Culture

This weekend I got to attend a few different events (nothing ever stops here at Woodstock).  

First, we had the Indian music concert, which only happens once a year.  The kids who train on the sitar, tabla, santoor, and vocals all get to perform for the school.  It was an interesting experience, and again I realized how little I really know about this land I live in.  The way music is described is incomprehensable to me.  Songs were described to be played at 15 beats in raag teentaal.  Honestly, reading the program I thought I was reading the names of students (who is Raag Teentaal?).  The songs also go on for a few minutes longer than is comfortable for my inexperienced Western ears, but the songs are almost enchanting with the rhythms and repetition.  I'll have to go next year and really try to figure it out.

Saturday was the Woodstock Mela, which is the Indian term for fair or gathering.  There's a building on campus called the Hanifl Centre for Outdoor Education.  It has been vastly underused, mostly due to its location (the far edge of campus, but, hey, still closer to the school than my house).  Well, Mrs. Hanifl was in town, so heck, let's try and show her we use the place!  The Mela was held there, despite the old location working fine and dandy.  

Vendors from Mussoorie and from the smaller villages further into the mountains showed up to hawk their food and wares.  The Thai, Japanese, and Korean kids at the school organized to serve food (or shaved ice) to help with scholarships.  The 9th grade sold hot dogs (chicken kabobs on a bun), the 11th grade sold ice cream, and the 12th grade did nothing as far as I could tell.  My grade, 10th grade, was supposed to be in charge of the carnival.  Long story short, because of the location, we had no room for a carnival and we were reduced to face painting.  Overall, it was a good time for me.  First of all, I had the shortest walk to an event for the first time ever.  I ate a ton of good food and got my hands on some rare brown sugar (about a dollar at Walmart, where it is from, but I paid 300 rupees or about 6 dollars for it).  I also picked up a batik wall hanging of an Indian-looking Jesus.  Very cool.  

In addition to all the food and selling, there was a bit of entertainment.  A few Nepali kids did a dance, the elementary kids all dressed up and danced, and a few of the Woodstock employees did a dance.  But, the best was the group of kids from a local village.  They rocked the place with their Indian dance moves (screwing in the light bulb and all).  They had major stage presence and at one point a bunch of them jumped on each other's shoulders and danced like that.  I'm learning that for men, dancing is all in the shoulders around here.  I continue to use my hips when dancing, but I have been practicing the shoulder bounce.

Anyways, the weather has gotten nicer, it's almost May, and that spring lethargy has been creeping into student and staff alike.  Summer is almost here!

The biggest

The past week or so, I've been saying the following phrase: "That's the biggest (fill in animal or bug) I've ever seen!"

They grow 'em big here in the Himalayas. First was the biggest monkey I've ever seen while eating lunch on Sunday a few weeks ago. This massive langour (the nice, grey ones) runs by and climbs up a house. At the same place this past week, I saw the biggest bee I've ever seen. You know those old Sally Jesse Raphael show where they would show massively obese people compared to average people? Imagine a normal, fuzzy bumblebee, then think of a massively obese bumblebee. Like a little, flying black and yellow tank.

The other day, I saw the biggest spider I've ever seen, in my house. I sat down in the bathroom (we're all very comfortable talking about this process at this school) and noticed a spider hiding behind the pipe underneath my sink. It wasn't hiding very well. Like if I tried to hide under a desk, its legs were sticking out. This thing was huge. Probably about the diameter of my pinky finger and then some. Paralyzed with fear (and on the toilet, so unable to move anyway), I yelped when it scurried away to another location in my house. I only hope my ayah killed it.

Next Food Network Star?

I can't explain it.  I've only really had one success when it comes to cooking here in India.  And that's grilled cheese.  I've never been much of a grilled cheeser before, but now I'm hooked.  It started by accidentally buying a huge block of cheese and not knowing what to do with it.  Now, I go through a block every 2 weeks.  Here are my variations so far:

1. With sauteed onions

2. With sauteed onions and garlic

3. With sauteed onions and apples

4. With regular cheese, bleu cheese, and sauteed onions and apples

5. With sauteed onions, garlic, and fried bacon (The bacon here is ham, people!  HAM!)

6. My dream and THE supreme grown-up grilled cheese recipe that would overflow the bounds of the bread and taste buds- regular cheese, bleu cheese, bacon, apples, onions, and garlic

All of these use a ton of butter and brown bread.

Man, I need to start learning how to cook Indian food.

Just a quick thought...

I think God blesses me with mountains.  Every time I go to church on Sunday, I take the nice, quiet, flat path called the Chukkar, which goes above town.  For a while, one can see the nearly uninhabited mountains on one side of the hill.  On the other side is Mussoorie, Dehradun, and the rest of inhabited India.  On a clear day, which has been every Sunday I go to church, the snowcapped mountains come into view.  Normally they're obscured by clouds.  Today, they were especially clear, and I saw some huge snowcapped ones I've never seen before.  I imagine (telling this like a 3rd grader) that God is sitting in heaven, sees me going to church and blows the clouds away from the mountain so I can see them.

