This Blog has made it Full Circle

     We are at the Lounge in Heathrow airport, the place of my first blog entry, the place where we entered the netherworld of cross-planet travel.  This time we are looking at one last leg of travel to New York City where Glenn and Todd will meet us at the airport this evening.  I do feel changed -- so much more knowledgeable about the developing world, and carrying a clarity about the level of challenge the girls and I can face.  This adventure is not over yet, we have another 3 months starting in February, but I am also beginning to see that our time at home during the end of December and January are is going to be a time of enormous growth as well.  How do we integrate our experiences and our learnings into an existence we know all to well? Stay tuned to find out!

Christmas Prep at Chanbari Hosue

Originally we had planned to use our time in London to get into the Christmas spirit.  Since that trip was nixed, Corrina and I devised a couple of ways to get into the spirit while in Sikkim.

1. We made homemade eggnog.  Here are the ingredients and a photo of Corrina with the finished product. It was DELICIOUS!

2. Corrina worked on making tags for Christmas gifts.  Here she is hard at work -- to keep herself entertained, she watched all three Lord of the Rings movies while she was working on the tags.  

Finally, both girls have downloaded Christmas music to listen to on the way home.  Grace was wondering if the airplane movie list will include Christmas movies.  Here's hoping!

Just when we thought...

     Yesterday was our designated day of departure for our trip home.  The plan was to travel to London where we would visit my good friend Anne for a few days and then fly directly to New York where Glenn, Todd, Lauren and Graham would pick us up.
     Instead  we spent the day at Chanbari House while Grace recovered from a long night of the effects of food poisoning. At 6AM, after only 3 hours of sleep and with Grace laying on the floor of the bathroom, I realized this was not a moment to soldier on, but a moment to once again acknowledge that I am not in control and postpone the trip home.
     Pintso was wonderful, he spent the morning rearranging our flights.  We now have 3 extra days in Gangtok and will fly straight to the US (with a 6-hour layover in London) on Friday and Saturday.  Although we haven't left the comfort of our temporary home yet, it still feels as if we are in a netherworld.  Rebecca, our current house guest, left yesterday in the taxi we were supposed to take.  There are teacher activities going on at school, but I am home taking care of Grace.  Everyone in our larger circle thinks we have left for London but instead we are stuck here waiting for Grace to get better and waiting for the time to pass.
      Once I got over the fact that we would have to go through the hassle of changing our flights, I thought I would feel fine about the situation given that Grace was starting t get better, but my level of disappointment at not starting our trip home was very high.  Even though we get to go home a day early, staying here for 3 extra days is hard!  I keep reminding myself that it is only time and this time will pass quickly, but clearly i am ready to head home!  Corrina was very disappointed as well.  We have been talking about eating western food for at least a week and although England is not known for its cuisine, we were looking forward to some good sausage and hearty breads.
      The up side of this is that there is now time to do things that started to slip from my priorities list, like writing in the blog. So stay tuned, I am sure there are at least photos from Darjeeling to come!

What are we doing for our last few days?

Only now that school is over does it feel like we are going home soon.  In fact, we will be leaving Chanbari House at 7AM on Tuesday morning to begin our long journey back to Beverly.  Here is what we are each doing right now:

Grace
She has already packed her bag (though she just told me that she thought of more things she needs to add to her overfull suitcase). She spent today with friends in town on an "outing." Tomorrow she is going with her friends to get her hair dyed; she is going to color some part of her hair bright pink.  She complains that she doesn't want to leave, even though she she knows we are coming back.

Corrina
Corrina has spent the day re-reading the second book of the Hunger Games series.  She knows she needs to start packing but has done nothing to make progress in that arena.  She wants to watch a movie tonight. We found out today that she got the highest mark in her class on the Science final, a score of 90. By the way, Grace also did well on her exams. Corrina is VERY ready to come home and has started to email her US friends about sleepovers.

