Right to Assemble

One of our responsibilities as advisors teachers is to do one assembly each semester. This is a short devotion or presentation done twice a week for about ten minutes. Our kids this year did a quick skit and musical performance. As you can see, our skit was not necessarily of the highest quality: a couple beards fell off and none of the kids had their lines memorized, but we got the point across. The music filled in the remaining time and got the rest of the students involved.

Overall, it was a success and now we won't have to organize another performance until next semester.

Dave and Beth

Don't Mess Around With Gym

The big news this past weekend was the grand opening of Woodstock's new gymnasium. Ground was first broken on the gym more than a decade ago, but it was only last year that work started in earnest. We've been watching workmen carry the gym up the hillside piece by piece for the last 13 months and the finished product looks fantastic.

Naturally, the school couldn't just declare the gym "open." Instead, we threw a big party to celebrate this long-awaited factility. One part of the celebration was the neon yellow and brown commemorative jackets that all the staff received. Dave and Matt look quite stylish in theirs and they will definitely stand out in a crowd.

In addition to jackets, we got a new mascot. The tiger was a big hit with the elementary and middle school students.

Less of a hit with the kids were the lengthy speeches from all the special guests invited that had helped in the fund-raising. The picture below shows some of the ceremony, but also shows the great new basketball court. There is also a small miniature basketball court that can be seen above the other end in the picture. Below that is a state-of-the-art fitness room.

The new facility also has a rock climbing room, two classrooms for health classes and the like, a table tennis (but not ping pong) room, and a squash court. We;re definitely looking forward to putting this building to good use for the rest of the year.

Naturally, the ceremony was not the end of the celebration. We had a great party in the Quad after the opening with a wide selection of food. Apparently, the cooks were flown in from Bombay and brought with them some (chicken) hamburgers and hot dogs, momos, butter chicken, dosas, and loads of other stuff.

After the gastronomic celebration we were treated to a dance in the new gym complete with smoke machinces, laser light shows, and a DJ that worked with Michael Jackson.

We knew that this was going to be a big deal, but we had no idea just how big. It was a great experience and we're glad that we were here to be a part of it.

Dave and Beth

The Right Atrium's Where the Process Begins...

One of the highlights of eighth grade Science this year has been the goat heart dissection! Vinodji (Beth's lab assistant) took a little trip down to our local butcher and picked up 21 hearts for the big slicing and dicing project. The students were excited to stick their fingers through all the veins and arteries and fish out as many blood clots as possible. Beth was excited that, while there were looks of disgust from students and some borderline frightening fascinations the dissection knives, there were no cases of fainting, vomiting, or weeping! Check out those valves and chambers below... that is the stuff middle school science is made of! (That and a few frogs, snails, puppy dog tails, and maybe even sugar and spice and a few things that are nice!)

Dave and Beth

Polio Drops

A couple times in the last couple of weeks, we have come home to find odd writing in chalk on the wall of our house. We've been stretching our brains to the limit trying to figure out the meaning, and were only enlightened yesterday afternoon. Apparently it is part of an effort to keep polio from spreading to the youth of India. The polio drop ladies go from house to house giving medicine to children. They mark the wall outside the door to keep track of where they've been and what homes have children. They also set up a little station at the top of the hill the other day. You can see the silhouette of a child taking his or her polio drops on the banner below.

Dave and Beth

Mountains

As we've been saying for the last couple of weeks, the new staff this year have it easy with a really light monsoon season. When we arrived in Mussoorie it was raining and it continued for a couple months. We saw the mountains for the first time in October of last year, but saw them for the first time this year in early September. This week, we got photographic proof that this monsoon is nothing much.

Hopefully we have enough water in the plants when forest fire season rolls around during the spring.

Dave and Beth

Re-Retreat!

It's been about a year since we had our first retreat here at Woodstock. It's that time of year again, so immediately after the cross country races on Friday, we moved over to the other side of campus for a retreat with the grade 7 and 8 students. It was, as always a beautiful setting.

We spent a lot of time singing and praying and learning.

But we also spent a lot of time playing games. The checkers and Connect Four were easy to accomodate in the buildings, because we didn't have to worry about losing any of the peaces.

