Settling in and Preparing for the Classroom

Hello, everyone! I'm still catching up with myself, and I have more written but I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'll post the next installment tomorrow or in a couple of days. The rain is pouring outside my window as I write this, and my desk is cluttered with origami-as-procrastination, art teaching resources, pens/pencils/inkbottles/erasers/brushes/scissors/glue/etc, and the cut-off water bottles that form the pots for my brave little sprouts, pushing up into the world despite the cloudy monsoon weather. I hope you're all doing well.



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Orientation of new staff began on Monday, July 9^th. At the time, it seemed like an unfair endurance test for those of us that had just arrived in India; little did I know, that in comparison to my teaching responsibilities, those all-day workshops would seem like absolute fluff.

We met all of the new staff, and I must say that the staff at KIS has been one of the best surprises of my time here so far. I think it’s fair to say that the school itself has brought me the most surprises of any part of India… I had a lot of expectations of the school, as it fits into a world I understand: private, American-curriculum-based education; whereas I came with very few expectations of India. Anyhow, some difficult surprises from the school: tense religious politics within the school, utter lack of central heating in a place that gets FROST in the winters as well as an impenetrable wall of mist that descends in a damp, freezing blanket for hours at a time. Fantastic surprises from the school: the staff is the most diverse and interesting and downright crazy group of people I’ve ever met. The student body is also chock full of fascinating characters, including a ton of Indian children who have been raised abroad (Canada, America, Australia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, you name it!); the racial breakdown is about ½ Indian, 1/4 Korean, and then a jumble of American, Canadian, British, Australian, German, Bhutanese, Nepalese, Japanese, and a handful of random Dutch exchange students.

Back to the staff. Remarkably, there are two Princeton ’04 graduates teaching here – they discovered the school completely independently of Princeton in Asia and were just as surprised to see me as I was to see them. We’d never met at Princeton, but we know a fair number of the same people, and – despite my ornery cynicism about the magical powers of the Princeton Connection – I was delighted to discover that they were from Princeton. There was a reassuring sort of familiarity; we understand a large part of each other’s lives right away, here, a million miles away from everything. It’s also nice to be around anyone from a country with a lot of immigration (America, Canada, Britain, etc.), because at Kodaikanal nobody really understands that I could look Korean but be mostly Canadian, or that I could major in biology but teach art, or that I could be just 21 and still qual – oh wait, in fact, there they would be right. I’m not really qualified to be a teacher. (Whoopsies…)

So, teaching staff – spot on. At first I was a bit alarmed, because everyone bowed their heads quite solemnly for our group prayers (those have slackened off now that we’re not doing workshops and are actually in the classroom), but in retrospect – I did my best to look solemn as well. Their quirky, irreverent senses of humor quickly started to leak out. I won’t write much about the religious politics of the school. It’s a complicated and – as I’m sure you can imagine – extremely touchy subject, but suffice it to say that last year things reached such a pitch that one woman threatened a hunger strike, several staff members had their jobs threatened, and at least one person was forced to make a public apology. Dinners out with certain groups within the staff are an endless tirade against the school’s status quo, and doing anything slightly against the rules can create an atmosphere of terrible paranoia; a teacher lost his job for having a drink, by himself, after lights-out, on a school field trip. No warning – just fired. Gone. No three-strikes. That particular episode irked me, because there are dozens of students caught drinking every year – probably every month! – without so much as a suspension, much less expulsion. But I digress.