Chris
I spent the day working, will spend the night working and will spend tomorrow preparing some cover letters for jobs I want to apply for.  I am not even close to getting packed, but I have been feeling emotional as I have said a few goodbyes at school to students and teachers.  Most of them we will see next February, but some will not return. I spend a lot of time thinking about the food I am going to eat when I get home.  It is mostly food in the Thanksgiving category, savory and rich.  I am worried that it will be very easy to overeat when we get home.  We have all lost weight here and have eaten a mostly vegetarian diet.  It will be hard to go back to large portions of yummy food and not indulge in them fully!

While at the Hospital in Delhi

We have been having such trouble with the internet.  I seem to finally have an evening where I can get online, so here is a post I wrote while sitting with the young ladies who were in the hospital while we were in Delhi. I took care of discharging them from the hospital that day while the rest of the group was visiting the Indian Parliament.

"My world is very small today. MTV is on playing on the television in the hospital room and there is video being shown that is set in New York City. To get there feels like there are many circles, not of hell but of hardship, to climb out of at this moment:

1. Primus Specialty Hospital – the two girls here were SO sick with food poisoning and after taking care of them through one night I am relieved they are better but here we are in the hospital room waiting for the discharge papers to make it to the discharge/bill payment office (there is no healthcare system here. You pay as you go. Corrina's chest x-ray from 2 weeks ago cost Rs. 250, or $5.00).
2. Sikkim House – we are staying in a dumpy basement room in the official hostel and hotel of Sikkim. I dread going to the room at night. It is supposed to hold 6 people and, until 3 girls went to the hospital, we had 9 people staying in the room sharing one bathroom.
3. Delhi – Delhi has not been as stressful or overwhelming regarding filth and poverty as I had expected. It feels like India, more people than you could ever imagine sharing one small city. Sikkim House is right across from the American Embassy so the surrounding environs are well kept and contain tree and grass lined, long straight avenues with an occasional rotary to break the drive.
4. Gangtok – the girls and I are enjoying Delhi but we are looking forward to going back to our temporary home, Chanbari House. When we get home we will have less than 2 weeks to go until we leave for winter break.

5. America and New York – It is hard to imagine what it will be like to live in America after 4 months in a place so significantly different. Maria said to me yesterday as we were making our way through throngs of people to get to a market, “Beverly is going to seem so empty after this.” I think she is right."
   
   
   
   

The Girls' Reflections on Delhi

India Gate, the first day of the trip

The most memorable part of yesterday was getting to dinner. We went down one of the worst roads that I have ever been down and it wasn’t just because of potholes. I’m pretty sure that I will never eat meat here again (in Delhi, that is) and I started bawling at one point. I’m almost positive that this was also terrifying to other people too so I won’t recall specific events, let’s just say that it involved a dead rat and a man with no legs on a skateboard.

-        Corrina

Maria leading her book
workshop

The event I’m glad I didn’t miss was Mrs. Denjongpa’s workshop at the Bookaroo Festival. After seeing workshops the previous day, I was curious to see what they had to do to prepare. I also thought her workshop was unique because she had other people helping her and she split the audience into little groups. But that might have happened in other workshops that I didn’t go to.
Helping in Mrs. D’s workshop also reminded me of TA-ing a bit. The teacher (Mrs. D) sets the plans and really is the main teacher. And the TA’s help out in the classes, which was what I felt we did today. By: Grace

Grace and friends searching for
scavenger hunt clues.

