Activity Week

So, this past week was what Woodstock calls Activity Week. I was going to briefly write about each day but I was focusing too much on the negatives of the week so I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures and hope you figure it out. Enjoy rural, northern India.

























On another note. Not to worry anyone or anything like that but while we were out in the villages apparently some threats were made on Woodstock and some other schools in India and Denmark by some terrorists in Chicago. Security has been ramped up and I really don't see a reason why anyone sure worry. I'm not. I'll keep you all posted as to our situation.


Also thought I'd let you all know that I am considering a third year here. It makes sense. I enjoy the kids a lot (especially my grade 11 advisees), I get along well with my coworkers, three years is really a good length of time to get to know what you're teaching, etc. There are downsides too. Things like your coworkers also being your drinking buddies, conversation revolves around school, a cloistered feeling. I figure I'll at least see what the new contract has to say and I'll make a decision soon.

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

quarter one just about down

Holy cow! It's been a while since my last post and SO MUCH has happened in the mean time.

Does that mean that I'll be posting a long blog today? Probably not, but I will give you some pictures. Firstly, here are some pics from class a few weeks ago. That is a pillar of salt (the sodium acetate kind, not the Lot's wife kind). You see, as far as solids go, you can only dissolve so much of one into a solution before it stops. That's why as a kid when mom finally let you make the Kool-Aid and you decided it would be so much better if more sugar was added you ended up with a slurry of red syrup at the bottom. Only so much sugar can be dissolved in the water... at that temperature. Now, if you were to heat up the Kool-Aid you could easily dissolve more sugar into each pitcher of childhood goodness. However, the problem with sugar is that it will tend to crystalise and precipitate back out of the solution as it cools down. So, unless you like a steaming cup o' Kool-Aid you had best stick to the recommended amount of sugar.


Now, sodium acetate doesn't have this problem. It forms a very stable solution. You just heat up the solution and add a few extra grains here and there. Once you allow it to cool down, the solution will remain clear and no crystals form. The solution is now considered to be 'supersaturated,' and contains more salt dissolved in it that would normally possible at that temperature. The sodium acetate will remain as a liquid until the solution is disturbed (sometimes it only takes a little bump to make it crystalise). In the picture below, I started with a single crystal of sodium acetate in the petri dish and started pouring out the solution. As soon as the supersaturated solution hits the crystals the dissolved salt has something to start crystalising on and the liquid immediately begins to form into a solid. The same effect can be achieved by scratching the glass (a common practice in my Organic II lab at ISU) or dropping the crystal directly into the solution.

Notice the liquid at the top and solid at the bottom. Science is amazing!

And also incredibly phallic at times...

Now, you may be asking yourself, 'What could possibly be the application of making penis shaped sculptures in chemistry class?' None really. However, the crystalisation of sodium acetate is extremely exothermic. That is, it releases a lot of heat. Enough to change the temperature upwards of thirteen degrees or more. This principle is used in some handwarmers and those of us who live in colder climes are all too familiar with. If you have a hand warmer that operates by popping a disc inside the chances of it also containing sodium acetate are pretty good. See, popping the disc gives a place for the crystals to start forming. As they form they release energy in the form of heat which one can then use to warm up. The nice thing about these hand warmers is that they are totally reusable. All you really have to do is drop them into a pot of warm water and allow the heat to liquefy the crystals again and then allow them to cool back down.

Anywho, science lesson over. On to show and tell.

A few weeks ago I was walking back up to my home after a long day of work and decided to take the longer, less steep route up to my abode. There's a path you walk up and I was lucky enough to stumble upon the carcass of a monkey in the middle of the road.

