NO SCHOOL

no school la la la sunshine la la la pretty flowers la la la

It's May Day, which, as it turns out, is internationally celebrated with no school (except for in the United States, where we decided during the red scare days that we would not partake in anything that the communists deemed worthy of celebration...according to Marielle). So we have a day off. We celebrated by packing a picnic and crossing as many mountains as we could before getting hungry, which we've found much more calm and cool than darting around thousands of suitors, cows and traffic just to get to a "McDonalds Family Restaurant" in downtown Dehra Dun.

Spring announced itself here with a series of sand and rain storms, and the mountains are in full bloom. We discovered a Tibetan town at the top of the first mountain to the north of our house, and there we found two Tibetan schools, a temple, a number of artisan and tapestry stores, and a tapestry/textiles/café co-op run by Indian and American entrepreneurs that employs thirty Tibetan women and trains many others in handicrafts. The café has a 270° view of the surrounding mountains and Rispana valley, and it has quickly become something of a safe haven for us. We come here often for the lemon cake and wifi, and we walk home surrounded by purple blossoms and Buddhist monks in saffron and crimson robes (with their iphones and crocs).

Now that we are actually settling into some semblance of a regular schedule (three classes in the morning plus recess, then various shenanigans in the afternoons), I have more time and energy for weirder/more entertaining things. We go to the Bollywood theatre once a week when we're not at the ashram, Marielle selects a fleet of books from the library for us to read and discuss on a weekly basis (last week was One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1984 by George Orwell, and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller), and I'm working on turning the brigade of monkeys in our backyard into a Monkey Choir.

We only have two and a half weeks left of teaching before Marielle's mom joins us and we go frolicking round Northern India until June. This gives us enough time to learn some real rudimentary Hindi (it turns out that most of what our students taught us is rude, vulgar or both), master the art of Bollywood dances, and make our amaji love us forever and ever. Happy May Day!

Information on Himalayan Tapestry and Chhaya Café:

http://www.himalayantapestry.com/

Information on Joyn India (textiles):

http://joynindia.com