Just another Sunday

   It is 7:02AM, my first cup of tea is finished and the batter for crepes is resting in the fridge.  We are embarking on one of our few remaining, yet typical, Sundays at Chanbari House. The cook has the day off so we are on our own for food (just fine with us), and we will spend the day doing homework and getting ready for the week.
     Last week we all took a trip to Darjeeling with Glenn's parents, who came to visit us for over a week.  It was a wonderful trip, I will post photos later.  The girls really enjoyed the trip even though our room was freezing (no central heat in Darjeeling either) and there was only a small heater for hot water in the hotel room.  Darjeeling is oddly similar to Gangtok and yet somehow more than Gangtok in a way that resonating with us all.  Given that it was Dewali, the atmosphere was particularly festive with lots of lights on the buildings, fireworks going off at night, and performances at the main square.
    This Tuesday we are off on another adventure, this time with students and teachers from Taktse.  We are headed to Delhi for a sightseeing/history trip and a visit to a book and writing festival called Bookaroo.  Each of us is nervous and excited about the trip -- nervous about the conditions of Delhi and the conditions of our living arrangements and excited to be taking this trip with friends and colleagues.  There will be little to no internet access again, so it may be a while until there is another post to this blog.  When we return from Delhi we will only have 2 weeks until we start our journey back to the US.

Waiting for the News

     For the first time since I started voting over 20 years ago, I believe I am going to be awake when the results of the presidential election are announced.  I will be at school when the announcement is made, I hope to have my computer on when the decision is clear.
     I never worked so hard to cast my own ballot -- absentee voting is a fascinating process.  After filling out and scanning an absentee ballot request, which was rejected, I filled out an electronic request for my ballot, then had the ballot sent to me as a pdf from the town clerk in Beverly (Jane Murphy is her name and she was incredibly responsive to my needs), filled it out scanned it and sent it back.  Of course you can imagine the rigmarole required just to have the ballot printed and then to get it scanned and emailed to me!  Anyway, late last week I got confirmation that my vote had been completed.
     On the home front, there is something wrong with the hose to the water tank and we are currently living without any water.  It started to become a problem yesterday morning, we all washed our hair in the sink when it became clear that all we would get out of the shower head was a trickle. By the evening there was no water at all and we went out to eat.  Not sure what today will hold, but I am worried that it won't be fixed before my in-laws arrive tomorrow evening.

The mountains ........ Finally!

 






While most of you are slogging through an historic hurricane (or is it a non-hurricane?), we are enjoying spectacular, if not a little chilly, weather.  And here is the proof:  the mountains are out!  I can understand now why they are considered gods, living beings.  They have been in hiding for so long that when they show themselves we are drawn to them; we want to look at them all the time, get closer to them, feel their presence.  The photos just don't do them justice.

Vacationing with the Hostel Kids

    We are about to head back to school after a week long relax-fest. Corrina prides herself on the fact that she left the house only once during the whole week.  Grace took her first exam on Thursday and felt that she did fine on it; we won't get the results until January.  I got a massage yesterday at the Mayfair Hotel, one of the fanciest hotels in Sikkim.
     While we were on vacation some of the students living in the hostel came to stay with us.  After the last set of exams we went out to celebrate at "Flamboyance," the local brick oven pizzeria.  Here are some photos of the trip:

Ingsa, 10th grader, and Sherab, 9th grader.

Grace with Sagun and Simrin, gearing up
for karaoke.

Margharita pizza

Corrina and Pomme Pomme, an 8th grader from
Thailand

 Corrina and Pomme Pomme, with the help of Pintso's cousin Rebecca, made apple pie one night as well.

Corrina and Pomme Pomme with
our new cook, Ms. Neema.

     

Religion at the Beef Shop

"The Christians are good employees. They work hard and they don't steal."

"The Buddhists will lie right to your face, but they wouldn't hurt a fly."