In general, the convoluted world of school politics was pushed out of the minds of the new staff by the overwhelming whirlwind of orientation, workshops, dinners with mentors and hosts and department heads, meeting new roommates, dealing with the inevitable stomach problems, buying pots and pans and vegetables and blankets and pencils and pens and flip-flops and stove-lighters and tea and milk and strange not-really-cheese and packets of chips and mangoes and mangostins…

In the midst of this, let me explain my living situation: When I arrived I was taken to Airlee Main, a fairly large house on main campus that was formerly a high school girls’ dorm. I was initially living there with Marie (student teacher, volunteer – one semester, science-math, from Ohio) and Yisu (new Korean teacher, from Seoul). Then Vera (language teacher, from Germany/France/a bit of everywhere) arrived, but only temporarily, while her permanent house was set up for her. Then Lowri (ESL teacher, volunteer – one semester, from Wales) arrived. Airlee was getting crowded, particularly when Gabi (general volunteer – one semester, just graduated from high school, born in Korea but has lived in India for the past 8 years) arrived, and Jeanette (Human Resources director, from Montreal, wonderful woman) began to discuss alternate housing arrangements. In particular there was an apartment at Loch End, the middle school boys’ dorm: the apartment was huge and beautiful, but came with two catches. 1. The occupants would have to help out with the Loch End study hall. 2. The occupants would get a fair amount of noise coming through the walls from the middle school boys. After some discussion, it was decided that Lowri and I would move into Loch End, which was almost too good to be true; Lowri and I get along extremely well, we both teach at the elementary school, Loch End is far nicer than Airlee, and neither of us are religious, so we have similar schedules on Sundays and religious holidays, etc..

We had intended to move on the weekend before classes started, but the desperate race to create lesson plans before our first class overrode that plan, and we entered the week (starting Tuesday) still living in Airlee.

Up next: Starting out as a TEACHER!!

Love, Jenn

Pictures From India, I

After uploading all the pictures I wanted to share from my first few weeks, I've realized that it's too high a volume of images to make blogger a sensible choice. I'll probably use Picasa web albums or Flickr to upload photos from now on; I'll be sure to keep you posted. For now, a photo odyssey courtesy of blogger, cumbersome as it may be. Captions are BESIDE the photos.

NOTE: You can click on them to view larger versions.



Approaching Kodaikanal on the Ghat Road, some monkeys on the side of the road - as you can see, lush mountaintop vegetation! Lovely.








View of some houses in Kodai - typically colorful, built on the hillside, surrounded by trees.








View of my loft in my first residence, Airlee Main. That's my purple sleeping bag dangling down - the loft was more spacious than it looks like from this picture, but not huge. Below is the dining table - we never really used it, as we all ate our meals at the cafeteria or out at a restaurant. Most people don't cook themselves; if they eat at home, they have an ayah (servant/maid) to cook for them. Cooking is a much more time-consuming proposition here; between going to a dozen different market stalls to buy the food, then washing the vegetables in treated or boiled water, then dealing with a small gas stove and usually no oven, it takes quite awhile.



Yisu and Lowri, before we leave for class.











Marie, at one of the teaching workshops.









The Sunday Market! Vegetables galore, spread out under tarps. The meat/fish/poultry is at the far end.









On the road bordering the Sunday Market, more fruits and vegetables.






Electricity in Kodaikanal. Last year there was a power-outage that lasted for over 24 hours, taking out all the electricity in town... The cause? A cow had bumped into the switch that controlled the electricity for all of Kodaikanal, and it took them over a day to figure out what had happened. Then they switched it back on. NO JOKE, FOLKS.




Power lines stretching over one of the main roads. Down this road is the marketplace for the Sunday market.









People in Kodaikanal. Fairly self-explanatory.


















Me and Yisu!









A typical vista. Houses perched on the hilltop. There's a view like this around every corner, another mist-shrouded village scattered across the hills. Hopefully we'll get to visit some of them over the course of the hiking season...









Laundry hanging on the porch of one of the staff. Many people here have lovely gardens, whether they be large plots of land or just a profusion of windowsill flowers.








First hike of the season! Vera climbing up through a beautiful terraced orchard, impossibly green and lovely in the early morning sun. Mist sets in by lunchtime, and heavy rain falls between 3 and 5 every day. But the mornings are gorgeous.





Lowri, my roommate for the semester.










For us, it's a rocky hiking path; for everyone else, a well-used road.









Some children we met along the hike; in central Kodai, people are bizarrely unfazed by my white face, they're used to the presence of the international school and the zillions of tourists. But get a little bit outside, and the children are fascinated and boisterous, demanding to see their digital reflections, chasing after us wanting to play football. They're lovely.




