Ice Skating by Aven

In the mall near our house, we saw an ice skating rink! From the outside, it looked quite small, about the size of an average living room. I saw some people having lots of fun and I wanted to try it, but we had to go home. A day or two later, Dad and I were at the mall to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and found that the theater was full. So instead, we went to check out the ice skating rink. We went inside and paid for a half hour. A woman was there to put on some skates and tie them for you. I got out on the rink and more or less “walked” across the rink. Something was different. I tried to skate back across the rink, but my skates kept slipping out to the side instead of going straight ahead.

After a while I started noticing all the skate marks on the ice, which makes sense because I was having a hard time imagining a mini-Zamboni going up and down that tiny rink. I also noticed that it wasn’t as cold as it should be to keep ice frozen. So, I reached down to see how cold it was and was shocked to find that it was not ice at all, but he whole rink was made out of plastic! Can you believe it? Plastic! I was ice-skating on plastic! And it was all icky and oily too! After about five minutes, the rink attendant noticed that I was having trouble, so he came to help me out. I soon learned that I needed to push more to the back than to the side, and to make bigger “walking forward” motions. 

This guy, about 17 or 18 I’d guess, decided that I needed my skates sharpened. He took me over to some sort of skate-sharpening machine. After my skates were all nice and sharp he took me out on the plastic again. My feet started to hurt, so I got out of my skates and bought a bottle of water.

If you find yourself in India, plastic-skating is not one of the things you should do. It’s so different from ice-skating on so many levels, and the rink is so small that even if it were possible to go over two miles an hour, it wouldn’t be much fun anyway.

May's Shalwar Kameez & KFC

May has a couple new Indian outfits!

We were told this would be fancy enough to wear to a wedding!

A close up!

A more casual Shalwar -- which is pronounced sal-war with the 'a' sound like in 'call'. I would not say these are designed to keep a gal cool in the heat, but they sure are pretty.

Aven in his native habitat -- Stripe and Cream at his side and his nose in the iPad. He also uses his neck cooler (seen at the upper left of the bed) and a batter operated 'personal fan and sprayer.'

KFC was a bust. Aven was so excited to know that KFC was nearby. When we actually went there, he was really bummed. Apparently, the Colonel’s secret recipe is changed based on the palate of the majority of the population. The coating had a touch of chili and was slightly sweet. That made it unacceptable for him. The rest of us liked it just fine. I think it’s actually better. However, Aven is the most difficult member of our adventurous troop to feed, and I badly wanted to have a comfort food readily available. He is accepting donations of Annie’s mac and cheese (purple boxes or orange boxes). We have decent pasta. Just send the sauce packets.

Sunday Stroll Pictures

May and I went to a nearby mall to get a few things this afternoon. Carl and Aven went to see the new Planet of the Apes movie at the same mall. (It was even in English.) I am self conscious about taking pictures of people but I want to share the mundane scenery of our neighborhood.

Local juice stall. The health inspector was by just last week, right? That is a pile of trash at the right.

There were lot of smashed melons with red powder on them today. I will try to find out what it means.

We got a tear in May's backpack repaired. Check out that sewing machine!

Religious supply stall

An alley we passed. If you enlarge the picture, you can see a shrine about halfway down on the right.

Road Work. Seriously.

A powdered melon near a painted watermelon and a statue of Ganesha.

Another alley

A little river we cross to get to the mall.

A house on the riverbank

The water is black like ink. Silt?

This is called an "auto" -- as in auto rickshaw. In Thailand, they were tuk-tuk's after the sound the motors make. This is the simplest mode of transportation. For a ride of about a mile, the cost is under a dollar. The fact that I stopped to take a picture has alerted the driver -- who is wearing white and headed toward us to see if we need a ride.

At the mall, the number of stores for men's clothes and shoes outnumber the stores for women's by about 4 to 1. A complete reversal of our ratio. Most of the people at the mall were men. The few women we saw were with their husbands and sometimes children.

This escalator makes a disquieting clank every now and then.

Lots of guys.

Typical street scene. People walking in the road.

This is scaffolding in front of a store facade. The scaffolding is tree branches -- bark and all -- tied together with rope.

More mystery melons.

Close up.

Woman selling young coconut. She will use a knife to lop off one end so the liquid can be drunk. Very high in electrolytes and excellent for hydration. It tastes like slightly sweet and fizzy water. I did not ask the price.

A billion bags a day

I took some plastic bags to the grocery with me to use for my purchases. This must not be common because the bagger placed my groceries in my bags and then put those bags in another bag. However, the Indian government has passed a law requiring merchants to charge for plastic bags. If the merchants are forced to follow through, the environmental impact is stunning to consider. Imagine over a billion people reducing their use of plastic bags.

Our First Day of School

Both May and Aven have been asked to sing for their classmates. They both demurred. Aven reports that he was asked to dance as well. Aven was asked to sing the national anthem, which he does know. That is something I never got around to teaching them, so I will have to give the credit to school. The Indian students are much more socially outgoing than the students at home. They speak very loudly to get attention and will get very close physically. May enjoys attention more than Aven, and her adjustment has been easier. She came home with ball-point pen all over her palm in henna designs, which she thought was cool. Aven has found that he can make paper cranes or paper stars or do little magic tricks to interact with his classmates. However, the most difficult adjustment in school is the heat and the mosquitoes. Aven finds it difficult to concentrate with his knees under attack. The repellant seems to be sweat away.

Both children have been excused from spots period (gym class), which can involve running laps of the schoolyard in the noon sun in the dress shoes that are part of the uniform. I explained that when our weather gets this hot, we keep the children inside during the hottest part of the day. They are also excused from Hindi and Sanskrit classes, so they have a fair amount of reading time during the school. They discovered this week that the library has air conditioning (when the electricity is functioning) and they will be retreating there when possible.