Frisbee, however, was another matter. We found some good spots to play:

the problems arose when one of the discs went over the edge.

It was a great weekend and an excellent chance to see our students in a different setting.

Dave and Beth

Run!

This Friday we had our annual Interhouse Cross Country race. The houses are something we have mentioned in the past on our blog. Essentially, everyone in the school is arbitrarily assigned a house (either Merlins, Condors, or Eagles). They are then encouraged to display as much chauvinist support for their house as possible. As can be seen in the picture below, our advisor group has some of each house, but we convinced them to stand next to each other long enough to get their pictures taken.

The races were fun, too.

The course is guarded by the chowkidars and the security staff of the school. This is one of their days to shine as they put on their dress uniforms and direct student runners with their flags.

Beth actually took part in the race this year and earned some points for our house. She did a great job and had lots of fun.

Dave and Beth

Blossoms, Valleys, and Critters

Anyone that reads our blog is probably tired of seeing pictures of animals, scenery and flowers. In spite of this, we're showing more here, anyway.

The last picture of this series is not, technically an animal, but it does show the evidence of one of our monsoon pests. Beth went for a hike the other day and ended up with a leech bite on her ankle. The leech latched, sucked, and dropped off before she even noticed.

Dave and Beth

The Firs

We have been the middle school coordinators for CARE for most of the time that we've been at Woodstock. Last year we were a bit too busy to put much time into it. This year we're still really busy, but we've got things figured out a little better, so we've been able to get several community and environmental service activities going for the students. Last weekend, we took a group up to the Firs--a local orphanage at the top of the hill. The walk was long, but the view across the valley was very nice.

We spent lots of time simply interacting with the boys at the orphanage. We started with "Giants, Wizards, and Elves." This is essentially rock, paper, scissors for a big group.

We then split up into groups with the younger boys working to have a paper airplane competition.

The older boys played socc...er...football.

We did do much at the Firs, but it was a great opportunity for our students to interact with the community and see how some of those less fortunate have found joy even in difficult circumstances. We're excited to go back soon.

Dave and Beth

That's Entertainment

Having been at Woodstock for a little more than a year now, we've gained some wisdom about how to keep kids entertained for a night. Each semester, we have an advisor night where we take our group (which has grown to 17 students) and do something fun with them. They just wanted to take it easy and watch a movie. We decided to add on to that itinerary with a few Boven specialties. The first key to a good night is to keep our students full of junk food. We started the night with pizza and moved from there to candy, popcorn, cookies, and soda pop.

The next step is to get everyone tired out. We staged an elaborate scavenger hunt that had students running from one end of campus to another. They also entertained themselves by playing other games.

We let the students choose their own movie from a selection. We were a bit disappointed that they didn't choose "The Incredibles," but we made it by with "Cheaper by the Dozen." We've now had our fill of Hillary Duff for an entire year.

Possibly the most important step in making this a successful evening was to employ our students in the cleanup. They did a great job of getting all the desks back in place for Beth's science classes and cleaning off the places where they had spilled pizza and pop.

It was a great change of pace for everyone and we all had a lot of fun. It was also a lot of work, so we're glad that these nights come around only once every semester.

Dave and Beth

Back in our day...

As further proof that the monsoon is not nearly as bad this year as it was last year, we saw the snow-capped mountains in the distance for the first time today. Last year, it was not until the second half of October that we saw these peaks. It is nice to not have to worry about things getting covered in mold overnight and the paths are much less slippery than they were. It just feels like the new staff this year should have to suffer the way that we did last year. We remember when we had constant dampness and we had to walk uphill both ways to school...

Dave and Beth

Coming Rain

This year, the monsoon rains have not been nearly as heavy as they were the first time around. Because of this there have been moments when it not raining. The other day, we could see the rains coming from the valley below. They hadn't quite reached Mussoorie, but they looked very beautiful in the sunlight as they came up the hillside.

Of course, our pictures do not do justice to the view that we had, but we wanted to share them anyway.

Beth and Dave

More Clean

This blog post does not have a great deal of substance. We just thought that the name of our new dish detergent was funny.

Hopefully all of our dishes will now be getting a bit more clean.

Dave and Beth