Only You Can Prevent...

We were enjoying our bible study and fellowship time on the terrace these evening when we noticed a couple of fires on the one of the hills nearby.

We are still a few weeks away from the monsoon season here, and things have been very dry in the hills. So in spite of the constant dampness of the rainy season, it is good for something.

Dave and Beth

Mela

This weekend, Woodstock School hosted its annual mela. This is a Sanskrit word that means "gathering" or "meeting." For Woodstock, it is a bit like a fair. There were stalls set up selling crafts from all over India and food from all over the world. In the middle of it all, there were several performances exhibiting the theme of rural India. These Garhwali dancers were a big hit with the crown.

Some of the elementary students also performed a short dance.

This group did a little plate-spinning in the middle of the booths selling handicrafts (which we visited a couple of times).

In addition to the performances, there were ample opportunities to sample food from around the world. There was, of course, a fine selection of Indian food. Below, Beth and Emily are trying the aloo tikki.

In addition to the Indian food, there were groups of students from all over the world hawking their own national dishes. We had our choice of Korean, Tibetan, Japanese, "American," and Thai. Dave bought some of the baikraphao that the students from Thailand were selling and convinced a fellow German football fan (who happened to be Thai) to take a picture.

This weekend was a great chance to sample things from all over India and a great chance for something different.

Dave and Beth

Bzzz!

One thing that has reminded us a bit of home here in India is our clandestine bee-keeping. Some may know that Beth and her dad had a couple hives of bees on the farm in Michigan. Shortly after arriving here, we noticed a buzz of activity where a tree was growing out of the pushta (retaining wall) above the high school. Since then, we've been tracking our own little hive. They've been thriving through the winter and now seem about ready to bust out of their hole in the wall.

We have not been foolish enough to jam our hands in the hole to retrieve the honey, but it has been fun to watch them as we think back to Beth's hive in Berrien Springs!

Dave and Beth

Basketball

This spring, we have both been involved in coaching here at Woodstock. This, of course, has added another layer of busy-ness to our lives. We've had practices every week with a couple of games each. Eventually, we'll be heading to Delhi with our teams to play at a tournament at the American Embassy School. Our warm-up games have been against other schools in Mussoorie.

Beth has been coaching the junior girls team. The schools in Mussoorie have divided the students up into sub-junior, junior, intermediate, and senior divisions. The junior division consists of seventh and eighth graders. Beth is co-coaching with our friend Christina, and their first game was here at Woodstock. Now we are very clear with our teams that the important thing is not whether you win or lose...but they won their first game, which was nice.

Dave's is coaching the junior boys and their first game was at a local school. He has imparted a great deal of basketball wisdom on his boys, but they were only able to pull off a tie in their first game.

Interestingly, both of our teams have earned one win and one tie. We each have one game left before we go to Delhi in May. We'll be sure to post pictures of our remaining basketball adventures.

Dave and Beth

Going Camping

On Thursday afternoon, we got out of school early for the start of quarter break. This is what passes for spring break here at Woodstock. Halfway through each semester, we get a four day weekend to help us recover from the quarter before. We definitely needed a break this weekend...we've been busy almost the entire time since we got back to India after Christmas. Initially, we had big plans to go on a hike to Nag Tibba—a 10,000 foot hill not to far from here. After getting home after school on Thursday, though, we decided that we didn't have enough energy for that hike. Instead, we decided to take on Flag Hill—only a 40 minute hike from our house.

We'd been to Flag Hill several times before, but wanted to get some use out of the tent that we lugged all the way to India, so we decided to camp.

Even though we were so close to home, we had a great time setting up camp and watching the sun set behind the hills. We also had a nice tasty meal of Wai-Wai (one of the local versions of ramen noodles).

We thought about bringing marshmallows to roast over our fire, but decided on hot chocolate instead.

We didn't get a lot of sleep in our tent, because a little mountain scops-owl (Otus spilocephalus) decided that he wanted to keep us company until about 2:00am. Early this morning, though, we were still able to get up to watch the sunrise over the Himalayas. It was a beautiful sight!

After about an hour admiring the mountains and the rhododendrons, we broke camp and started heading home.

Even though it was just a short trip and we didn't go very far from home, it was the first time that we've gone camping in India. It was much more relaxing than a major expedition up a mountain would have been and we even made it home in time for lunch this morning. This was a great warmup for whatever great peak we tackle next.

Dave and Beth

Chocolate Cake

So we were reading the back of our can of cocoa powder the other day and saw a nice-looking recipe for chocolate cake. We thought that we'd share it with those back home in the states in case you want to give it a try:

Mix 1 cup curd with 50 grams rawa and 1/2 teaspoon soda bicarbonate. Keep aside for 10 minutes. Beat together 100 grams daida, 200 grams icing sugar, and 50 grams mava. Add soaked rawa and curd mixture. Mix well. Add 200 grams maida, sieved with 1 teaspoon baking powder and three tablespoons Cadbury cocoa powder. Mix well. Add 1 cup milk and pour into greased cake tin. Bake at 180° for 55 minutes.

We have not yet attempted this recipe—mostly because we don't know what most of the ingredients are—but if it comes from Cadbury's, it's probably pretty tasty. Let us know if you try it...

Dave and Beth

Wilderness First Aid

Before anyone gets too worried about Dave's health, it is important to understand that we were involved in a wilderness first aid course this past weekend. It was sponsored by school and taught by instructors from the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) which is based in Wyoming. Our time was split pretty evenly between classroom sessions where we got a lot of information:

and scenarios where our classmates feigned injury in order to be treated by us. Here we are working on a patient who broke his ankle after becoming a bit inebriated. Beth is holding his head still just in case he injured his spinal column.

We also did some practice in CPR. We both took a course in this when we were at Calvin, but it was a much needed refresher. You can see our classmates listening for signs of breath in their "patients," and us in the background doing chest compressions.

It was a long weekend of time spent in the classroom, but it has made us much more confident in our ability to care for students when we are out on hikes. Hopefully we'll never have to use our new skills, but we are ready if we do!

Dave and Beth

Missed March

We are now a few days into April and we are beginning to wonder what happened to March. It has been a couple weeks since our last post on the BoveNet blog and that is mainly because we have been so busy. This was the most fully-booked month that we've had so far at Woodstock. Now that all of our grades are in for the third quarter, we have a bit of time to report on the things we've been doing. Some of the posts that we're making about events from March are dated for when they actually happened, so there may be some new posts before this that you haven't read yet. Sorry for the long delay...we'll try not to let it happen again.

Dave and Beth