      Last Saturday Mr. Karma drove the Spaceo and picked up all the admin staff to take them to work.  Chanbari House was the last stop.  On the way up, the person who oversees the food orders reminded Mr. Karma that we needed to pick up the beef for the hostel kids that was ordered the day before.  So we all went along for the ride to the meat shop.
      Mr. Karma, the estate manager and most likely a buddhist by upbringing, pulled up to the roadside shop where sides and cuts of beef hung from meat hooks both in and outside the shop.  There were cars parked in front of the building, but that did not deter Mr. Karma.  He pulled in close, in between the cars and the shop, as if he were parking on the sidewalk.  He was so close to the building, in fact, that the roof rack collided with the tin awning coming out of the beef shop roof.  Undeterred by the scraping sound above, he backed up and pulled in even closer to the shop, stopped the car and got out to pick up the beef.
     Ms. Rekha, the business manager and a devout Hindu, was sitting in the back seat by the car door closest to the shop.  With the windows open from a lovely morning's crive along the upper road, the faint and acrid smell of beef curing in the sun filled the cab of the car.  We were waiting silently in the car (there was an unusual mix of high level admin and low level drivers that led to a somewhat uncomfortable silence) when Rekha let out a "Peuw!" under her breath.  Then she said, "He knows I can't look at it, why did he park here?"  Then silence for her to build her argument and the declaration, "He could have parked further down the road a bit.  There are spots I can see form here!" Making her case, she finally said, "He did this on purpose."
      A quick stop at the beef shop had turned into a religious affront.  This is Sikkim.

Facebook

     I find myself trawling Facebook these days more often than when we first arrived in Gangtok and certainly more than I ever did when I lived in Beverly.  On Facebook I find an entertaining mix of the personal (I have friends who jog and while they jog can get words of encouragement from me if I post the comment on Facebook!),

I just started a run with Nike+ GPS

Let me hear it!

Cheer me on with comments or likes and I’ll hear it along the way.

general knowledge (did you know there is a potential hurricane brewing off of the coast of Jamaica?)

The Perfect Storm: Possible Next Week… But Is It Likely? - CBS Bostonboston.cbslocal.comSo you may have heard… meteorologists up and down the East 

and the political. In fact, I came to the realization that Facebook has become a tether line for me after reading the following post:

As President, Romney will tackle the bayonet shortage head-on.

This comment was posted by a beloved student from Meridian Academy, Sam Miller, who was referring to a point made in the most recent presidential debate.  I of course had no idea that the debate was going on!  Thanks to his post (and many others in the end) I went in search of information about and follow-up to the debate.
      An endorsement for Scott Brown by a Facebook contact spurred me to check on my absentee ballot status.  Come to find out, the US government never sent my request to vote by email to the Beverly Town Clerk, so now she is going to help me do it.  That same endorsement led me to figure out exactly who that person was and contemplate blocking her from my friends list (I didn't go that far though).
     I think Facebook has become a reverse blog for me.  I am very out of touch with America -- no one in Gangtok ever talks about anything related to the US -- and we are wrapped up in coping with the environment in which we currently live.  When I have visited Europe, people would ask me to justify some economic policy or explain an American cultural phenomenon, but here no one thinks about the US; The girls and I have spent most of our brain power figuring out how to adjust to the culture here.
     Still, I/we have a growing desire to connect with the world back home (Corrina has started having chat sessions with a couple of friends that last for hours, after weeks of not even wanting to contact her friends in Beverly), an enormous desire to be home (and especially be with Glenn), and a strengthening understanding that New England is where we belong.  We are counting the days until we come back home, not out of a dislike for our current situation (in fact I think we are very content here at Chanbari House right now!), but out of a desire to touch the life we had before we came to Sikkim.  Imagine what it will be like when we come home only to realize that we have changed, and home has changed, in such ways that we will never go back to our old life.  I am very curious to see what the new life will hold.

First Photos from Autumn Collage

Last night Taktse International School preformed a concert at the Secretariat Hall in Gangtok.  Both girls sang in the performance and I managed the backstage.  Here are some photos I took, there will be more to come!

Prashanti -- one of the girls
in my math class.

More students from my
math class!

Grace and Tenchung before
the performance.

Mrinaala, also in the 4th grade, in her "K-Pop" costume.

11th graders performing
their song.

Vacation is coming

     Today is the last day before a week long puja holiday.  Tomorrow night the whole school, including Grace and Corrina, will be performing a concert in a spectacular auditorium downtown.  After that, we have few plans for the upcoming week.  Grace will be studying for and then taking a Cambridge English exam and Corrina and I are planning to watch a lot of movies.  We are open for any suggestions that can be downloaded from iTunes.  There is an amusement park here that me may try out after the exam is over.