All students here are learning Hindi, Sanskrit and English during school. The predominant languages are Tamil and Telugu here in the south. Some students also take German and school is taught in English. So, by the time a student graduates from high school, they are likely to know Tamil, English, Hindi, Sanskrit and perhaps German and the language spoken at home. The teachers find it perplexing that U.S. children will not start a second language until middle school – after the best language learning time has passed.

An average Indian teacher has 4 hours and 15 minutes less of actual teaching time than US teachers, but the classes are spread over six days and are only 35 minutes long. I have more planning time, but being at work for six full days is significantly more draining. Also, the school has a bell that is not always audible – some classrooms are too far from the bell and sometimes an airplane obscures the sound. We are adjacent to an airport, so the planes are pretty regular. In addition, the electricity often goes out, and then the bells don’t ring. As far as I can tell, the actual time schedule for the beginning and end of classes is just a rough guide. The bells do not coincide with the timetable. This means that the actual class time, which is scheduled to be 35 minutes, can range from 25 minutes to 45 minutes. Using all the class time effectively is much more challenging because I have no idea how much time I have left.

Indian students keep meticulous notebooks for each class. They write many pages each class – dictated by the teachers. Most study each night – whether homework is assigned or not. This is true even in the 7^th grade class I teach. Students are very good at rote assignments – for example making a poster of cell parts. However, little emphasis seems to be placed on thinking skills. I was asked to judge a handwriting assignment, and the students chose a passage from a book and copied it word for word. The handwriting was beautiful – with several students using calligraphy fountain pens.

Aven reported in math class that a single story problem was written on the board and students copied it. The purpose of the problem was to use the Pythagorean theorem to find the hypotenuse when a strip of bark fell off a tree. The children drew a nice tree, with shading to show where the bark was stripped off, and they drew another diagram to show the triangle using rulers. Then, they solved the problem and the class was over. Aven simply solved the problem with numbers and was done in a moment. We have concluded that efficiency is a value that we hold more highly in the U.S. than in India. I had collected notebooks to check in one class but needed to start the notes before I was finished grading (about 45 students per class). I suggested that students write on a separate paper and tape them into their books. Nearly all students simply recopied the notes into their books when I returned them. Tradition and respect are much more important here than efficiency.

My first day at school. My mentor is on the far right, Mrs. Malar.

Independence Day

I have never before taught a group of students who smiled at me through the entire period. The 11^th grade class greeted me especially warmly at my school. Students stand when the teacher enters, greet the teacher in unison and wait to be asked to sit down. They stand at the end of class and thank the teacher in unison and stand at attention until the instructor leaves the room. They do not move when the bell rings because they wait to be dismissed. For all my U.S. colleagues, the application to teach here in India can be found at this link: http://www.fulbrightteacherexchange.org/

August 15 (India’s 4^th of July) entails banning the sale of alcohol and flying kites. (Which does seem to beat the beer & firework combination that we favor.) India celebrated its 65^th year of independence from the British while I was in New Delhi, which is one of the most crowded cities on the planet. The residential areas are many-story buildings that share common walls. An entire block can be wall-to-wall buildings of various vintages and heights. I would not be surprised if there were completely windowless dwellings on the insides of the blocks. For the holiday, large numbers of people were on the rooftops flying kites. From the highway, I could see hundreds of colorful kites blowing above the patchwork of apartment buildings. Kites easily evoke an inspiring feeling of freedom, and I appreciated being able to celebrate in the largest democracy on earth.

Walking along a road in Delhi with other exchange teachers, we noticed that the trees in one area were covered in bats. Not little brown bats, but gigantic brown bats. They were the size of seagulls. In many trees, we could see that every branch was laden with about a dozen bats. They were hanging upside down, making bat noises and opening their wings and slowly fanning them (presumably to keep cool). No, I did not have my camera. The flock (probably not the right word for a bat group) consisted of easily hundreds, perhaps thousands of bats.

I have noticed feeling like I am in a Salvador Dali paining. Perhaps it is the jet lag, perhaps the change of culture, or it could be the malaria medication. Yesterday morning was like that. I was unexpectedly asked to make a small spontaneous speech to the 1,600 students who were standing at attention in neat rows in the courtyard during the morning assembly. Many of you know my allergy to public speaking. One of the teachers had introduced me and included a number of items from my Fulbright application. On the application, I was asked what languages I spoke or wrote and I indicated that I spoke broken Thai and poor German. However, the kind teacher exaggerated my skills and said I spoke both German and Thai. Shortly after the assembly, a beautiful woman was animatedly talking to me. I could not understand a word. She was standing in front of me and looking right at me – so I knew she was talking to me. Slowly I realized I was hearing German with an Indian accent. Now, I still have to listen very carefully to understand the Indian accent, but somehow I did understand her German once I knew what was happening. I had to respond in English, but I managed. One of the difficult aspects of being here is not being certain that the communication has been effective. Once in awhile, people respond in such a way that I realize they had no idea what I was just saying. I also know that I am sometimes guessing at meanings and can tell my responses produce puzzled looks. Fortunately, everyone seems very patient with me and I know time will make everything easier.

On the way to school this morning, I walked past a cow that tried (but not very hard) to shove me out of the way with its horns. I moved quickly. Cows have the right-of-way everywhere here.

Sign of the Day: Seen painted on the wall near the opening of the train car. There is no actual door, so I hesitate to use that word.

“Exercise Care During Entrain or Detrain”

Arrival

I was greeted with an overwhelmingly warm welcome at the Chennai airport by my exchange partner's colleagues and relatives. Covered in flowers, I was whisked from the airport at midnight. Having only napped briefly in the previous 24 hours, the scene felt surreal. I saw my first cows wandering the streets of a large crowded city.