I'm back, part 1.1

So before I begin my detailed and whitty captions for the 200+ pictures I just put up, I wil give you all a description of the travel schedule I worked out between Oct. 15th and 30th.
At 6:30pm on Oct. 15th a fellow student teacher, Midori Neaton, and I will board a KPN sleeper bus bound for Bangalore. We will arrive on the morning of the 16th, and spend the deay with my dad. I will drop off a bunch of my stuff (like trumpet and souvenires from south India) here so I don't have to lug them around india with me.
Early on the morning of the 17th Midori and I will board a plane for Delhi. The purpose for the visit to Delhi is to take a day and visit the Taj and Red Fort in Agra. Other than that I'm not sure what we'll do; explore, possibly hook up with the Global group (although I don't know when or even if they will be in delhi).
On Oct. 20th I will board a train bound for Dehra Dun, and from their bus or taxi/bus up to Mousoori to spend a few days at Woodstock Intl. school. I have two friends who are student teaching there, so I'll spend time with them and just explore the school and the surrounding area.
On Oct. 24th Ill start the leg of the trip I'm most excited for. Probably via local bus I will make my way north and west to Dharmashala, the home of the Dalai Lama and the Tiebtan Government in exile. I checked the schedule of the dalai lama and it seems that he will be in town while I am there. Who knows, maybe I can get an audience with him (probably not, but a guy can hope right?). Other than that I'll just spend the next few days exploring the area. Everyone tells me its beautiful with mountians all around. Apparently one of the most picturesque cricket grounds in the world is in Dharmashala, so maybe i'll catch a cricket game.
On Oct. 28th I will fly back down to bangalore to spend my last weekend in India with my dad. it will be a wonderfulway to end my time here. By that point my dad will have been in bangalore for almost a month, so maybe he can give me a good tour of the city ;)

On Oct. 30th at about 8pm I begin my treck home. its hard to believe that my time here is almost over. Ill refrain from saying too much because I plan on this topic being my last reflection of the blog, but I will say that so far my time here has been unreal. It will certainly be tough to say good-bye to this place.