     Grace and Corrina each got outfits for the concert, I will make sure to post photos of them in their traditional garb.

What are we doing here?

     Since the day we arrived in Sikkim I have been haunted by this question: what the heck are we doing here?  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and find myself thinking about it. When I sit and write emails to Laila I find myself asking myself (and her) the same question.  Sometimes I have an answer, but more often than not it is a rhetorical question, meant to represent my inability to see to the other side of this experiment, nor to see what we will have taken away from the experience. Last night I found myself asking it again as we were coming home from a lovely dinner out.
     This time I believe I was asking it for a different reason. As we were climbing the steps to the taxi stand, life felt no different than it would have if we had been at home.  I think maybe we have truly arrived.  "What are we doing here?" I asked it then because I could feel us being ourselves -- happy, grumpy, bored, at peace, safe -- at that point in time and in general for longer and longer periods of time every day.  Partly, we have adjusted to our new surroundings so that less and less often we are surprised or upset by what we see. Partly I think all three of us has come to have a level of acceptance for what life can be here in Sikkim for us.

The End of the Karma

     Our cook left for good on Tuesday.  She asked for the day off and never came back.  Maria said we may never find out exactly why she left, nor should we have expected any warning signs.  People here get upset about something, never say anything and instead retreat until they are completely gone. I asked Maria if there was ever a chance for reconciliation and she said, "it depends if the karma has ended." Well, I think the karma has ended for Buddhamaya and us.  It's hard to carry the knowledge that she has left upset and without really knowing the reasons why she was upset.  On the other hand, we struggled to get her to do chores and other things around the house, so maybe a new cook will be better able to run the household.  In the meantime, the school has been ordering some delicious take-out food in the evenings and we fend for ourselves in the morning.  I just wish I knew how to make Dal!

As Washers go....

  So, we finally have a working clothes washer!  I thought you might like to know that we are now able to wash AND dry our clothes.  Of course, there is only one viable electrical outlet in the room with the washer and dryer, which means we can't put the wet load in the dryer at the same time a new load is being washed. To add to the complication, it is also the electrical outlet for the hot water heater in that bathroom, so there are 3 appliances for one plug-in!
    Also, the washer currently empties it's wastewater onto the bathroom floor where it then makes its way to the drain in the floor. I have a feeling that will be fixed sometime soon, maybe in March.
      Either way, we are very happy to wash our clothes here at home, and dry them too!

Trip to Namchee

A dog sleeping on the ledge
of the second floor of the restaurant 

   On Ghandhi's Birthday (last Tuesday, it was a school holiday) we spent the day visiting the largest Statue in Sikkim, a statue built with the help and oversight of Pintso's father, Sonam. It sits on the site of an old meditation hut in a town called Namchee.  To get there we drove about three hours, the first hour down into the valley of southern Sikkim and the next hours hours back up another mountain.  On the way there we drove through a lot of jungle and also drove through a couple of tea plantations.

The view from a rest stop.

Once at the statue site, a thick mist rolled in and we couldn't even see the statue from 30 feet below it.  After an hour or so, the mist lifted for about 15 minutes and we took all the photos we could.  Then the mist re-enclosed the statue.  There were many tourists there with us, mainly Bengalis (Maria told us) who like to travel to Sikkim after the monsoon season ends. They were very intrigued by all of us white people and asked Maria where we were from.

This is a snow lion holding up the
Buddha.  It is made out of fiberglass
and was drivin up from Siliguri.

Corrina, Christine, Maria and Laila take off
their shoes to enter the prayer room
at the base of the statue.

There was also a group of teenagers from Gangtok and one of them was brave enough to ask Grace would she let a guy in their group of friends take a photo with her?  She graciously said yes and much picture-taking ensued.  Laila took photos of Grace and the kids, I will upload them once she sends them to me.  Eventually just about everyone in our party had their photo taken with the students and they went on their way.