Eucalypt crown! (My secret goal in life is to look as crazy as possible, almost all the time.)

















Tall, tall groves of eucalyptus trees.... I'm not sure why they were planted in the first place, but now you can find dozens of little shops that sell mostly eucalyptus oil. I'm not sure what anyone would need all those gallons of eucalyptus oil for, and I've never actually seen anyone buy it, but you could certainly buy a TON if ever you desired.













A rare giant squirrel! Spotted during the hike. It looked like a giant teddy bear but was actually quite agile, and reminded me of the colobus monkeys we saw in Kenya. I suspect it fills a similar niche.










...And the mist rolls in.









Some pictures of the new apartment in Loch End, where I now live with Lowri... Our stove (blessed, blessed stove!).









The living room, where we spend all of our time. Bookshelves! Fuzzy Tibetan shawls! Couches! Wood floors!









More of the living room. These rich burgundy curtains are everywhere, it makes a huge difference to the atmosphere of the room. And there's a large batik I bought at a women's co-op in town. Curtains on the left lead to bathrooms, bedrooms... Curtains on the right lead to the kitchen.



My bedroom, messy as always.











Why didn't anyone tell me it was this hard to buy alcohol in India??? I never would've come! Just kidding... But Lowri and I had a hilarious misadventure in which we thought we'd found wine at Meenakshi's, the grocery store that has everything... We bought three bottles for our house-warming party, at great expense, and took them home only to realize that they were non-alcoholic. So we made a trip to the sketchy, sketchy liquor closet - it can't properly be called a shop - to get some brandy, and ended up making some very decent mulled wine. When the majority of people (Hindus, Muslims) aren't allowed to drink for religious reasons, and the leftovers (Christians) are encouraged not to, liquor closets become a shady hangout of rough-edged men and tragic drunkards. And the occasional pair of determined white girls.




I have planted a lot of flower seeds in bowls, cut-off water bottles, plastic containers, and so on. Larkspur, lupine, balsam, sweetpea, beans and snapdragons! I'm very excited about them, and will keep you posted on their progress. These are my first sprouts.






View out the window of Loch End. As you can see, I actually live in a 1900s Lutheran monastery, not India at all.









My classroom! Large, beautiful, full of supplies and light and old artwork - and chilly, but I'll deal.








My blackboard. I'm official.











Mobiles from last year.

















Goodbye till next time! I promise not to overload you with photos again, I'll find a better way of doing it. This is WAY too time-consuming. Yawn...

First Impressions of Kodaikanal

Preface:
I started writing this soon after arriving, but I'm just not going to catch up with myself for awhile, and I think I'd better post what I've written so far. I promise to catch up with everything sooner or later, but I'm madly busy learning how to be a teacher (I only get to my second day in Kodai in this bit of the entry; I think I'm going to have to cut the detail if I EVER want to get to my first day of classes!)

Photos coming soon, I have lots, I just have to get to class really soon and don't have time to post them right now. SOON. Hopefully this evening.

Also, I'm considering password-protecting this blog, because I've realized that the high school students - even though I only teach the elementary school - like to stalk their teachers on the internet. More on that later. If I password-protect it, I'll email you all.

That's all for now, folks.
-Jenn

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After God knows how many hours of travel, I arrived in the Chennai (Madras) airport at approximately 1:30 in the morning. The airport was fairly crowded because, in addition to my flight, another 747 had come in from Dubai. The baggage claim was crowded with people bearing duty-free bags with stamp of Dubai Duty-Free that I recognized from my own brief visit to Dubai. I fended off a few men eager to volunteer their services as porters and hauled my bags off the carousel myself: my trusty black rolling suitcase, still alive after 4 years of being stuffed, sat on, and stuffed again as I traveled back and forth from Victoria and Princeton – and my new love, a beautiful 65 L Osprey backpack.

