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.

 

Tremor Update

     We are totally fine!  The earthquake (4.1) was very unexpected, but only lasted a few seconds.  No one was injured, though our knees knocked for a while after it was over. Here is a link that explains it all:

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/tremor-felt-in-sikkim-exactly-a-year-after-devastating-quake-269026

Earthquake

I chat with Chris and the girls about once a day.  Sometimes we go for a day or two without chatting, sometimes we talk a couple times a day.  Between Google Talk/Hangout for video chatting and Google Voice for cheap international calls (0.02/minute), we have a pretty reliable set of options for communicating.  Video chats are preferred -- it is great to see them -- but calling works even when their internet is out.

This morning at 8:25 AM ET (5:55 PM IST) I was on a video chat with Chris.  I had just spoken with Grace, and Chris was walking with her computer over to where Corrina was.  There was a noise in the background, and at first I thought it someone had dropped something or tripped.  It turns out there was an earthquake.

While holding her computer, Chris and the girls gathered in a doorway.  Corrina was quite frightened by what was happening.  Chris seemed extremely calm and collected, gathering the girls to her side.  She observed that she could hear all the neighbors talking outside.  At that point Chris said she should focus on the situation at hand and we bid each other adieu.

When's the last time you cut a phone call short because of an earthquake?

Thoughts from the week

Sunday Night--
     I thought I could will Sikkim out of the rainy season, but my powers of persuasion are clearly not up to the job.  It has been raining ALL WEEK. It is a new kind of rain, but rain nonetheless.  This rain includes mist that blows in early in the morning, drizzle that begins on the way to school and a steady rain that lasts until late in the evening. I don't think we saw sunshine once this past week.
     I also thought I could will the washing machine to be ready to use by now.  That didn't work out either.  We do have a "working" dryer, but the vent lands in the middle of the bathroom which leaves even more moisture in the air, and drying hang-wrung clothes takes a REALLY LONG TIME!
     I did explore a new part of the city today with our two housemates while Grace and Corrina stayed home to do homework.  We visited a multi-story shopping area called Lal Market that sold everything from single cloves of garlic to underwear and bras. We also had a lovely dinner last night at a new restaurant -- it took FOREVER for the food to come out but it was tasty and we celebrated the fact that the electricity was on after a whole day of it being out at home, at Taktse and in town.

Thursday's Thoughts--  
     Today was a discouraging day. My new math students are impossible to control. Fortunately they only do small bad things (the 5th grade class does many worse things in their class), but at least half the students in my class are only interested in seeing what they can get away with, and they got away with a lot today:

1. Sneaking candy from their bags and eating it during class
2. Pinching, pushing and shoving each other as they moved from the circle on the floor to their seats at the tables
3. Throwing erasers across the room
4. Leaning back in their chairs -- one boy had the audacity to tell me that 4 legs were on the floor, of course two of them were his....
5. Talking when they were supposed to be quiet
6. Shouting out answers to problems

I think the most upsetting part was the fact that, in some form or another, it went on continuously.  It took 35 minutes to get the whole class fully engaged in the activity which left only 10 minutes for good work to happen. That said, they all had their homework done on time and in correct order, which matters too I guess.

    Some of the adults acted similarly today.  I had a meeting scheduled that the Admin Assistant had confirmed the previous afternoon, but the person never showed up.  He had gone off-campus earlier in the day and never even bothered to call and cancel the meeting. And when he got back to school, many  hours later, he made himself scarce so that I didn't see him all day.

     The computer intern, a former student who is working for the school while he studies for the Science Cambridge Exam, was asked to set up a computer for the new Admin. Assistant two weeks ago.  He set one up and then the monitor died. Rather than grabbing an old monitor from the storage cabinet, he kept the poor man waiting for all this time.  Today I insisted that somehow he put together a computer for the assistant who desperately needs one for his work. The Business manager had located a monitor that could be borrowed until a new one was ordered, and all of a sudden the intern knew where he could find an extra monitor right away. After it was set up the Admin Asst. asked him to also hook up the printer.  The intern's response was, "Oh no, that can't happen today!"  I asked why and he came up with an excuse related to the fact that he didn't have the disk needed for the driver, hoping that I didn't know what he was talking about -- of course you can download a driver quite easily in 10 minutes.