more to come soon,
Kevin

Im back, Installment no.1

Well, Its been a while. August 23rd huh? Wow. I had predicted early on that the month of september would fly by, and so it. This month was contained two partial weeks, One long weekend, one full week field trip, parent week, and two extended weekend field trips. In addition I've finalized my travel plans, been hard at work on my TPA, and had some fun and exctiing classroom expereiences. The month will end this coming weekend with a much later than expected, and yet earlier than expected (I'll explian) weekend visit from my dad.
Yah alot to write about.
Fist though, there are like 200 new pictures on my photobucket from the month. make sure to check them out.
http://s975.photobucket.com/albums/ae233/crusader3629/Student%20Teaching%20in%20India/
Alright, here goes.
So the month started with a weekend trip to Kochi with my friend Tim. Tim and I had some extra time on our hands and decided we needed to get away for a little while, so we went west into Kerala and ended up in Kochi.
First a little bit about the city. Its old. Very old. It was occupied by the Portugese in the 1500's, and before that was a center for the spice trade, and the seat of the Kingdom of Cochin (Wikipedia,Kochi). The city itself is made of a bunch of Islands. The mane part of the city in on the shore and is centered around an area called Ernakulam. The historic partsof Kochi , called fort Kochi and Jew Town are two Islands to the east, and are where Tim and I were fortunate to find a place to stay.
The first day we spent wandering around Fort Kochi. I found this really interesting. In the US we seem to set our historic landmarks aside. Their is a very strong "time traveling" element to visitng historical landmarks at home. We look at them because they are pretty and theytake us back to a time which we can only imagine. We don't touch them. In India, these historical landmarks are very strongly mixed with the squalor and grittieness of the typical indian city. Their is trach everywhere, run down buildings, dirty and poorly mainteined streets, bright colors, tons of people. In the midst of all this you walk past an inconspicuous looking building with a plaque on it that says it was build 600 years ago. It was remarkable how well the narrow cobblestone alleys mixed in with the rest of the feel of Kochi.
We say a few really cool things in Fort Kochi/Jew Town. First were the chinese fishing nets (see pictures in my photobucket). These are large nets that have been used for thousands of years for tidal fishing.  The Idea is that the net is lowered into the water, and the incoming tide washes fish into the net. pretty cool. They looked like large aquatic dinosaurs, which in a way they were. Due to modern fishing techniques, this style of fishing is becoming increasinlgy rare.
Fort Kochi/Jew Town also had some very old places of worship. The first we visited was St. Francis Church. Built in 1503 it was the origional burial place of Vasco de Gama before he was moved to Lisbon. The second we visited was the Satna Cruz Basilica, which was founded by the Dutch in 1505.
Finally we visited the Old Synagogue in Jew Town. This was an especially cool experience. Although we new it was closed on Fridays, we got a rickshaw their anyways, just to see the outside of it. As we were looking at the fairly inconspicuous exterior, a man came out and asked us if we woudl like to come in. Apparently we had lucked out as this was the one friday of the month that the synagogue was not being used. The synogogue was built in 1568 and serves five families in the area (I'm not gong to lie, I didn't really expect to hear about any sort of Jewish influence in India... at all). The inside was amazing. The floor featured hundreds of individually hand-painted, Chinese porcelain tiles. No two tiles were unique. our pricate tour guide then showed us a 600 year old copy of the Torah, and a the synagogues weekly calender, which was hand written in three different languages. It was a remarkable place, and w were very fortunate to get to see it like we did.
The next day we decided to go to the Beach, and this is where the stories really being. Cherai beach is a 2 minute Ferry ride and a 30 minutes bus rde away from Fort Kochi. Our journey out occured without a hitch. We got to the beach to discover that it was much dirtier and rockeir than we expected. basically it was more Indian than we were hoping. We wandered down the beach a ways and found a nice comfortable rock grouping to camp out in. After gooping up with sunscreen, we both took off our shirts and started swimming. I was feeling little uneasy though. I wasn't entirley comfortable with leaving our stuff their unattended, so I kept a very wary eye behind me when a group of people passed by. After about the third or fourth group, I decided I had had enough, and resigned my self to bag duty. Eventually Tim came back, and just as he sat down a group of about eight indian guys come up and sit around us. One of them asks tim very directly "do you have any problems?" This made us a little uneasy. A large group of indian men coming up and plopping themselves down right around you when no one else is around. Needless to say we kept our stuff really close to us.
Despite our unease, we struck up a conversation with these guys. We foudn out that they were all bachlors of Business Management Students from Bangalore. One then led to another and we were happily chumming around with these guys, ending the day with a fish fry at a local place next to the beach. I'm not going to lie, that fish was probably the sketchiest thing I have eaten here. It was cold, and very clearly not fresh. I was starving though and ate the whole thing with not ill side-effects.
Thing that struck me the most about these guys was that they were 25 and 26 years old and still had 2 years left on their bachelors degree. Here I am 22 years old with a completed (or nearly) bachlors degree and completely qualified to go to graduate school or get a job. I have come the the conclussion that the US is quite unique in that regard. Our secondary system ends pretty early, and thus our College system graduate young students. Just and Intersting observation.
After parting ways with these fine gentlemen and wandering on the beach for another half hour or so, we decided to make ourway back to our hoe-stay in Fort Kochi. The thing you have to know about the Indian Bus system is that its not in English. This means that, for an english only person like myself, once you get on a bus yo have to find a young person near-bye who is likely to speak english, and aks them to tell you wne your stop is. Tim and I hadn't learned that yet. Before we knew it we were traveling on a bridge acorss the bay (which we were supposed to be corssing by ferry) into "West Kochi." After asking a few people it was decided that rather than simply catch a bus back to the ferry, we should take the bus to the end of its route, which was Fort Kochi. With a bus switch in the middle this ended up being a good 2 hour tour of the City in one of the most crowded bus I had been in up to that point. The make things even better, near the end of the bus ride I hear shouting a behind me. I turn around to see a fight breaking out in the back of the bus. With no security on the bus except a ticket collector who clearly had not intrest in getting involved, the fight contiuend unhidnered. It finally ended when one of the offenders was puched out of the bus and not allowed to get back on.
Great way to end the day.
The next day we headed home.
Here's a look at the path we took home: http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Fort+Kochi,+Kerala,+India&daddr=Ernakulam,+Kerala,+India+to:Munnar,+Kerala,+India+to:Theni,+Tamil+Nadu,+India+to:Batlagundu,+Tamil+Nadu,+India+to:Kodaikanal,+Tamil+Nadu,+India&hl=en&sll=9.985081,76.483383&sspn=0.53085,0.614548&geocode=FdUMmAAdHleLBCmNFwtPMW0IOzE7tA05PyNFxQ%3BFYzQmAAda0yMBCmp83b5CA0IOzFU1G7wRLTN6Q%3BFeXxmQAdxdWXBCltmglNeZkHOzEMfjxV5VAyBg%3BFWmvmAAd7SKeBCktinW-rxQHOzGLECeT1XaDwA%3BFXMfmwAdGYSiBClByvwrcU8HOzFsEOEbBqgbeA%3BFaI4nAAdHmSeBCmHAwp_Y2YHOzE8wVg3N-n6nw&vpsrc=0&doflg=ptm&mra=ls&t=m&z=9
We decided, rather than taking the more expensive KPN bus, we would take the local busses home. Think city bus, but with open windows, several holes in the floor, and probably built in the 70's. The trip ended up being about 13 hours long, and probably half of it was spent either standing or sitting on the engine cover.
The first half of this ended up being one of the most beautiful bus rides I had ever been on. The Munnar area is one of the most stunning places I have seen here in south india. It tough to descirbe, so i'm just going to point you to my photobucket again.