    The statue was in the process of being repainted, which Sonam was relieved to see.  After the people at his monastery built it (at the request of the government) they decided they should take it over and maintain it.  Of course, they didn't maintain it at all. While we were there men were climbing the scaffolding and scraping off paint.
      On the way home we stopped at a rest stop and ran into a group of white people, I think from Australia, who were taking a motorcycle tour of the mountains.  They looked pretty rough and tumble!

Our Current Status

I figure it is about time for an update on how each of us are doing.

At a rest stop on the way to see the largest
Statue in Sikkim -- another post to come...

Photos taken by my friend Laila, who is visiting
for the week.

Corrina first.  Corrina is the one of us most likely to count the days until we go home in December.  While she would clearly prefer to be back in her old life in Beverly, she is more easily living in the day-to-day of life here in Chanbari House.  She likes some of her classes, including science, and is slowly making friends with the kids at school.  She still prefers to eat lunch with me everyday, but I can see she is more and more comfortable on her own in the school space.  At home she likes to stay in, watching movies on her computer and lazing around the house.  She just finished reading The Hobbit and is now reading a tome that is all three Lord of the Rings books in one gigantic volume.  She speaks proudly of the fact that other students in her class have started reading The Hobbit since she finished it. Her engagement with the rest of the Sikkimese world revolves around going out to dinner, and she asks less frequently for American food.

Now Grace.  Grace is mired in studying for the preliminary Cambridge English Exam which she will be taking in early November.  She is writing short essays almost every night, trying to make the essays longer, her handwriting neater and her spelling more accurate.  She continues to gain friends in the school and even went to town last Friday with a bunch of friends after school. The basketball has waned a bit, there are few girls' teams at other schools, which disappoints her.  But she is still a star on the court and loves the positive reactions she gets from the students at the school when she plays.  Of the three of us, she finds it most difficult to share living space with so many different people.  Before we came here I didn't really think about how much of our living would be communal, and with people who are coming and going, but it is a big part of our life in Chanbari House.

Finally me.  Somewhere between the time Charna arrived in September and the time that Laila arrived last week, I morphed from being another guest at Chanbari to being the mistress of the house. It is not a position I actively sought, but perhaps a natural one for me to grow into.  I realized it just today as I was coming home early (I am not feeling well), when I spent most of the ride home thinking about who was going to take care of rounding up everyone for the Spaceo ride home and make sure that everyone who needed a ride would get one.  The dogs are mine (even though I was under the impression that we were ALL going to help take care of the dogs), the weekly dinner menu is mine -- something I am happy to own -- and people look to me to solve the minor issues that arise in the daily life of being in Gangtok. I lost my phone on Monday and only now that it is gone do I see how many small phone calls I get or initiate around the details of family and home life.
        At work I have hit a bit of a wall.  While I am doing many interesting projects and having great conversations with Pintso and his mom, I am also ready to offer some new ways to think about doing things.  But the pace of getting things done is very slow, especially in comparison to the overdrive pace of Gann Academy that I had grown accustomed to.  I am engaging my patience, but also trying to find ways to assert myself without offending or putting people off.  There are amazing people working at Taktse and I see the potential the school has to go to a new level; I hope I can help move it there while working within the way things happen at Taktse.

Oy, the dogs...

     There is so much still to learn. Perhaps they are lessons I should have learned by now after 8 weeks in Gangtok, but I can well see that the fact I haven't learned them dooms me to repeat the same thing over and over again.

