Leaving

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my Activity Week. At 9 in the morning I will leave with 17 kids and three other adults to go to one of the local villages. I say local but it's still a three hour taxi ride to get there. You go down the hill and up the next. Oddly enough, you feel so far away but you can still see lights of Mussoorie by night.

Activity week is a bit of a Woodstock tradition (one of these 'intangibles' I keep hearing about). For one week in the second quarter school stops and the trips begin. The littlest ones go into the bazaar and learn about the people who help us. Others learn the history of Mussoorie and then there are rafting trips, hikes into the mountains, village trips, meetings with the Dalai Lama, Habitat for Humanity groups in Delhi and others. Overall, it's a nice break from traditional school work and a chance to see a new side to India. For the second year now I'm going to a village. I guess you could say I'm a little disappointed because both years now I've said I'd like to hike. This year is different though. I'm actually in charge of the trip this year (though I can't say I've really organised anything or done much of anything at all for it; we have people here that do it) plus I'm going to a new village. It will be nice to see what this other village is like.

So don't be surprised if there aren't any new posts for the week (ha, you're probably more surprised by the fact that I am posting one anyway!). To help you satiate your thirsts for all things me here's a couple of things:

1- It was recently Mole Day (if you don't know, look it up... heathen). The other chemistry teacher and I got up in assembly to tell some jokes and light money on fire. More on that if I ever find pictures of it.

2- World Woodstock Day recently took place as well. You can check out a video of a day in the life of the school here.

3- I've been working on a new song on my accordion. It's coming along nicely. Still need to work out the bass/chord buttons but, you know, it's coming along.

New Quarter

For a teacher, the new quarter means only one thing... new seating charts.

I thoroughly enjoyed my break, spending the long weekend relaxing up on the hillside. There were movie nights, tavern nights, and health centre nights. I was cutting up some onions to make homemade pasta sauce when I hit a rather dense centre. The next thing I know, the blade slips and instead of shedding tears I'm shedding blood. Good thing my father taught me the virtues of using sharp knives. I can't be certain but I think I might have hit bone. I can't imagine the shape my thumb would be in now had the blade been dull and rather than slice through my muscle it tore it apart. Anywho, I couldn't staunch the bleeding myself so I made the trip down to school and the nurse on duty cleaned me up and wrapped my thumb in enough gauze to make me look like the barnyard dog's after it gets hit with a hammer by ol' Foghorn Leghorn.

Yeah, about like that.

Not to worry, the thumb's fine now. Had to get a tetanus shot though. My arm was killing me for about 2.5 weeks.

Anywho, this quarter's only just begun and we've already been thrown into pandemonium. We took the first Friday of the quarter off for our inter-house sports day. It was a rather uneventful day. The entire middle and high schools go down to watch (not necessarily cheer on) students from our three houses; the eagles, merlins, and condors; as they compete in track and field events. I was not terribly interested in watching kids shot put all day so I brought a copy of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time with me and read about black holes and why they're not quite so black. Well, the highlight of the day (for me at least) was the staff relay. I got talked into running for my house (merlins) on one of our three (guys') teams. I hounded my students for a pair of running shorts and track spikes. When I finally found some I found that I was last to run for my team which means I get all the glory when I cross the finish line fifth out of sixth. As I got the baton the only person still running was our principal so I gave it my all and passed him as we were nearing the finish line.

Oh sweet, sweet glory.

The entire Merlins running crew. Four teams in all.

By the way, if you, like me, have been wondering what the hell a merlin is, I can tell you. It is a pigeon hawk. Thank you wikipedia!

There wasn't much celebration afterward. Merlins came in last and points apparently got tallied wrong so everyone was confused. I trudged my way from the lowest point on campus up to the highest and had some dinner and friend's birthday cake before turning in for a well deserved rest.

Last week was crazy with suddenly shortened school days, days cut out to go to the inter-school sports day, days put back in and not going to the sports day, etc etc. It was interesting to say the least. Saturday, however, truly was. For those of you not up on your Hindu festivals and holidays (and I think there's been about four since Saturday) this past weekend was Diwali. I don't think I mentioned Diwali last year as I didn't really do much for it. This year, though, I went into the bazaar with some friends to see the colours and everything and then went down to the dorms to watch fireworks. I don't know what to really say about it. We were only a few metres away as they set them off and were getting pelted with bits of firecrackers. At one point one fell short and bounced off the roof of one of the dorms. One fell and exploded on the ground. Another exploded quite low, just above the students. It's very interesting to see how much more lax India is about public health and safety in situations like this. Well, I'll let the pictures say the rest.

A local family celebrating Diwali in the traditional style.

Firework tube fort.

This guy followed me up the ramp to my place. He's my neighbor's dog and is the only thing that has been consistent with my Diwali experience. Last year he followed me down to another friend's place and kept running around like a idiot. He's not the brightest of dogs on the hillside.

So, what else have I been up to? Well, a few things. I spent a good portion of my quarter break looking up schools to apply to. I've found a few in Hong Kong, Korea, Istanbul, Beograd, Romania, Greece, Germany, Croatia and a few other places. I have a meeting about extending my contract later this week so I'll see how that goes and I'll have to make a decision by the end of the semester. If you know of any schools in those areas (Hong Kong, Korea, or eastern Europe) in need of a chemistry teacher, let me know and I'll check them out. I have also been reading a lot of comics now thanks to big brother Mike. I hadn't read one really since I was ten or so. In college I had picked up a few of the Marvel Essentials books and enjoyed them but Mike was really the catalyst that got me into them. I plow through the box fulls he sends and have worked through others as well. Most recently I completed the first four books of Sin City (the last three are on their way), The Tick, Usagi Yojimbo 1, Cerebus 1 and am currently reading SCUD: the Disposable Assassin. No real complaints. They were all good reads. Usagi was a bit short but the collection comes from before it got its own monthly book so the stories had to be truncated a bit. I'm hoping that wherever I end up next pays well for shipping because I'd hate to have to leave any of these books behind. Maybe I'll just stay on the hillside, become a chemistry tutor and make comics full time.


Ha