So theirs istallment 1. 2 and 3 will come soon, hopefull later today. For now I need lunch and a break.

Till then,
Kevin

We've lost a lot of men out there

Benn and I have decided that "we've lost alot of men out there" is going to be the unofficial moto for this semester. As it stands the music deparment is now four staff members short. Fortunatley that is only temporary as two will be back by the beginning of september, but it has also made all of our collective jobs here much more intense. I personally took 16 of stu's students, and almost sole responsibility for the wind ensemble when he left. On top of all this we have been planning a trip for the Wind Ensemble and Orchestra to bangalore for this coming weekend. basically whether I like it or not, I became the point man for the band in planning this trip. This has been a real crash course in the behind the scenes workings of a band program, specifically when planning events like a trip. I've had a significant role in writing the budget, Deciding whether a group of volleyball studetns shoud join us half way through the trip, and getting within a whisker of being embroiled in school politics. Fortunatley I escaped that one, but It wasnt easy. This on top of my 31 block a cylce schedule had meant that I've been regularily staying at school until 7 or 8 at night. Welcome to the world of band directing I guess. Unfortunatley all this activity has not left me with much energy to write in my blog, and for that I apologize. But that means this one should be really fun to read since I'll have so much stuff to sahre with you all.

Lets start with the weekend following the chennai trip, which I'm pretty sure I talked about. The weekend of the 15th was indian Independence. What a crazy time. It started saturday night with the Mother Mary festival. I think this is a celebration on St. Mary's feast day. It was wild. There were decorations everywhere, includuing these large light pictures on bambooo framwork. The one down the budge had to have been 100 ft tall, and that wasn't even the biggest one. This occasino epitomized India (or at least this part of India)better than any other that I can think. First, the prepearations seemed the be made quite haphazard. In one particular case, the Kodai club wanted top put un an awning over the street. The onl problem was that the street was in the way. What did they do you ask? Only what any sane person would do, send a team of men out with a hammer and chisle to chop through the street. From what i could tell they spent all night, and part of a day drilling four holes in through the asphalt to put up this awning for two days. Things are diffeent here.