Arrival, and then… The wait. The flight to Madurai was scheduled for 6:50 AM, so I settled into a chair in the airport lounge to wait. After an hour of restless jet-lagged twitching, I went to the bathroom and had my first experience with Indian toilets. For those of you not in the know, imagine a narrow toilet bowl recessed in the floor and a little water tap and bucket placed nearby. You squat over the trough in the floor (it drains and flushes) and relieve yourself, then use the water and your left hand – KEY POINT! LEFT, NOT RIGHT! – to clean yourself. If possible, flush, then exit and wash hands. Because this is the customary way to relieve yourself, the left and right hands have very different roles in Indian culture; never get caught eating with your left hand!

I managed to sleep for awhile in the airport chair, feet propped up on my bags on their luggage cart, as people came and went around me. There were many families around me doing the same thing, children clustered under their mother’s shawl as they tried to get a bit of sleep before the next flight. At about 4:30 AM the airlines’ counters opened again, and at 5 AM I went to the Jet Airways counter to check in. I anticipated a lot of fuss because it was a domestic flight yet I had an enormous amount of luggage, but I guess they felt sorry for me, and the fellow behind the counter tagged them and sent me to get them screened. The screening process seemed largely superfluous but involved a lot of questions in heavily-accented English that my exhausted brain had trouble deciphering, and they eventually gave up on me, slapped “Checked By Jet Airways” stickers on both bags, and sent me through security.

Airport security note: after getting to Madurai I realized that I’d had a small kitchen knife in my carry-on bag the entire time, black plastic handle and 5-inch blade. Vancouver airport? Searched my backpack to the point of pulling out my change purse and rifling through it, digging to the very bottom of each pocket, and absolutely destroying my careful packing job, but they didn’t notice the knife. Newark airport? Sent me right through. Chennai? Screened ME with a metal-detector wand, but didn’t bother with the backpack and its knife. So much for all that plastic cutlery on the planes. (Mom, Dad – sorry, I didn’t realize I had it, but I guess I’ll just use it in India. It’s only a little knife.)

Flight to Madurai was delayed by 2 hours, so I waited around in the airport in a daze, and then got on a plane and began, at last, my final flight. They served a nice Indian meal (what North American domestic flight serves a full meal on a 1-hour flight???) and offered me a newspaper, which I took but was too tired to read very carefully. Very colorful language for a newspaper. Landed in Madurai! Claimed my bags and went outside to find the poor taxi driver who had been waiting for at least two hours for me, and then was quickly loaded up into an ancient car that looked like it had been left behind by the British, back in the day; paneled interior, high cushioned seats, and utter lack of seatbelts. Which, let me tell you, was PETRIFYING given the ride I was about to embark upon.

I’ve never experienced anything like traffic in India. The ride through Madurai was one of the more harrowing and exhilarating experiences of my life (SO GLAD TO BE ALIVE), and Madurai’s not even a very big city… Can’t imagine what Mumbai or Delhi are like, though I hope to find out during my holidays. It’s the sheer volume and variety of traffic that makes it so terrifying – pedestrians, motorbikes, bicycles, cars, trucks, and the occasional ox-drawn cart, all vying for space and moving at different speeds on roads that are far too narrow and have very poorly-defined dirt sidewalks. Nobody stays in their lane – scratch that, there aren’t any lanes. Everyone squeezes through spaces I’d never believe they could make it through. Women nursing babies don’t bat an eye as a motorbike loaded with three people – all without helmets, of course – dodges a truck and nips past them with an inch or less to spare. The garlands of jasmine flowers in their hair sway in the slipstream, and they keep on walking, unperturbed.

Gradually, the hustle and bustle of Madurai gave way to the Ghat Road, the long twisting road that threads through the Panil Hills and up to Kodaikanal. Another terrifying experience, in that the road has no lanes at all, barely enough room to pass, and a very high density of completely blind corners. The drivers, of course, race around them at high speed, such that you don’t know what to be most afraid of: that they’ll skid off the edge, or that they’ll be hit by an oncoming bus. Everyone uses their horn like crazy to make sure that people coming round the bend know they’re there.