     It is really hard not get angry about these things -- they feel like personal affronts; and I can't see any way how to get people to change except to show them how displeased I am with them, just as I feel I must do with my students.  It feels deeply rooted, learned in primary school -- it is ok to employ no self-control because it is your boss's/teacher's/parent's job to make you do it, through what techniques I know not!

     Are they interested in doing good work? What are they thinking about when they make the choices they do?  What need are they meeting that is hidden to me?  Why did that intern not do his absolute best to get the computer for the Admin Assistant? What makes the people I now work with tick?

Some Eclectic Photos

Not a moth, not a grasshopper,
not sure what it is....

The puppies -- one will come to our
house eventually

A "Goods Carrier" with eyes watching you.

The Dharma teacher enjoying
the chance to play basketball.

My other work in progress, Humanizing Education Blog

You might be interested in another blog I am working on related to the topic of education.  This blog post finds its roots in the girls' struggle with our trip:
Humanizing Education: Zone of Proximal Emotional Growth

Novelty's effect on Homesickness

     I think it is fair to say that the novelty of our situation is wearing off.  We are no worse nor better than we were only a week ago, but there is a sense that we are facing a routine that includes things we like and things we don't like, that gives us a sense of security that we know what will happen next and where to go for what we need, but that also forces us to face squarely the mundanity of life even on a trip in a culture as foreign as Sikkim.  The laundry needs to be done on Sunday, what a pain to wash clothes in the bathtub.  Homework has to get done, in fact I am not even making sure the girls keep up with the math they are supposed to do outside of school.  The tea is too sweet (they love their sugar here), but at least Budhamaya now makes eggs for the 2 kittens (yes, we now have another kitten) in the morning without my having to ask her to.
     I am ready to explore more of the countryside and the city, but the girls are reluctant to leave the comfort zone we have so painstakingly created at Chanbari House and at the local marketplace.  They love nothing better than to lounge around in their pajamas on the weekend, watching videos we have borrowed from the school DVD collection. To be fair, Grace played basketball last weekend and will do so again this coming Saturday.  And it is a bit of a logistical issue to go anywhere.  We don't have a car and driver at our disposal, nor would I want to drive a car if I had the option to.
     Finally, my homesickness is starting to set in.  Grace had it from two weeks before we left Beverly until the third or fourth day of school, when she became close to the girls in her grade. Corrina started about then and still struggles with it almost every day.  Calling Glenn in the morning, just as she is getting ready for school, has made a big difference there.  For me, I have fended off homesickness with the use of novelty, soaking up my surroundings and the new people to meet.  But now that we are in our routine, I find myself thinking of home and longing for it often.  I love the Fall in New England -- the Topsfield Fair, crisp days for apple picking, cold nights when we might light a fire, all the Jewish holidays that I had off!  I miss the pets, the comforts of our own home, the people who know me well who I don't have to explain myself to, literally or figuratively.
     We passed the quarter way mark for this leg of our adventure last week.  I know we can make it, but a quick trip home to recharge would be so sweet right now!

Sun and Basketball

Friday ---  
   I have a hypothesis that the monsoon season is over today.  We woke up and the sky had a completely different quality to it -- high thin clouds covering the morning sun, clouds higher than the mountains (except for the highest snow covered mountains -- we are still waiting to see them in their full glory). There was also little mist as we drove to school with our new driver, whose name I do not know.
     Today Pintso is out of town and the Heads of Upper and Lower School are both out.  So it is up to me and Ms. Dingtsa to hold down the fort.

Saturday --
     Grace and I went to school so that she could play on the basketball team for the first time. They played Kyedikang Academy and won easily 27-2. They only had 6 girls on their team, against a visiting team with at least 15 girls, but they played really well together.