The other thing that struck me was the crazy mix of cultures that was going on. Kodai was origionally founded as a mission, so it is not unusual to see chrisitan slogans written on cars, busses, lorrys, and buildings (In fact one of my friends likes to say of Kodai "you have to be high on jesus... or something to work at Kodai). The mother mary festrival was a direct extension of this very strong visual christian message. There were pictures of mary every where. The interesting part was the clear Indian style that these picutures and messages had taken on. Like I said in an earlier blog, India is loud, and this was no exception. Everything about it was very "in your face" The light displays were huge, bright, and in some cases have moving components. They also liked to contain seemingly unrelated imagry. One picture was of Mry with a Helicopter and a marching band of Bunnies below her. My friends and I couldn't help but chuckle at that.

All of this decoration (which you can see in the pictures I've posted on my photobucket) and noise (there was music blaring 24/7, gave the whole festival a really strong christmasy feeling. At one point I think I even heard christmas music playing as Icrossed seven road junction. probably because of this, one of the coolest exerpeinces I had that night was walking back from mungigal (the focal point of the march/festival) the call to prayer from a near by mosque went up. Such a cool mix of cultures and traditions.

As I said, this was a two part weekend. That next day, monday, we had off. Kind of. It was Indian Independence day, and in stu's absence, I was in charge of leading the band through the National Anthem and school song during the school wide assembly. Kind of a debut for me which was really fun. The music wasn't all that challenging, but it sure tested my ability to organize my band into a performance. I though it went off very well, except for clean up, which was like pulling the teeth of my students. That left me a little frusterated.

Beginning that Tuesday our St. Olaf observer arrived to observ all us teachers. She stayed for the week and ended up observing my four times (once with each band, one lesson, and my 10th grade music class). As nervous as I was for this week, it flew by, and she did a fantastic job of making it a stress free situation. Although she is not a music person, she did a great jkob of giving advice for the teaching side of my skills. Her biggest positive comment was my knowledge of my content area, and my enthusiasm for it. I think this especially showed through in my 10th grade music class where I'm teaching Sonata (one of my favorite boring subjects). Her biggest constructive comment was that I need to improve my awareness of the classroom and the students in it. She recommended changing the seating in my 10th grade music class (which I did today and it worked incredibly well) and being more aware of students in my bande, which sounds easy, but when you are a new teacher and you have 30 kids on your class, its easy to not make eye contact with everyone.

That brings us to this week. Honestly, apart from being incredibly busy all the time, Its all been pretty much the same. I have conversations with the orchestra almost daily to resolve a "big problem," I'm teaching more than i've ever taught before, and I'm learning all sorts of new things. My classes, as can be expected have been pretty up and down. 10th grade has been good for the most part, honestly the situation I'm in for that class is a teachers dream. 9 students who want to be in the class, in a classroom thats well equiped, I may never have that again in mteaching career. The reason it's been up and down has simply been because I've been experimentgin so much with how to run a class. Its probably more organized thatn any of these students have ever experienced before, but given the the incredible situation that this class in putting me in, i'm trying to make it as productive as it can be. My plan has been to take them through the four major musical forms of the classical period (Minuet and Trio, Sonata, Symphony, and Concerto) and culminate with them giving a presentation on one of these forms. Hopefully this will allow them to reveiw each form before a final test, and to practice good research and ctiation skills (which has been ahuige topic at kodai this year since three students failed the IB exam because of poor citations).

My bands have been a mixed bag as well. My biggest challenge has simply been keeping them focused and productive. Band it always at the end of the day, so they are usually tired and ready to do something else. Sometimes they are wonderful like last week when Kathy was observing me. My wind ensemble were angles, which was wonderful. Sometimes they are a realy challenge, like my Intermediate band when Kathy was observing. that band was reading a piece of music for the second time, and they were not doing it very successfully. Keeping them focused through that type of activity is quite challengeing. My saving grace though is that I'm still learning and I have wonderful advisors and metors around me to learn from. I'll get a hang of it eventually.

My final thing to add is that last week we had our Staff recital for the school. I opened the concert with Otto Ketting's "Intrada." I'm actually extremely proud of how it went, and managed to make a recording. I'm hoping I can post that here or somewhere else for you all to listen to.

Thats it for now. I need to go play some volleyball.

