Out with a bang

The semester ended with more stress than I'd like. In fact, it was probably the most stressful month at Woodstock for me thus far. By far my least favorite part of teaching is dealing with excuses from students. Slightly above on the totem pole is grading. Unfortunately, the two tend to coincide. All grumpiness aside, my last few weeks did have some highlights.

-Trick-or-Pilgrim Party: Not having celebrated halloween, my housemates and I decided to throw a halloween party...the weekend before thanksgiving. We decided to combine the two and force anyone not in costume to don pilgrim hats. Genius! Needless to say, the party was a hit.

Native American meets Pilgrim.

The best costumes of the night by far - authentic chowkidars!

-Thanksgiving potluck: Another international Thanksgiving for me (I've been in the states only once for Tday since 2006!). This year, we trudged to the very top of the hill and shared our American cuisine with friends from England, New Zealand, India, Japan, and Canada. The food was so good that I didn't even notice the lack of turkey, cranberries, or pumpkin pie.

Set table

Homemade pumpkin momos - yum.

Giddy with anticipation

Evening bonfire

-Volleyball! I have been leading weekly volleyball scrimmages for staff. They are merely for fun, not for competition. Much to our surprise, we arrived at school one morning to find out that we would be having a match that evening against the staff from a rival school. Being our first game ever, we had no strategy and pretty low expectations for ourselves. A rowdy match ensued, with plenty of shouting (mostly between our athletic director and theirs) and a fair amount of cheating from their team. Despite their foul play, we won 2-1. It was incredibly fun.

-Christmas celebrations: Woodstock indulges in any chance to celebrate; I can't even remember how many holiday events I was invited to! Of course, there was the Christmas Chapel and also the Christmas Staff Banquet. My housemates and I had a real Christmas tree this year. It literally fell from the sky. (We think a monkey must have broken a branch of the tree outside our house.) It has a severe case of scoliosis and can only stand when supported by two walls, but it's Charlie Brown qualities proved to be endearing.

Housemate Christmas photo

Charlie Brown Tree at its best

-Trek Reunion: Over a year since the Kuari Pass trek, the students persuaded us to have a reunion. These kids are phenomenal and I am so glad that they continue to want to spend time together. We walked into the bazaar for a Tibetan lunch, ice cream, and lots of laughing.

Sharing a very large sundae.

-Advisor Night: I've mentioned before how much I love my group of 10 senior advisees. They are fantastic. We decided to have an end-of-the-semester party and, of course, they requested to come to my house. In honor of St. Olaf, I decided to have a Woodstock version of Late Night Breakfast, a tradition of eating breakfast food the night before final exams start. We made quiche, pancakes, sausage, and potatoes and ate it all. And then the dancing began...

The feast begins.

-Delhi: Due to "going-down duty" and my travels home, I went to Delhi twice in less than a week. This is not really recommended - the trip is long and tiring. At least this is the best time of year to visit. My first trip was a 12 hour bus caravan with about 300 students all heading to the airport. After dropping them off, I took full advantage of some free time with friends and hit some delicious restaurants. A few days later, I found myself back in Delhi with some free time before my flight. The highlight: taking the fantastic Delhi metro! It is ridiculously nice.

-Travels home: Seeing that I am halfway through my 3 year contract, Woodstock bought me a flight home. Traveling from Woodstock to Baldwin is a long journey especially when, as is becoming a trend in my travels, disaster strikes! Without Amsterdam hold-ups, the travel time would have been approximately 48 hours. However, it was a 72 hour journey due to bad weather and cancelled flights in Amsterdam. I personally cost Delta Airlines $23,000 because I was stranded on the tarmac for 6.5 hours. Multiply that by the 200 (?) passengers on the flight...ouch.

AP Art Field Trip

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to bring 17 senior art students to Delhi. Not just seniors, the seniors from the AP Studio Art class. These are the most dedicated art students and most of them are looking into going into the art field when they graduate. They are the students I know best, having worked with some of them since 2008. While the trip was four days, we only had two days to visit galleries and sites. The months of October and November have been exhaustingly packed, so it was difficult to get my energy up before the trip. However, I found the trip inspiring and I feel absolutely privileged to have had the opportunity to spend a weekend with these students.

