Last few months in few seconds

To summarize, these are the things that happened since I have arrive to India.

First of all, the Mussoorie tour by couple of kind teachers who took time to show me around the town. They introduced me to couple of their favorite Tibetan stores, vegetable stops and the tailors they trust. It's all about connection and building relationships in India. If you know who to go to, you get good deals! Apparently if I let them know that I work at Woodstock, I should be able to get 20% off right away. Nice! Also when you make good friends with the clothing stores or the tailors, it becomes impossible to leave the place without their welcoming cups of chai. 

Main Bazaar in Diwali decoration

Chaaya, everyone's favorite little cafe. They have beagles!

In first few weeks some kind staff invited me over along with other new staff for dinner and gave us quite a few tips and advice about the life here. How to deal with the coldness, mold, monkeys, food, ATMs, so on and so on. The get together involved some seriously, amazing, delicious food. I really need to gain some proper North Indian cooking skill this time. No more faking like I know how to cook Indian food!

Sareena, a HR staff who helped me get to WS, cooking her AMAZING tandoori chicken.

Devan, Jesse, Karen and our host Sareena. We are all new and fresh!

And then on November 5th, there was Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. It's one of the biggest festival in India. I remember KIS been all beautifully lighted up with candles and we got a lot of sweets that day. You can read more about Diwali here since I'm too lazy to explain the whole story.

Well, I had never been out in a town on Diwali. After the school firework show some of us decided to be adventurous and go out to the bazaar. I kept on hearing that it's pretty dangerous because many local people will be quite drunk and when they see foreigner they could throw firework at us. But as always, I don't care what other people say, specially when it's about how dangerous India is. I wouldn't be here in India if I didn't want that thrill, would I?

Get ready for BANGGG!!

Mussoorie was all decked out for Diwali. Beautiful, isn't it?

So anyways we went out, and yea... to say the least, it was VERY thrilling! It was like walking through a war scene. We were constantly hearing huge explosion sounds coming from both behind and front of us. We couldn't really back off once we walked into the bazaar so we had we keep on going. Seriously, I love firework but most of the firework here is just this big BOOOOOMMM sound that scared the hell out of us every time. What was most scary about what we saw was that there were groups and groups of little kids without any adults watching them, who would be firing some really scary looking firework all by themselves. They were having a blast but really...

In front of the best sweet stop in Mussoorie. Very busy day for them!
In the picture: Me, Paul (Art teacher who also does amazing "stretching" Yoga class),
Hisayo (Japanese dorm parent! Sadly she recently left the school),
Caleb (A crazy dorm parent from Colorado!) and some Kiwi friends.

I also went camping with two other staff friends on November 12th. What a cold and funny experience that was! We camped at a place called Flag Hill. You'll see why in this picture.

Sunrise at Flag Hill (taken by Jesse) 

Apparently Mussoorie (or Dehra Dun?) is the first place in India Dalai Lama escaped to from Tibet. So there are many places here that have significance to the Buddhists and Tibetans and they are usually covered by prayer flags like this. It is believed that every time wind pushes the flag the prayer written on the flag is being read. Anyways, it makes the beautiful scenery even better.

The prayer flag, written in beautiful Tibetan

The two friends were Caleb and Jesse. Caleb is a dorm parent at boy's Hostel, and it's his third year here. He was kind enough to invite us newbies to join him with a Woodstock experience. Also it's almost impossible to say no to Caleb. He is very persuasive. Well, he is just good at making me feel how much fun I could be missing out on if I don't listen to him. If you see what I ended up doing this winter holiday, you'll know what I mean by that. Caleb is also the head lifeguard for the school swimming pool, and he has been using that as an excuse to pull me into all kinds of dangerous adventures. It usually ends up being fun so I'll stop complaining.

Jesse is a newbie just like me. He got hired much earlier than I did but because he only holds a Canadian passport, unlike me who has dozens, he got stuck in Canada for 4 months until India gave him an employment visa. He is a science teacher and I have to say he is as animal geek as I am. He likes to ride them all, and I like to touch them all. Actually his love for snakes are kind of scary. I was surprised to find out that Jesse's home is Sarnia, Ontario because Windsor (where I went for university) is quite close. He also taught English in Japan for a year. My new entertainment is to listen to him speak Japanese, but he makes fun of me all the time so it's sort of fair.

Caleb and I had to go back to get woods for fire... life of living in protected forest! 

Out plan was to be in the air... Anyways, snowy Himalaya in the back!

Tonights Menu: Miso soup, pasta, cookies, chips and some rum!!

Anyways, going back to the camp story... We made a nice dinner. The menu was instant miso soup, pasta with cream sauce and random vegetables, cookies and chips for dessert, and of course some hard drink - rum. I also taught Momotarou story's song to them and we all sung together with hand gesture. We also did animal sounds competition and as usual Japanese animal sounds were rated high since they sound nothing like it but funny.  

Despite the fact that we setup two tents, we ended up sleeping outside in sleeping bags beside fire. I was feeling much colder than those two somehow, so Caleb tucked me into double layers of sleeping bags. This process was hilarious... He had to roll me around and pick me up occasionally to get me in and I felt like a little baby.  

The stars were amazing too

I had to wake up early to catch the hike group. Why did I sign up to chaperon a Grade 6 hike after camping? I don't know. But seriously it got to be quite a weekend with all the outdoor activities. In order to wake up on time, I had brought my high-tech alarm clock that records things. Caleb and Jesse recorded a "pirate wake-up call" for me and it was some way to wake up. It's still in my alarm clock since it's pretty epic. Well, that's it for the camp.

Beautiful mountains

Dehra Dun in night

This post is getting to be to long so I will summarize the Fall 2010 semester in the next one!