Cheers,

Kevin

Chennai

Ohh, I forgot to mentions that last weekend I went on a trip to Chennai with a small contignet of studetns and staff from the music dcepartment. All thew students and two staff, including myself, performed at a recital there. Its was really quite an experience and a real treat to finally get off the mountain. I took a few pictures and I'll post and catption them as soon as possible. 

India is loud

Yes I am still here. I apologize for the late update. Things have been pretty hectic around here for the past two weeks. Before I go into my brillinat insite for this entry, I'll guive a brief update about what has been going on with my teaching.

As a re-cap (mostly because I don't remember If I told you all this or not) my teaching falls in three areas; directing the band, teaching private lessons, and teaching a grdae 10 general music class.

To preface all this, it is important to mention that the music deaprtment here in Kodai is extremely short handed, now more so that the last time I updated. We are currently three hands short due to the no replacement for one staffer who left after the year, and two staffers who have left. One of those staffers will only be gone temporarily on personal business, which is a relief, but it still makes it hard on us for the time that they are gone.

Lets start with 10th grade music. I took this class from the first staffer to leave Kodai. So far it has been going extremely well. After finnishing some presentations, which the previous teacher assigned, I was finally able to take the class in a direction that I want. Due to a lack of explicit expectations, both for myself as well as for the studetns, I decided early on that the presentations would not be graded, but rather used as a wamr up of sorts for a larger project, which I assigned the next class period. The class is about the classical era, and basic music theory like circle of fifths, major/minor keys, chords and cadences, and classicl forms (minuet and trio, Soanta form, Symphony, Concerto Form). I chose to focus the project on forms because I think that this topic does the best job of bridging the gap between classical period msuic, and basic theorr. Also because, after spending a months studying sonata form in depth, I felt the most attracted and able to teach form.

Jump ahead to this week and we had our first lesson on form. I chose to teach minuet and trio because, in some repects, it is the simplest of the four forms offered. It also has a very clear link back to the baroque period, which I want the students to study in their projects. It also gave the easiest opportunity to teach line graphs, which I think the kids grasped to some extent. I surprised my students by giving them a homework assignment (a short bibliography assignment related to there projects, a reading about minuet and trio, and a line graph assignment). naturally they all cried and whined, saying the assignment was too long, but really the bibliography assiingment was only for they to find two sources and cite them properly (citation has been a big issue at Kodai this year), the reading was barley three pages, and the chart was far simpler than anything we did in class. My biggest concern is they simply don't do it. Benn, my host teacher, gave his class an essay, and no one turned it in. We'll just have to see what happens tomorrow.

Next is private lessons. I spend by far the most tiem during my day. The teacher who took a temporary leave was one of the primary lesson teachers and because of their absence, I will be teaching 21 students per cycle. Interestingly, the majority of these are clarinet players (9), mostly beginners (. My quasi-host teacher, stu, has said a number of times that beginning clarinet is the most difficult thing to teach simply because of all the squeaking. motivating the studetn beyond that point is quite difficult. For that reason is its been very good for me to take on these students. Its giving me lots of experience teachng an instruement I don't know very well (its not very difficult to out-play my on the clarinet right now), as well as giving me a reason to re-learn the instrument. In general all of these lessons have gone really well.

The final portion of my day is spent directing the bands. This has strangley been a mixed bag. I have loved my time with the intermediate band. They have been making wonderful progress, I seem to have all of there respect, and in general leading them has been alot of fun. My time with the wind ensemble has been a little more frusterating. I don't feel like I command their respect like I do with the intermediate band. They feel a little more incredulous of me (especially the percussion). With that being said, Wind ensemble is the one who needs my focus more. With the department so short handed, much more band responsibiliy has fallen to me. The band is playing at the Indian Independence day celebration at school on monday morning. I am leading the entire thing. Muscially its pretty simple, but its my first experience taking this much charge of a performance. I need to make sure the student are there on time, dressed, and wth their instruments and music. I need to make sure the proper percussion and other band equipment is their at the proper time and in the propoer place, and I need to make sure the band is musically ready to play the show. A bit of responsiobility there. I thnk I have my boxes checked, but we'll just have to see when monday comes.