The forest became thicker, dense vegetation rising in a tangle of trees and vines, epiphytes and shrubs, with the occasional troop of monkeys sitting at the side of the road watching cars go by. It also cooled noticeably as we climbed, to an almost Victoria-like climate. Mists rolled across the hilltops – every corner revealed a new eyepopping vista, of mist-shrouded mountains or the sweeping, patchwork plains below. And at last we began to approach Kodai. (Nobody really calls it Kodaikanal – just Kodai – pronounced “ko-dee.”) The road is narrow all the way up, with the occasional fruitseller sitting on the edge, banana leaves spread with cut-up jackfruit or pyramids of coconuts, and an intermittent flow of human traffic – children, women carrying bundles of firewood on their heads, old men. The buildings along the side of the Ghat Road are, for the most part, actual buildings (as opposed to tin/plastic/wood shacks), brightly painted in the same cheerful, garish way they were painted in Kenya. Schools, shops, cement walls advertising toothpaste and candy and soda, jacarandas and purple morning glory and moonflowers overflowing the walls. Also, oddly, big hillsides planted with eucalyptus trees, which made me feel a bit like I was back in Australia.

We wound up through the spread-out, colorful town, till we arrived at Seven Roads Junction, which is exactly that – seven roads, one of them the Ghat Road, that come together in a chaotic “traffic circle” – otherwise known as “circle of imminent death but not quite as imminent as Madurai, because this is, after all, a ‘small hill station’ and shouldn’t be so crazy.” The main gate to KIS’s main campus is right at the junction. Google Earth doesn’t have very good resolution on Kodaikanal, but I suggest searching “Kodaikanal Lake,” because Main Campus is right on the edge of the lake, and the outline of the lake (sort of a spread-out dark starfish, on Google Earth) is distinguishable. You’ll at least get the idea that I’m in the middle of the mountains somewhere.

Anyhow, pulled into the Seven Roads Junction traffic circle, then in through the main gate, and after some confusing discussion between the driver and the people at the gate, I was driven up the road a bit, past an old, mossy, stone church, a huge covered court where they hold assemblies, a huge enclosed hall where they also hold assemblies, some lovely orangey clay tennis courts, and various other structures, until at last we reached our destination: Airlee Main, formerly a girls’ dorm, and my humble home for the next couple of weeks.

I went inside, dragging my bags, and was immediately bowled over by an extremely enthusiastic student teacher from Ohio, Marie. She toured me around the house in a whirlwind, explaining that she’d already bought various necessities, she was here to teach science and math, she’d only been here a day and a half, she was delighted to be at KIS, etc. Another girl was also there: Yisu, the new full-time Korean teacher. KIS has two categories of employees: teachers, who sign 3-year contracts and are paid a salary and receive various benefits like free airfare and shipment of one cubic meter of belongings; and volunteers, who sign one- or two-semester contracts, receive a volunteer stipend of 2000 rs/month, and various benefits like free room, board, furniture, bedding, appliances, etc. Marie is a volunteer for a semester, Yisu is on a 3-year contract. (I’m not sure how binding the 3-year contracts are; I get the impression that people break them all the time.)

Yisu was at first a very quiet, extremely cute Korean girl of few English words, with whom I thought I would have a difficult time communicating… However, after about a week of hanging around with her, all language barriers were destroyed in favor of some excellent conversations and a long-running joke about being mistaken for students. “I’m going to come over and visit…”

“You’re not allowed out of your dorm after hours, young lady!”

“Please, teacher! Make an exception for me… Please?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I settled into the loft in Airlee Main and began exploring Kodai with my new roommates, and some of the other new teachers, though we didn’t meet most of them till the workshops started on Tuesday. On Sunday I actually went to church, the first time I’d ever been to a proper service in my entire life. This was motivated by two major reasons: 1. I wanted to see what it was like, since it’s such an important part of life here – at this point, I can say that for many it is the MOST important part of life here, and 2. I was terrified at the idea of being left all alone in Airlee while literally EVERYONE else went to church – I wasn’t ready to completely jump off the social ship at that point. So I went. It was a nice service, and I really enjoyed parts of it; however, for others I was squirming in my seat, both because I disagreed with what was being said, and because I just felt out of place. It wasn’t my place; they weren’t my beliefs. However, I’m glad I went.