Grace and Pema heading down the court

Kitso, Sagun and Pema

Action shot!

Mr. Numgyal -- their coach

Smrithi

The boys played after the girls.  The boy in the middle
is actually on the Bhutanese national team.
He showed off a lot!

Grace had a great time playing but got a pretty bad sunburn -- oh yeah, did I mention that the sun is out?  It is a very strong sun that warms things up quickly, and it did rain for a bit this afternoon, but I think we are coming out of the monsoons.  I hope I will be able to salvage my sandals, which are currently covered in a thin layer of mold.  There are at least 4 different types living there, I'll spare you a photo of that!

Kids will be Kids

      It feels very cliche to say so, but I have to admit that I find myself thinking it often as I spend time with the students in Taktse and in Sikkim: kids are the same anywhere in the world.  Yes, there are differences -- habits, customs, languages, wealth and resources -- but the fact remains, kids are the fundamentally driven by the same desires and motivations no matter where you go.
     Today the girls were entered in an inter-scholastic competition representing Taktse.  The "Inner Wheel" of the Rotary Club sponsored this event that included activities like a spelling bee, a drawing competition, debate and "Dumb Charades." The competition was fierce and good-natured.  The students laughed with and at each other, paid attention, got bored and restless and overall had fun at this event.

Corrina spelling "souvenir"

      Taktse students won a good number of awards for their accomplishments at the competition, including Corrina who won 2nd place in her age-group's spelling bee. (The 1st place winner was also a Taktse student in her class....) Corrina was very proud!  We waited all day for the 30 seconds it took her to go on stage to collect the prize, but it was worth it to see her beaming at her accomplishment.

    At this competition there was wholly too much standing around -- the legislative minister gave a 40 minute speech while over 600 students and over 150 adults stood by -- and too much sitting around -- we waited 4 hours for the final ceremony to happen where Corrina went on stage to get her prize. But all the students were anxious and invested in the possibility of winning in their categories, so they sat and waited, and they handled both success and defeat with grace.  Everyone watched the general knowledge quiz and I felt the contestants could have been competing on the Granite State Challenge!  There were boys mostly, eagerly sitting forward into the microphone to shout their answers first.

Listening, sort of...

     I know that Grace will never choose to go to another Interscholastic Competition, but Corrina may; and I will happily sit all day, watching the kids be kids.

A Walk into Town

The downtown area of Gangtok has become our familiar.  It tends toward a place of comfort, we know where to get a bite to eat, we know where to buy bins for our underwear and socks, and we are beginning to figure out where to buy clothes.  The walk to town takes about 15 minutes. These are 2 photos of the view along the way.

Most neighborhoods in the area, including the one we live in, are nestled into the side of a hill, as you can see. I found out yesterday the roads are so bad in our neighborhood because the people who live there are critical of the local government. The consequence? Dirt roads with patches of pavement and potholes that, as you go over them, make you feel you could lurch off the cliff at any moment.

The walk down to town includes steps that pass a local monastery.  Each flag has a prayer on it that the winds blow into the ears of the gods. Some days the flags are up, some days they are missing.

Usually we get something to eat first thing when we go to town. If we go after school, Baker's Cafe provides yummy sweet baked goods to eat.  If we go for a meal we tend to go to Gangtalk, a restaurant above the marketplace with decent food and a veranda view of the walkway. These are photos from the veranda. Across the way is a palm reader, a trekking travel agent and our money exchange location.

Here is the view from the street.  This is a well lit walkway with children running around.  We often run into students from school as we walk among the gawking strangers.  Lately there have been more white people in view -- I think that tourist season will begin soon.

This is the store where we ordered the girls' uniforms for Taktse.  It seems that most schools get their uniforms from this store, which makes it a busy place.

Sagun showed us where she likes to buy ice cream.  It had a decent flavor and consistency, but it was no Capt'n Dusty's!  The cones were bright orange, which was a bit disconcerting at first....