The wind ensemble is also taking a trip to bangalore during the last week of august. Most of this trip has already been taken care of, so i'm not getting much responsibility for the logistic side of it (thank god, I'm not ready for that), But I am responsible for reparing my own piece for the conert there. The band will be playing a suite from the Hans Zimmer score to the movie Gladiator. It's been fun watching this piece develop with the band. I think today parts of it finally clicked for the ensemble. Really cxool to see. Hopefully we can have it performacne ready by the end of the week. Thats the deadline.

Ok, my insite for this entry: India is loud. I first heard this statement from Benn when I first arrived here. I found it interesting to think about this because, as Benn pointed out, it is true is every possible sense of the word. The smells, tastes, colors (oh my the colors), the sounds, and surprisingly the people are all very loud. One of the lasting images from this experience will be the India lorry. I LOVE the indian lorry. Its big, loud, pwoerful, disgusting in pretty much every way, looks like its held together with thumb tacks and chewing gum, and abover all is painted obnoxiously bright colors. Some even have multi-colored flashing lights in them. Even things that are supposed to be quite, like nice hikes int he woods, are anything but. Indian people, especially men, love to whistle when they are in high, or open places. perhaps its because they are not used to it. Im honsetly not sure. All I know is that the last time I hiked to a mountain top or majestic overlook, I was accompanied by at least 100 other people, and about ten of them were makeing very loud, high pitched whitles. Very obnoxious and has taken a while to get used to.

Well, I think thats abotu it. Hope this finds you all well.

Kevin

Picture captions

I had several requests to add more in-depth descriptions to my pictures. I spent the night doing that. considering the hour, the fact that I have school in the morning, and that I still have work to do, I've decided to make that my blog entry for the week. Their are also 41ish new pictures up, starting at 50 I think.
Enjoy!
Kevin
http://s975.photobucket.com/albums/ae233/crusader3629/Student%20Teaching%20in%20India/

I'm a stranger here myself

I just finnished Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, and I couldn't help the reference in the Title (its one of his earlier books). I apologize, but bear with me, its pertinent.

The title is a great disriptor of part of my experience here. I am a stranger here, and I never feel it more than on weekends. Kodaikanal is a popular toursit attraction for India's mostly for the cooler weather, but partially because of the international community created by KIS. This means that, because I am white, I am an oddity. This feeling is compunded on weekends when the tourists show up.

Last weekend was a shock simply becasue I had never experienced it before. First I went on a walk down by the lake to see how windy It was (some friends and I were thinking about going canoeing. That ended up happening yesterday, which I will get to in a minute). As I was walking a group of young men approached me and asked for my picture. Having never experienced this before, I was flattered and agreed to take a couple pictures with them. Its quite amazing how quickly that feeling wears off. Later that day we were walking back to the school from a local hike, and (I'm n ot joking here) an entire bus leadned out of their windows and were whistling at us and asking us what country we were from. Its difficult to say whether this was because all three of us were white, or because I was the only male there. Regadless, we all kept our heads down and kept walking.

Fastforward to this week. The three of us finally got out canoeing. As we are launching the canoe, five men come over to help us put the boat into the water. As we launched the boat another 10-15 came over to watch us, waving and snapping pictures as we went. This treatment continued through our canoe, prompting me to make a very interesting connection: Its not all that different to minnesota boating culture. In MN, if you pass a boat or someone sitting on a dock, its polite and friendly to wave and say hi to them. In action, things here are quite the same, although I can't help but feel that the intention is quite different.

The point of all this is that it has been a severe wake up call for me to not only be in the minority, but to have it pointed out all the time. From tourists takeing pictures of me (both discreetly and quite obviously), to merchants charinging me more for their goods (skin tax and my friend Dan called it), to spectators calling me "westman" while I play ultimate frisbee, It has been an eye opening expereience to say the least.

I don't Imagine it will stop any time soon, rather I will just have to get used to it. A number of my friends have begun charging for there picture. That way its a win-win, either you get left alone, or you get some dinner money. I haven't had that opportunity yet, but I surely plan on taking advantage when the opportunity comes.

