About a month's worth of pictures

Ok, so it has been a while since there was a substantial blog post. Give me a break. I'm on my first job, we're just wrapping up the quarter and I have better things to do than attend to the every little of people half a world away. You know there was a reason I moved so far away.


Ok, so this week I spent most of my time writing comments. We have to write a substantial, at least three line comment about each kid. That would be great if I knew all my kids yet. Granted, I know most of them but some of the Koreans I just can't get. Hopefully by the end of the year.

What else have I done? I'm getting boots cobbled. I got two new pants made. These ones are even more swank than the others. The button on the fly has Mickey Mouse on them. Awesome.

Things are getting colder and colder around here. Monsoon came back this week too. It rained for about 30 hours from Wednesday to Thursday and it still comes and goes. I busted out the sweaters this week. Went to the local watering hole last night wearing a cardigan and one of the older staff members that came with us told me he thought I was 30 or 35 this entire time. I just felt distinguished, like an intellectual.

So anywho, what you really want is pictures.

Some of my advisees over at my place for some dinner and games. "Oh, Mr J, (They call me Mr J) you're so full of shenanigans!"

The other half of my advisor group.

Playing charades, can you guess who?

More of the bazaar.

One of the numerous textile shops. This isn't the one I go to though.

Some playground/hangout place. No one can tell me who the bust is of there in the center (centre?).

The hillside from the middle of the bazaar.

Clocktower. Thusly named because there is a clocktower there.

Ram Chander, my grocer.

Fruit carts out in the street. The guy gave me a really dirty look for taking his picture.

The Woodstockmobile.

Just a couple of chums playing cards.

Birthday dinner at the Tavern.

The other half of the party. The guy in pink is Prakash. He's the second biggest metrosexual I know. Can you guess the first?

Birthday libations. Indian vodka tastes like CH3CH2CH2OH.
(For reference, the stuff you're supposed to drink is CH3CH2OH.)

Dinner. The stuffed chicken sizzler! Sounds kind of like an amusement park ride.

Hockey game. These kids were running around trying to scare people with the mask. This guy put them in their place.

The WS boys' teams waiting to play. We had three guys' teams and three girls'. I think they won one game all day between the six of them. Granted, they only formed the teams three days before.

Spectators.

The temple next to the hockey rink.

The statue in front of the temple.

Inner school cross country. The kids in front of Kellogg Church. My house (the Merlins) won the day's events.

Cheering on the runners as they pass by.

Staff being boring and waiting around for someone to break their leg or get run over by a car. We ran in the streets and had no way to stop traffic so it was a real danger.

I've been skyping beautiful, young women and men with large proboscides.

The group of kids and visiting teachers we took on a hike up to Benog Tibba last weekend.

Pics of the old pump house. How the hell they got these huge things down the mountain is beyond me. There's people living here now.

Taking a break part way through the day at the wheelhouse. The guy puffing out his chest on the left is Darab, our outdoors guru.

Break time by a valley stream.

The hike's final destination. There's a shrine at the top of Benog Tibba.

A kind of natural shrine just below the real shrine.

Darab and Niranjan (the physics teacher) walking up to the shrine.

You're supposed to ring this bell to help drive away evil spirits. Darab was telling me how there has been studies that show the vibrations actually kill some harmful micro-organisms.

The visiting teachers perched on the observation tower. It was foggy as all get out so there wasn't a darned thing to see.

Grubby Caterpillar.

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.

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