Day 1:

-National Gallery of Modern Art: This museum is phenomenal and highly recommended for anyone passing through Delhi. The students loved it equally as much as I do and even asked to spend extra time. (It's not very often that group of high school students wants to spend more than 2 hours in a museum!). It was delightful to see them wide-eyed among the huge abstract paintings. One pair of students spent the whole 2 hours on one of the 6 floors because they couldn't get enough of the enormous oil paintings!

Most of the group in front of the National Gallery. They come from India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Tanzania, Korea, Bangladesh, and the US.

Do you get it? (A P A R T)

Getting some last photos of the sculpture garden

-Hauz Khas Village and Ruins: Next, we headed to South Delhi to visit the village and ruins of Hauz Khas. Unfortunately, our driver (who turned out to know very little about Delhi, having come from Himachal) had no idea where it was and we ended up driving around in circles for an hour and a half. We did manage to walk briefly through part of the ruins and stop at one art gallery in the village, but more time would have been appreciated!

We spent a lot of time on this bus.

Maybe this had something to do with it.

Students at Hauz Khas ruins

Posing.

Lokayata Artist's Gallery

-Reflections Art Gallery: A definite highlight for the students was visiting a gallery run by a Woodstock graduate. Unlike most of the art galleries in Delhi, Reflections focuses on art and activism. Stefan, the Woodstock alum, explained the mission of Reflections and shared about a recent artists' workshop that created artwork about tuberculosis. We also heard from two artists who are involved with Reflections. The students were definitely inspired and are eager to make their own artwork more meaningful.

Stefan giving the students an overview on the mission of Reflections.

Intrigued.

The artwork on Tuberculosis.

-Dilli Haat: After Reflections, we headed to the well-known tourist destination Dilli Haat. Essentially, it is a large arts, crafts, and food market that sells products from all over India. The artists rotate, so each time there are new stalls to visit. We had dinner and did some shopping.

-Wedding Crashing: I believe we now hold the record for the largest wedding crash ever attempted by Woodstock! Well, a few amendments...It was technically a wedding pooja; we were kind of, sort of, backwardly invited; and it was more than attempted - it was successful! A student's parents work in the wedding planning industry (there is no better place than India for wedding planning!) and they were working on a large event for a very, very, very wealthy family. Over the course of a week, the family was having three (at least) wedding events and the student's parents were planning each site. Yes, each site. Below are images of the first one, which is the wedding pooja. A pooja is a religious event, though I'm not sure what the aim of this pooja was specifically. The second site was the mehendi site. Mehendi is another word for henna. Indian weddings have an event to adorn the bride in henna. We also went to this site, which was still under construction. Don't worry, we did see the 30 foot tall Buddha being carved out of styrofoam and the fake trees that were made out of plastic (and painted gold). We were too tired to see the actual wedding site.

The entrance to the pooja.

The main hall of the pooja.

A panwallah (sweet pan is an after dinner palette cleanser, digestion helper, and breath mint. They can taste really bad.

The best part was the food! We might have hovered in front of all the deliciousness much longer than is polite.

Day 2:

Qtub Minar: This historic site in South Delhi proved to be the perfect excursion for sketching and taking in beautiful architecture.

Looking for sites to capture on film and paper.

A nice (and, apparently, forbidden) place to sketch!

The pillar.

Happy site see-er!

Delicate details

Sketching the pillars

Sketchers with the Qtub Minar pillar looming in the background

In the sketching zone

Bollywood moves!

-Delhi Art Gallery, Vasant Kunj: Our second small gallery visit was to a privately owned gallery in a very upscale mall. One of the art advisors gave us a tour of the gallery, giving us a brief overview of modern Indian art. It was great to get some art history as well as a sense of what an upscale gallery does. It was a nice contrast to the grassroots mentality of Reflections.

Our host explaining some of the artworks.

