reflect on the things that we've found interesting over the last year and a half in India. Coming from North America, one thing that was a bit surprising about India was the prevalant use of the swastika.

The swastika is actually an ancient symbol that has been used in India for thousands of years. Today it is a symbol of harmony in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and is often found tattooed on the various Hindu deities. In the West, it is often looked at with disdain after being appropriated by the Nazi party in Germany. Here, though, we've been struck by just how mundane of a symbol it is. We've seen it embroidered on aprons, painted on temples, and even molded into bricks.

It's amazing just how much culture informs the ways that we view different things.

Dave and Beth

A Day in Our Lives

Now that our students have all left, we've got some time to do a little reflecting on our third semester here at Woodstock. One thing that we wanted to post on our blog, but haven't had time for yet, is a video made by the Development Office here. It goes throught a day in the life of Woodstock School and does a great job of showing some of the things we can't show on our blog. The video features our friends and colleagues, and Beth even has a speaking part. You can follow this link to see the video on Woodstock's American server. We hope that you enjoy a little glimpse of our lives.

Dave and Beth

Santa Breakfast

One of the great traditions in the elementary school here at Woodstock is the Santa breakfast that is held every year before the youngest students "go down" to Delhi to catch their planes around the world. Generally, the middle school staff is not invited, but we had a great connection this year that allowed Beth to get an invitation. Dave was inexplicably absent, but it was a great morning for all involved. Our connection that scored the invitation was, of course, Santa Claus himself. He did a great job of handing out presents to all the elementary schoolers.

He also posed for a picture with Beth and made sure to distribute gifts to all his hard-working elves.

It seems, though, that not all of the students were very excited to see Santa this morning.

Dave and Beth

Celebrating

Though our grades have been completed and entered since Monday, we still had one extra week of school to complete. Since there was little motivation to start anything new, much of our time this past week has been taken up by celebrations of the end of the semester. On Wednesday, we had our advisor group Christmas party. We played games,

decorated Christmas cookies,

and had some great Tibetan food.

We also made our students bring in a sock so that we could have a traditional Christmas stocking for each of them. Some of them are actually our socks, but they got the idea when they saw all the candy and presents stuffed inside.

In addition to our advisor group Christmas party, we also had a banquet with the whole of the middle school. Though he was not actually present in India any more, there was a place reserved for Dave's student teacher, Matt.

We also had a fantastic visit from Santa Claus.

He dropped off a present for everyone, though some were more appropriate than others.

We love our students, but we are definitely ready for them all to head home. We are excited for the plans that we have during this Christmas break, even if we have to stay in India.

Dave and Beth