Flowers Flourish

After our look at animals the other day, we thought we'd share some of the spring flowers we've seen the last few days. Most of these come from our class night last weekend.

Dave and Beth

Hail!

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been beset by hail storms here in Mussoorie. We have not yet entered the monsoon season, but the storms coming up the hillside have been very thundery and lightningy. It has also hailed about ten times in the past two weeks. We took some pictures of the storm tonight.

It's not huge hail, but it stings if it hits you.

The video probably gives best idea of how difficult it is to teach during such a storm.

Luckily, we're usually safe inside when the storms start.

The most recent storm actually covered the ground so that it looked like snow.

At least now it rains and hails for a few minutes and then stops. In a few weeks, we'll be back to the permanent drizzle of the monsoon.

Dave and Beth

Animals Abound

We just thought we'd post a few pictures of the animals that we've been seeing lately. The first is a bird that was fluttering around our terrace. The second is a butterfly we found at class night. The monkey in the third picture was sitting calmly on our roof one day. And the tadpole was also from class night--the result of much hunting on the part of sixth graders.

Dave and Beth

Class Night

This weekend, we had our quarterly class night. This time, we took all of the sixth graders to a local resorty area where they were able to swim and go for walks and relax. The place was beautifully set in the woods.

The highlight of the evening was probably the swimming. The water was a little on the cold side, so the kids were tentative about diving right in. Once they were fully submerged, they had a great time.

After some time spent swimming, many of the students started a massive tadpole hunt. There was a little stream that went through the area and it was full of tadpoles

Dave even rolled up his trousers and got involved, though he was a bit too slow to catch any.

Following a long walk in the stream and the collection of an entire bucket full of future-frogs, we were treated to a great dinner of "hot dogs" and french fries.

The kids enjoyed being away from school for a few ours. It was a great way to relax as things are getting busier and busier around here for the last few weeks of school.

Dave and Beth

New Baby Nephew!

Most of the people that read this blog regularly will have already heard this news, but we are excited to share it! We have just become an aunt and uncle. Dave's brother and his wife, Mike and Amy, have just had a baby boy. This is our new nephew, James Robert Boven:

He was born yesterday evening, but it was actually this morning in India, so we'll probably have to get him two sets of presents every year. Anyway, here is the happy family shortly after little Jim Bob was born!

We are definitely looking forward to visiting Jimmy (and Mike and Amy) over the summer.

Chacha and Chachi (Uncle Dave and Aunt Beth)

Playground

Before the campout with our advisor group last week Saturday, Dave spent some time on the playground with our students. It is very clear now that a see-saw won't work when Dave tries to use it with a sixth-grader!

Dave eventually let the kids play with someone their own sizes and contented himself with the swing set.

It was a good way to tire the kids out before our campout. It's always easier to sleep in the woods if you're extra tired. And it was fun!

Dave and Beth

More Basketball

One thing that our students have been looking forward to immensely is the basketball tournament at the American Embassy School (AES) in Delhi. Dave has been the coach of the junior boys basketball team and Beth has been coaching the junior girls with our friend Christina. We've been excited about the trip, too, but were worried about how tired we'd be as a result. The trip started last Thursday at about lunch time. We left school on a big bus that took us all the way to Delhi. The trip was about 10 hours and was not terribly comfortable, but it was nice to take the same vehicle from door to door.

At least our teams were quiet as they traveled on the bus!

We ended up staying at AES in a couple of dance studios in the gym. We played three games against the three other teams in the torunament over the course of two days. Dave imparted some great words of wisdom on his boys and they played a little better every game, but they were only able to pull out a fourth place finish (you can do the math).

Beth must have given some even better words of wisdom to her girls because they were able to win two of their three games and pulled out a second-place finish.

Perhaps the secret to Beth and Christina's success was their more calm attitude during the game. Dave had a tendency to get very animated when his team was playing.

One of the great things about Delhi is the proximity to different food. AES served us great breakfasts all of the days we were there (and a couple of lunches and dinners, too).

We also spent some time at a local shopping mall and tourist market. The kids enjoyed Subway, Donut Master, McDonald's, and Dominoes. We took advantage of these opportunities, too.

We left Delhi early Sunday morning and got back to Mussoorie at about 3:00 in the afternoon. It was a great trip and a wonderful experience, but we were tired. It was tough going back to school the next day, but we had a lot of fun!

Dave and Beth

We're Going Camping Now...

We've been wanting to do something special with our advisor group for a while. Even though all of the middle school students had required hikes on Saturday morning, we decided to go for a campout on Saturday night. After we walked to the outdoor education center on campus to pick up tents and sleeping pads, we made our way to the campsite. Dave helped the boys set up their tents.

Beth helped the girls stake in their tents.

In the end, we had a pretty nice camp set up.

After getting everything organized with our tents, we walked with the kids over to Char Dukan to get some dinner. Most of them ordered a soda pop and a bowl of Wai Wai (Indian ramen noodles) and some split a plate of french fries. For them, it was a nice break from their routine of dorm food.

After dinner, we decided to have a nice bonfire. Because the forest was still a bit dry, we thought it would be best to avoid having a fire in the woods. We brought the kids back to our terrace and built a little bonfire safely away from the threat.

After a the fire, we went back to the campsite and the kids went to sleep pretty quickly. It had been a long day and they were pretty tired. They woke up much earlier than they usually did, but they were happy to have had a different experience than the usual.

It is always nice to treat our advisor group to something special!

Dave and Beth

Kaplani School

On our hike last Saturday, we were able to visit the students at a school in one of the local villages. Since we are both teachers, we enjoyed seeing the dedication of these students this school is run by a local NGO and the students were here to get extra lessons on Saturday morning. They don't have all the nice facilities that we have at Woodstock, but they make up for those things in the effort that they and their teachers put in.


Hopefully, seeing the schools of these students helps our own students to understand the blessings that they have in life.

Dave and Beth