Warning, gross picture above!... whoops, too late

Typically, I would be somewhat saddened to see an animal torn apart like this, but as anyone who has lived with real monkeys knows (the Man in the Yellow Hat does NOT count. Besides, George had no tail, I'm more inclined to believe he was a chimp and not a monkey.) monkey's are evil! Therefore, I was less than saddened at the sight. However, I then realised that something had to have done this to the monkey. What could have though? My first thought was LEOPARD! Now, I have seen a leopard skulking around my area of habitation before and I know that there have been numerous sightings just up the hill from me but I never got to see damage. The monkey was torn apart and these guys are vicious and resilient. You have to be a tough guy to tear apart a monkey.

I'm hoping it was one of the dogs from next door...

We also had our advisor night. I took my ten kids (now five boys and five girls since two girls went on exchange this semester) up to the top of the hill to Char Dukan (not sure if I'm spelling it right) which literally means four shops. There are four shops at which you can get food, tuck (snacks), etc. The kids enjoyed the night, ate way too much, and played some games.

We also recently had our annual school cross country races up at the top of the hill. I made the mistake of deciding to run this year without having run since being back to India. I finished the race (something like 5miles) but realised just how difficult it is. I came in almost last but I'm sticking to the fact that I was wrangling up the stragglers and 'encouraging' them (much in the same way as one of those big with no shirt on 'encourages' the rowers on those old-timey warships). I was sore as heck afterwards but I felt accomplished.



The same night as the cross country I had a few boys over for dinner. All kids I had last year in tenth grade. One of the boys organised it and invited ten others over. Now, I'm considered a sexist by the girls and racist by they Koreans b/c neither of their respective groups were represented that evening. I just can't win.

This is the food we had. A veritable feast of delicious food. We ordered from Kalsang's, a restaurant notorious for improper handling of food and making everyone sick. I eat there a lot and have never been sick (knock on wood). We had momos, a type of Tibetan dumpling made of meat, veggies, and spices wrapped in dough and steamed; shaptek (again, spelling?) a spicy meat dish; dingmos, steamed Tibetan bread; and various other things ranging from chips to smoked chicken. I literally had a bag of chips left at the end of the night.

We had fun eating, talking and watching The Last of the Mohicans (we couldn't decide what to watch so I put this in). Nothing like Natty Bumpo to make a good party a GREAT party.

Also big in the news here at Woodstock is that our gym has finally opened up. We had a big ceremony with all of the pomp and circumstance for the opening of a long anticipated building. You see, the gym project began 10 years ago but got held up in legal issues and only last year on Independence Day was construction finally able to begin. A little more than a year later the school finally has a gym again complete with basketball court, locker rooms, a climbing wall, weights room, and squash court. A building of this caliber is really unheard of in India. The kids are loving it and I'll probably be more motivated to do more exercising than just walking home if I can just hop over to the gym in the evening and do a little work out. Old teachers, donors, and alumni showed up for the opening and got special gifts of flowers and shawls.


The big guest though, was WS's own mascot, the tiger. As far as I know he has no name but the kids loved him. I got a kick out the fact that roar was actually a tiger's mating call.

Hey, wha's happenin' hotstuff?

And so the first quarter of a new school year ends on Wednesday. Lots of staff and students are going for trips over the extended weekend. I'm going to stay around the area and work relax. Maybe I'll do some day hikes in the area and hang out with others still on the hillside. I'll also begin looking up schools in Europe, Turkey, Hong Kong, and Korea. I think I've narrowed it down to those four places for my next excursion.

Grad school isn't out yet though I doubt I'll be able to make it for next year's session. I think I've finally decided what I'd like to go in for. I'd most like to do some work with implementing more instrumentation into high school labs. A lot of places use data collecting probes but I'd like to see if there wouldn't be a cheaper, easier way to get that out there.

Also, monsoon has ended. The ferns on the hillside have all turned brown and withered a sure sign that the rains and humidity are gone. It's sad because for as much hassle as it is keeping things dry and mold free in monsoon, the beauty of the hillside really comes out in the mist and rains. The colours are lush and vibrant and everything just feels alive. It will be nice, however, to be able to keep the green outside and not so much on my cushions or in my pipes.

Well, enough procrastination. I have to get comments written and grades finished. Enjoy this sunset while I work.