The gallery was tiny and had sliding walls!

-Sita Ram Stationers: Next we headed to an art supply shop. The students enjoyed finding some special art supplies and the shop owner appreciated us so much that he treated us to free coconuts!

"Hey, Ms. Onkka, do I look like a painter?"

Yum, coconuts!

The coconut vendors.

-India Habitat Center: Lastly, we went to the Habitat Center, which is a lot like a cultural center. We had a great dinner and then went to a short-film screening. The venue was packed and it was fun to feel like we were part of an event. We saw some great short films from India as well as internationally. We also popped into a few small gallery spaces.

A closer look at the pen drawings.

Diwali in Rishikesh

For the first time in Woodstock's collective memory (in light of the high staff turnover, it isn't a very comprehensive memory), school was cancelled on Diwali. This meant a three-day weekend - hurrah! It also happened to be the weekend of Kate's 25th birthday, so we decided to get out of town and celebrate. 

The number of times I've been to Rishikesh is becoming difficult to recall. It is the easiest destination for a weekend getaway and I rather enjoy that it is becoming a city that I know well. Each time I go, I try to do or see something new. This time I did three new things. A little adventure (as well as luxury) keeps life exciting!

The first new Rishikesh experience was taking the local bus. I've taken local buses other places in India, but never in or around Mussoorie (with the exception of local buses hired for a Woodstock group). The trip from Mussoorie to Dehradun is notorious for making even the strongest stomachs queasy with twists, turns, jerks, and jolts. You know a bus has been driving in the hills by the presence of puke stains dripping down the outside of the bus and/or the sight of heads hurled out the window and actively puking. There have been many close calls of almost getting showered in vomit while walking around Mussoorie! Anyways, due to stories of vomit pools swishing and swaying around the bus floor, we decided to splurge on a taxi down to Dehradun and start our bus journey on flat land. The bus is a whopping Rs33 (75 cents) and takes about 80 minutes on a good day. Our trip to Rishikesh took a bit longer due to traffic on the eve of Diwali. The trip back was short due to the borderline reckless driving. All in all, the bus proved to be a fun and cheap experience! I will do it again.

Our bus, puke free!

The birthday girl and I are excited to be on the bus!

Don't worry, there's a Frist Adi Box With Bus!

The second new experience proved to be even more delightful: Rainforest House. I've been meaning to visit this guest house ever since it was recommended about 6 months ago. It is run by a British man and is located 3km up the Ganges from Laxman Jhula (the main bridge in Rishikesh). It proved to be idyllic: a well-decorated and incredibly peaceful guest house centered around a mango tree and nearly on the shore of the Ganges. We were delighted!

I should have taken this before we slept in the bed :)

Kate swinging on the mango tree

The beautiful cafe

Simplicity and elegance

Sunrise over the Ganges

Morning prayers on the Ganges

Travel buddies!

Thirdly, I experienced Rishikesh on Diwali. This Festival of Lights is notorious for chaos. Knowing that Rishikesh is a Hindu pilgrimage town, we were more than curious to see how the city would celebrate. Surprisingly, they didn't do a whole lot. In fact, if I hadn't known it was Diwali I probably wouldn't have even noticed that it was a festival day. Although, there were more than the usual amounts of firecrackers and wishes of "Happy Divali" from shopkeepers. I've started taking Hindi lessons and so am interacting much more with shopkeepers (How are you? What is your name? Where are you from?). Even this pitiful amount of Hindi warranted multiple invitations to see "boom booms" from various shopkeepers. As much as watching huge firecrackers shot off in the middle of a tiny (one-lane) and busy street intrigued me, I declined. 

Diwali decorations

Many shops hide their regular merchandise in order to maximize firecracker sales! (Photo from Mussoorie)

Water guns are also a popular Diwali purchase!

A relaxed lunch at Freedom Cafe on the Ganges

Sunset over Ram Jhula on Diwali.

Evening aarti

While the hindus were celebrating with lights and prayers, we celebrated by stopping here for some banana nutella crepes.