Maggie, here's your cheese...

Ok, so in order to get Maggie to shut up (Hell, we all know that's not going happen but, hopefully, this will help her to stop annoying me so much.) here's a blog post. It's difficult to post blogs when I don't get home until at least 7 at night and still have things to get done. Compound that by the fact that the internet doesn't always work at my place (I'm in the staff lounge right now so don't expect any pictures today). Ok, so let's do this.


-Blog posts have become rather infrequent because little of consequence has been going on around here. Things are actually becoming 'normal.'

-Went to Syco on Friday. Not sure if it's pronounced 'sicko' or 'psycho.' It's one of Mussoorie's local dives. The food wasn't anything to get excited about but the beer was cheap. It was the first building in India that I've seen with wood paneling on the walls. Felt kinda homey.

-We just passed our six-week checkup. I used this to grade my performance as much as the students'. Overall, I think things are going OK. Grades are evenly distributed like I would expect and things are going well. I just need to work on incorporating more fun things into class. Every now and then I get the chance to. The most frustrating thing is when I come up with something that I think is going to be a lot of fun and it turns out the kids have already done it in other classes.

-Had my first experience chaperoning a high school dance last night. They had a rock show where the kids could get up and perform a song or two. It was fun but the acts weren't the greatest. I do give them a break, though, they're still in high school. It was all completely run by students (AV and everything) so there were some (i.e. a lot) of technical difficulties but the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves. I was rather disappointed by the lack of rock at the rock show. There were a few songs that would qualify (Johnny B. Good, Are you gonna be my girl?, and Don't Cry) and they were decently done so I couldn't complain. After the rock show we had a dance that lasted about 45 minutes. A lot of the kids left early to go back to dorms (to play Warcraft or get on facebook I'd assume) but those that stayed had a good time. I was actually surprised by the lack of bumping and grinding. This kids actually know how to dance properly. The evening was a tad subdued, however, when kids started getting phone calls from family telling them about a series of bombings in Delhi. A few kids were pretty distraught but the night went on. So far, I've not heard any confirmations about who did it or why.

-I also went on a hike yesterday. I went up to a place called Benog Tibba. We started at Happy Valley, the Tibetan refugee camp, and hiked down the hill, up the next one, down the other side, followed a stream for a bit, and finally hiked up to the top to Benog Tibba. There was a shrine to a local deity there and a pretty stellar view (if the clouds hadn't been there that is). It was enjoyable. I had been really wanting to get to go on a hike for about as long as I've been here and this one was just challenging enough to make it fun. I went with Darab, our local outdoorsy guy, the physics teacher, five students and a group of visiting teachers from northeast India.

-I've finally busted out the ipod Becky gave me. I've just been listening to the stuff she had on there already and am enjoying most of it. The one I've been enjoying most, so far, has been Wilco. I knew Mike and Becky are big fans but I had never gotten the opportunity to hear him.

-I've been steadily going through the comics Mike sent me. Just about finished with them. I really enjoy the Captain America ones and the ones about the Invaders. Haven't gotten much into the DC ones yet. Then again, I was always more of a Marvel fanboy. They just have more interesting characters. Send more.

-That reminds me, I've been thinking about a new activity for my exploratory block. Right now I'm helping another teacher with first aid which is all fine and dandy but kinda boring. I was thinking about doing one of two things since my campfire skits and songs went belly up. 1) A comic book appreciation group. I'm not sure exactly where I'd go with this one. Obviously we would read comics and I would like them to get into some more substantial ones like Maus or Watchmen. Something we could derive something from. Maybe reading Understanding Comics wouldn't be such a bad idea either. The only problem would be to get copies of all these books at a reasonable price. Any ideas where I could go with this one? The other one was 2) a cult films group. There's already a classic films group that watches stuff like The Sound of Music but I was thinking of something along the lines of Eraserhead or Freaks. The only thing, though, would be that I couldn't get anything too crazy or heinous being at a Christian high school and all.

So that's about it. When I get around to it, one day I'll get some more pictures uploaded.