Mangos

Welcome to my favorite season in South India: mango season! I'm planning to spend my day being completely unproductive, eating my weight in mangos, and reading a book. Lesson planning can happen tomorrow.

Half Way

Last Monday was the half way point for my time here in India. I cannot believe that I have already been here more than two months and have less than two months to go. Being in India has stopped feeling like a vacation and has started to feel like home. It is finally setting in that this is where I live.

While there are things about India that I find frustrating or exhausting, as a whole this has been an amazing experience. I am learning so much about myself as a person and an educator. I am learning how to do more with less and ways to be creative with my resources. I have revised my idea of what it means to be culturally sensitive and am incorporating that into my teaching style, I believe for the best. I am also being forced to recognize my perspective as only one of many, and not always the best or most appropriate for the situation.

In my time here I have been exposed to a truly global community, full of amazingly talented people from all over the world who talk casually about the myriad places they have lived and languages they speak. I am learning that for this community, taking a job in Tanzania is as natural as taking a job in Frenchtown, MT. I have also learned what it is to be the minority. This has its positive and negative facets.

I hope you will forgive this anomalous post because I wanted to give you all a peek into how much living abroad has opened my eyes to other ways of seeing the world. I thought that living in India would teach me about other cultures and religions. I even anticipated the staggering poverty. What I didn't realize was how much working in an international school would impact my experience as a whole. The lessons I have learned and the experiences I have had so far have been staggering. I can only guess what the next two months will be like. 

Last Week and This Week

Last week was such a big week that I didn't get a chance to report on all of it at once. So after Mumbai and everything else, we also had Field Day for the high school! White house, orange house and blue house battled it out for domination while participating in all kinds of track events. White house ultimately took the crown but we all had a good time and then concluded the two day event with biryani lunch on the field.

I even got to take part, joining in the staff and alumni 100 meter relay. My team lost but we did it in style. The 100 meter dash is not my event. I kept joking that this is the fastest I have had to run in a decade, and its probably true.

 

Staying out of the sun:

Score board (These are not the final scores. White wins!)

I'm biased toward the running events:

Biryani lunch around the track:

This is what a biryani lunch looks like (Sorry I didn't think to take the picture until I had already started digging in. Watching other people work out makes you hungry.)

This week we had prom for grades 11 and 12. At the last minute I was asked to cover chaperoning duties for a teacher that needed to go out of town for the weekend. It was fun to see the kids all dressed up and as part of the deal I got to have dinner at the nice hotel in town. So it wasn't really a hardship.

Prom night here consists of dinner at the Carlton Hotel, then the dance, then a movie. Its a bit different at a residential school because all of the kids have a fun night and then you deposit them back at their dorms. This keeps the debauchery to a minimum and eliminates many of the potential issues that occur on prom night back home in the states. All in all it was a very easy chaperoning job, with the biggest rules to enforce being dress code.

Crowning the king and queen:

Chaperones:

The go-to dance move is to jump up and down with your arms in the air:

All in all a hugely busy couple of weeks but a lot of fun. 

Surprise Mumbai Trip!

Last week got eventful, fast. I had known that a group from Kodaikanal International School would be venturing to Mumbai on March 4 for the National Science Festival held at NES International School there. What I did not know is that they were short a female chaperon. Last Monday I was asked if I would be willing to go and after a whirlwind of planning, plane ticket buying, and packing, we left Tuesday morning with seven excited students. Below you will find some of the highlight pictures from the trip. 

In case you aren't familiar with India geography, here is Mumbai marked on the Google Map:

Flying in over the Indian Ocean:

Some images from the National Science Festival. The school was very fancy and the even included a cultural program as well as traditional sand paintings:

Our students are all winners (cheesy I know) but these guys won the awards to prove it:

Then the principal from NES International School was so pleased that we had come all the way from Kodai that he set us up with a guided tour of Mumbai. We first visited the Taj Mahal Hotel, which was the site of the 2008 terrorist attack:

The hotel is gorgeous and right on the water. Here is our group photo:

Some incredibly colorful horse carriages:

The Gateway of India:

The Regal Cinema is the oldest cinema in Mumbai. This is a big deal because Mumbai is the home of Bollywood (Mumbai is basically the Hollywood, CA of the East):

The Institute of Science (this is the back door but we couldn't get through the gates to go to the front door):

Street scene. A chappal (sandal) seller:

Next we went to the beach! Here are my feet in the Arabian Sea/ Indian Ocean for the first time:

Pani puri from a food vendor on the beach. A unique and tasty culinary experience:

Haji Ali Mosque is completely surrounded by water:

Night time at the market. All of the colors laid out for Holi:

Eating Punjabi sweets on the plane on the way home:

Kodai Rain

In India they take the saying "when it rains, it pours" quite literally.

Lately it has rained every day beginning in the afternoon or evening. This has been very welcome given that Kodai is prone to droughts and the town's water often runs out in the dry months.