     There are two stray puppies at the school, one probably about a year old, the other around 6 months. The one on the left is the younger of the two.  The older black dog (we'll call her Belle) was starting to cause trouble for herself at school -- she had joined the school as a puppy and everyone thought it was cute when she would nip them but as an older puppy people became afraid that she would really bite them.  Also, she is a bit willful as dogs go and likes to sleep in the classrooms.  The cleaning staff are very scared of her and had started beating her to get her out of the rooms.  The little puppy (we'll call her Olive) is a biter and a bit wild, but still cute and small enough for everyone to love her.
      Needless to say, as we saw the beatings going on and watched the black dog become more and more ornery, we decided to take both of them from the school and train them properly at home. Ha, ha, I think the joke is on us.
      They have been at the house for three days and for the most part it has been ok, but I keep expecting the things that work with our three dogs at home will work in Sikkim, and I just don't think they will.  For instance, we want to have happy, quiet dogs, but with the whole neighborhood full of strays, once one of those dogs starts barking, our dogs start barking, at any time day or night.  We bought collars and leashes to take the dogs for a walk, but as soon as you step outside the compound there are stray dogs menacingly protecting their territory and growling at us as we try to walk by.  Pintso said this morning that before this experiment is over I will have been trained to carry a big stick and hit the other dogs, and I think he is right.
     The dogs escape our yard every day and when they come back they have clearly had a great time, but they get riled up and wild while they are out there.  And I realized that if they are going to leave the house (not sure how we could possibly do it otherwise) they need to keep some of their streetwise attitude to make it work with the stray dogs.  But that attitude makes us not like them as much. And then there is the worry that while they are out there they will get hurt, or beaten by some other human... We need to learn how to not care so much (incredibly hard for Grace to do, by the way) and how to be at peace with whatever happens to the dogs.  We did not bring them into this world and we have little control over how they will experience this world.  Maybe the best thing for them would have been to be beaten at school until they found a different place to stay. I keep telling Grace that they started out as strays and that they may end up that way again.  In the meantime, we will love them, warily, and wait to see what happens, having yet to learn our lesson.

A Busy Week Last Week

    We have been busy lately, which is a good thing I suppose.  I know that it has made each of us more tired -- none of us stays up much past 9PM these days!
     Last week held a few surprises. First we had the minor earthquake, which occurred at almost exactly the same time, one year later, as the major earthquake they had here last year.  In fact, there was an anniversary vigil  being held in the marketplace when this year's 3-second, 4.1 on the Richter Scale, tremor occurred.  It was the first earthquake for all of us. Grace handled it with sense of humor; she thought it was funny that her knees wobbled during the earthquake AND after the earthquake.  Corrina got very upset and cried, at which point Budhamaya told her, "Don't cry, don't cry!" and 15 minutes later Corrina was remembering with awe what it felt like to be in an earthquake.

A Vishwakarma Puja at our local taxi stand

     The next day was a Hindu holiday commemorating the God of all things mechanical--Vishwakarma!  People do "pujas" to pray to this god by decorating their cars and having prayer services in places like the taxi stand and the police headquarters.  After school that day Grace and I went into town to buy her a dress for Traditional Dress Day the following day.  On the way home, we could barely find a taxi -- all the drivers were busy celebrating the holiday.

The following day all of the cars were still decorated, including our car, which makes driving a little more fun.  I realized too late that I should have done a puja for the washing machine -- it STILL isn't hooked up to work! 

Below are some photos from Traditional Dress Day.  The girl standing alone is in my 4th grade math class.  Her name is Rikzim and she is the cousin of one of the girls in Grace's grade.  People use the words cousin and sister/brother very loosely here.  It seems like everyone we meet in town is a cousin of Simrin's or Tenchung's.

      Grace and Corrina each wore a skirt that we bought in Gangtok.  We found a Levi's Store and an Adidas store where we were able to buy western clothes.  After this last Traditional Dress Day Grace said she would like to buy a Baku (the type of outfit Rikzim is wearing below) for the next Traditional Dress Day.

I borrowed these photos of Pintso and his parents from one of our housemates. We currently have 2 people staying with us: Peggy who is an oboeist and is here to help with the Autumn Concert and Sharna who is a Waring alumna and recently graduated from college.

To the left here is Maria, Pintso's mom, with Pintso.  Below is Pintso with his dad, Sonam. Maria teaches Grade 10 English and Grade 11 (she is Grace's teacher) and Sonam oversees all of the construction at the school.