After church, we went to the Sunday Market, which was much more my speed – a bustling vegetable market that’s set up every Sunday in a lowered cement marketplace. Shouting, confusion, all kinds of bizarre vegetables being weighed out in rusty metal scales against burnished, ancient weights. Things I’d never seen; new versions of familiar vegetables; an endless supply of absolutely fantastic mangoes; and at the end, the meat section, where you can buy live chickens and have them slaughtered and plucked right before your eyes, where slippery fish flip and squirm in buckets of dirty water and piles of dead fish lie on plastic sheets waiting to be chopped up by the fish-seller – blackened machete on stained wooden block, bits of scale and flesh flying everywhere – where fatty shanks of goat or mutton hang from hooks and are hacked at with long knives while the ubiquitous stray dogs dart among the customers’ ankles, searching for scraps. I like to watch the meat market section, though I’m a bit leery of buying anything. I’m sure I’ll get over that. Cook it well, that’s all you need… (Mom, I know you’re looking concerned right now.)

Arrived

I arrived at about 1am on the 7th (as in, late night of the 6th) and it's been an unstoppable whirlwind of events since then. I just wanted to let you know I was still alive... I've been structuring a long entry to write about everything that's happened so far, and I really want to get it done before classes start on tuesday, because I know that once I get into the school year (a) I won't have any time, not that I have any right now, and (b) I'll want to write only about the classroom, and not about all of the fascinating events of the past week!

Anyhow, I desperately need to make up lesson plans before I write that long entry, and I hope I'll be able to do that tonight, but in case I don't - yes, I'm still alive, and yes I will eventually enlighten you as to what the first week in a completely gorgeous, completely isolated, completely amazing hill station in India feels like. Not to mention the first week in an extremely Christian school. I've never been involved in frequent collective prayer before... It's an experience, to say the least. It's the most shocking part of the culture shock, in fact, because I wasn't prepared for it... Anyhow, more on everything later. I need to get cracking on these lesson plans, so that I'm still alive at the end of the week.

Much love, I'd love to hear how all of you are doing, but realize that I don't deserve any juicy emails till I get the big entry up... :)

airports

Dear Readers!

I report to you (not so) LIVE from the Lufthansa Senators’ Lounge in the Newark airport. The first leg of my journey has gone smoothly; after a last-minute change of plans, I took the ferry to Vancouver on Tuesday, soaking in an absolutely perfect 90 minutes of “Super, Natural British Columbia” (as the license plates would have it…) on the outside deck, watching all my lovely islands and mountains and ocean slide by in the golden evening sun. It was good to have a last look at my home; I’ll miss it a lot, that’s for sure. Despite all my traveling, I still love BC the best.

Flying from Vancouver to Newark was uneventful. I’m flying business class (!!!!) which means that I get access to all of these delightful lounges of the elite, where I sneak around looking out-of-place and hoard the free chocolate bars in my pockets while sipping the free drinks. Right now I’ve amassed some delicious blue cheese, a selection of olives, a mediocre pear (really, what can you expect from produce in an airport?), a glass of sparkling water with lime, and some decent sauvignon blanc. I’ll get the chocolate bars on my way out – if I ever find them. I’m not sure that this particular lounge has any. They’re all a bit different, I’m discovering. It’s a bit like Harry Potter – the doors are disguised, occasionally camouflaged with potted plants, so it’s as though I have to find the secret brick to open Diagon Alley – then, instead of waving my magic wand, I wave my business-class boarding pass – and I’m in, granted entry to a fantastic wizardly world where the drinks are plentiful and free, and the cheese is big wheels of camembert or stilton instead of pre-packaged cheddar. Aaah.