My first trip away

I spent a weekend in Delhi- here's how it went:

Upon arriving in Delhi, I latched on to my co-worker so he could show me where Pahar Ganj was.  I discovered that it is right where people said it was... across the street from the train station.  I probably would have gotten lost without him.  As soon as I saw the street that people referred to as the backpacker/hippie ghetto, I latched even closer to my co-worker and told him I'm staying where he was.  A phrase that rolled through my head every time I walked down this undesirable street was "Pahar Grunge."  Not too clever, but it's what I came up with.  This street is seedy.  There was garbage everywhere and unidentifiable feces to match.  Salesmen with horrible, horrible souviniers (like a crappy drum or a wooden snake) accosted us although it was nearly midnight.  Shady young men accosted us to stay in their hotels/guest houses/caves.  It was accosting.  To summarize Pahar Ganj, over the next few days I heard the following phrases non-stop whenever I was on this street:

"Baksheesh, Babu!" = old ladies begging for money

"Hey, man! Where you from?" = untrustworthy men trying to get me to buy something or go to an emporium (more on this later)

"Hash? You want hashish?" = kid outside my hotel with a very interesting sales pitch.  He doesn't say this directly to you, but says it so you hear it.  If you want hash, you perk up and listen.  If you get mad, he wasn't talking to you.  If you ignore him (like me), he keeps asking.

So, Friday, I got my feet wet in Delhi.  I saw the India Gate (it's a big gate), the houses of Parlaiment and the President's house (empty because of the holiday), the Lodhi Gardens (quite nice, actually), and the rooftop restaurant of my hotel where I had an excellent Chicken Kiev and some French onion soup - those of you who know my history of French onion soup in India will laugh- it wasn't that good here, either.

Saturday was my extreme tourist day.  I started out by swearing off all emporiums to my co-worker I ran into in the hotel.  For those of you out of the know, an emporiums are crappy, extremely over-priced tourist shops that all sell the same things.  On Friday, I was unexpectedly dragged to two of them by auto-rickshaw drivers.  Exiting the hotel, I was strucked up a conversation by a guy on the street (figure out the proper way to phrase that!).  He said he'd show me the Indian bazaar with Indian prices.  I was in no hurry and I do need glassware for my house still, so I agreed.  I found out the guy is a dancer and is studying to be a doctor.  He's also a dirty liar who brought me to an emporium.  Confound him!

I then hopped into a rickshaw whose driver agreed to take me around.  I saw Humayan's Tomb, went to an emporium, saw the Lotus Temple, was brought to a jewelry shop (emporium), then was dropped off at the metro station to make my way to Old Delhi.  Old Delhi is a mess of transportation, chaat, and chai.  It's one part alluring, one part overwhelming, and two parts repulsing.  I saw the Red Fort and hopped in a rickshaw to see the Jamma Masjid (the largest mosque in India where I was forced to pay 200 rupees for a camera I didn't want to use) and a Jain temple, which was great until the guy running the place demanded 100 rupees for showing me around.  After being robbed by practitioners of most of India's religions, I was spent.  Upon getting to the spice market, I just asked to be brought to the metro station.  When I got back to the hotel, I realized I hadn't eaten all day, so I grabbed an excellent pasta salad, a mediocre veggie sandwich and a refreshing lemon iced tea from a nearby cafe.  Not wanting to look like a pig but still hungry, I returned to the rooftop restaurant where I had a decent caesar salad (with huge strips of luscious parmesan cheese) and fried date-filled pancakes with honey and ice cream, which was reminicient of Mexican fried ice cream.

On Easter Sunday I slept in.  In my half-asleep mind, I rationalized that I had celebrated Easter a week prior and... I didn't know where a church was.  I made up my mind that I was to see a movie and enjoy good food for the day.  Eventually I made my way to a movie theatre where I saw the International, which was mediocre and cliched, but watching Clive Owen bust up the Guggenheim Museum with an Uzi while sitting in an air-conditioned theatre munching popcorn was just too great.  I left my first movie in three months with a big grin on my face.  I wandered around the nice shopping area of town and bought a few ties, thinking I can get shirts made to match back in Mussoorie.  I returned to the cafe near my hotel and had a satisfying smoked salmon sandwich with potato salad and a sublime Greek salad (with olive oil and balsalmic vinegar!).  I wrapped up my night by watching a bad British horror movie followed by 28 Weeks Later.  Sunday was definitely my most Western day, but it was the vacation I was looking for.

Despite the bad taste I have over Delhi now, I am grateful for the vacation.  I rather enjoy the weather in the mountains, the relatively clean streets of Mussoorie and the lack of an assumption I am an Australian hippie hash-smoker.

And now that I've written a small book on my blog, it's time for bed- Parent-teacher interviews are tomorrow and I'm excited to ask my students what they did over break they don't want to tell me about!