The Hiatus is Over

     We have arrived back in Sikkim for Part 2 of our stint at the Taktse School.  We learned a lot during our first trip over about how we each are as travelers, which helped to make the second trip much easier for us all.  Glenn has joined us for 2 weeks and we spent most of the trip over trying to prepare him for the lack of control he will feel over his life during the time he is in India.  In fact, he is planning to guest-blog here over the next three weeks, until he returns home.
     Our time in the US a much needed and well-taken break with time to see friends, a chance to witness how Glenn lives (and how we will live) in New York, and a time away from our life in India.
     The kids didn't really like to talk about India while we were home.  They both wanted to live in the present and to focus on bridging the gap between their experience abroad and the community that has continued on without them in Beverly.  Their friends have been very open to them, which made it a little less overwhelming for them. For me, it was pure joy to focus so much of my time on catching up with my friends and to reconnect with Glenn.  He was SO glad to see us!
    Our time at the house in Beverly was the epitome of bittersweet -- loving the place dearly and being ecstatic about coming home to it has proved a constant reminder that indeed we will be leaving it more permanently when we come back from India in May.
     Our return to India includes many things to look forward to:  I am going to run the start of the school year including teacher orientation and the first 4 weeks or so of school. Pintso will arrive back to Sikkim in March.  Grace is going to study a science and math stream as soon as we return to India, which will be a new endeavor for her with a whole new group of students -- the incoming 10th graders.  And Corrina will get to spend some extra time with Glenn while Grace and I are up at school. They are considering taking a trip to Darjeeling for a few days while he is with us.  We are all excited to share with Glenn our life at Chanbari house with the spiders, the cats, Ms. Neema and the many visitors who come to stay at the house.
     While we have enjoyed our much needed break from the simple and rustic life we led in Gangtok, I am looking forward to returning to a place where it is much easier to live in the moment, where limited choice means less to worry about choosing from, and where "yes" can mean "yes" -- or it can mean "no"!

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.