Speaking of Harry Potter… I hope it’s released on the same date in India. Or I might just have to die. I don’t even know if there’s a bookstore in Kodaikanal! There must be.

Unfortunately this lounge does not have free wireless, and I’m too cheap to pay the € 6.50 minimum fee to get it. Hopefully Frankfurt will have free wireless.

I’m starting to realize the craziness of heading off to a place where I don’t speak ONE WORD of the language. If it had been Hindi, perhaps I could have learned a bit of it before heading off. But Tamil? There’s a big blank in the “T” section of the languages shelf. Even my Indian friends in Victoria had to think hard to come up with someone they knew that spoke Tamil, and I ran out of time before I could contact anyone to arrange a lesson. So it’s off to Tamil Nadu I go, hoping that it’s true that a lot of people speak English, and REALLY hoping that the taxi meets me at the appointed time and place in Madurai.

As a side note, I feel like I’ve just started to realize exactly how many Indian immigrants there are working in North America. The guy who searched my bag in the Vancouver airport opened my little money bag, and upon seeing the rupees, became about 50 times friendlier. “Where are you going?” “Oh, it’s beautiful!” “Will you have time to go to Rajastan?” “Be careful of the trains…” It’s a lot of fun! Everyone who finds out I’m going to India is very enthusiastic and wants to make sure I visit their home… Unfortunately, most of them are from Northern India, and many have never heard of Kodaikanal. It’s a big country.

>>>> In fact, Frankfurt doesn’t have free wireless either, the cheap jerks. Oh well. At least my flight involved some very tasty lobster. That almost makes up for the lack of wireless… And the lack of North American plugs, which means that my laptop time is limited! The next time you hear from me, I’ll be in India…

Two More Days

I leave Victoria on the 4th of July. My crazy flight - purchased by my wonderful uncle on his Air Miles - goes like this:
Victoria --> Vancouver
Vancouver --> Chicago
Chicago --> Newark
Then I stay overnight in New York with my aunt. The next day (the 5th), I fly
Newark --> Frankfurt
Frankfurt --> Chennai (Madras)
Then I stay overnight in the Chennai airport - the flight gets in very late at night (on the 6th). In the morning (of the 7th), I get the first flight out:
Chennai --> Madurai
And at last, in Madurai I am (hopefully) picked up by a taxi sent by the school, which will take me on the winding, treacherous, nausea-inducing, dehydrating, absolutely-beautiful-but-I'll-be-too-exhausted-to-notice, three hour trip up the mountain to Kodaikanal. Where I will arrive, collapse in a heap at the doorstep of Jeanette (the human resources director, I met her in New York when I went to get my visa), and pass out for several hours. Or stay up, manic from jet lag and unable to sleep. Who knows! Adventures of almost 4 days of travel... Hurrah!

I weep for my circadian rhythms.



Currently I'm savoring the last few days at home in Victoria. A family friend who helped develop the Manitoba school curriculum met with me and gave me a huge stack of official art teacher materials, so I've got something to work from - you have no idea what a relief it is to have a big, authoritative binder of project ideas, child psychology, development guidelines, and so on. I didn't realize how little I knew about teaching art until she started to flip through those beautiful, beautiful books. I think I'm going to be learning far more than the kids are - kind of unfair, but can't be helped. KIS tries to integrate the curriculum across all subjects, so I'm looking forward enormously to sitting around with the other teachers and making up projects that tie in with what they're teaching. Hopefully I can bring in some biology stuff - perhaps even some zebras! - and take them on nature walks for inspiration. I'm sure I'll be going bonkers trying to take in all the new flora and fauna; ideally, I can get some of that enthusiasm to carry over to them!

My vaccinations are up to date. I have a year's supply of deodorant. I've transferred eight zillion cds to my ipod. I'm heartbroken that I don't have more time in Victoria... I'm not sure why I keep leaving, actually! (To go see fabulous places like southern India, of course - still, I'll miss Victoria a lot.)

My semester starts July 18th!