Theres my speil for this week. I have my pictures posted from the last two weeks. I think they will go up in weekly installments as well. A quick note, I accidentally loaded them in reverse order, meaning you should start with the last picture (number 49 right now I think) and go backwords.

http://s975.photobucket.com/albums/ae233/crusader3629/Student%20Teaching%20in%20India/

Cheers,

Kevin  

Teaching

Since I am here for teaching, I might as well give you guys a taste of what my week days have been like.

This week has been very strange. Not just from the point of view of starting teaching for the first time, but because the music department is in such an intense state of limbo, its difficult to do much of anything. The culprit for this state of limbo is scheduling. I have quickly discovered that scheduling is the number one difficulty at this school. Students schedules are constantly being changed due to class conflicts. Because of this the music department has been unable to schedule lessons for students, only half of the band members have showed up to each rehearsal, and it is not uncommon for a student not to come to one class because they have a conflict. That being said, my duties here will eventually be teaching private lessons, helping with all three bands (mostly the advanced and intermediate, but a little work with the beginning band), and helping teach a 9th grade music class.Because we haven't been able to schedule lessons, my time here has been relatively free. Eventually this will become the largest part of my day. One of my host teachers, Paul Jaikumar, Has already agreed to give me 6 of his students. I have already been working with one of these students, a talented Euphonium player who is working up an audition of the Royal School of Music exam (RSM).The other host teacher who I've been working with pretty closely, Stu Potter, has also talked about giving my some of his students, although we haven't figured out details yet. I am also planning on helping at the elementary/middle school one day a week, but who I teach and how many students I take has not been determined yet. It has been a little frustrating to go a week without doing what will eventually be the largest part of my day, but it has also been enlightening watching and helping my band directors get the band program moving.
The second largest part of my day will be working with the bands. All three of the band directors have been extremely generous in how much they will allow me to do with there bands. On the first day I met Mr. Potter he asked me how I thought I could best learn and contribute to the program. My response to him was that I wanted to become as much a part of the team as possible, which he has graciously helped me accomplish. On the first rehearsal we had with his advanced band, Mr. Potter gave me 1/3 of the rehearsal time to read through a piece. It should be noted that he is new here as well, so for his to surrender that much time for me was truly astounding. Mr. Jaikumar has treated me very much the same with his Intermediate band. He gave me two pieces to read through with the band, plus the opportunity to teach them part of a warm-up. In the end I think I was on the podium in front of that band for almost 45 minutes. What a treat.
I am also co-teaching a 9th grade music class. This has been quite an experience. There are only 5 students in the class, and all of varying backgrounds. One student cannot read music, while another understands the musical component quite will, but doesn't have very strong English. None have any extensive theory background, but all (at least I believe) have showed a strong urge to learn it. It will prove to be a very interesting, and I think very rewarding challenge.

That it for now, I really need to go have a weekend.

Take care,
Kevin

Traffic

I finally arrived in kodai last night. It has been quite a rush just getting here, and from the little I've seen of KIS, I think this expereience will be one for the ages. The campus is beautiful, the city is very unique and will be a ton of fun to explore, and the people I've met here are amazing.

However, between Incredible jet lag, Culture shock, language barrier, and all the new sights, sounds, and smells I'm expereiencing, I am very much on sensory over load right now. In light of that, I've decided to focus these blogs a little more. Rather than try and recount all of my stories and experiences here, I will focus on one expereience or event, and talk about it a little deeper. 

Todays topic is traffic. On the flight over, I stumbled across a short auto reveiw show called "the Autocar show." In the episode that I watched, they reviewed a new, economy class, Toyota that was coming out soon. One of the comments that the host made was that the car sacraficed smooth and comfortable ride for stiffer suspension that made it easier to dodge in and out of traffic. At the time I didn't think much of this, but as soon as we got into the taxi in delhi, I realized how important that it. There are lane markers on some roads here, but there really more like decoration, and the stop lights are very much optional. At one point our taxi driver made a right turn from the left "lane" with about four rows of cars in between.

When I got out of the taxi in Delhi, I though it was a very exciting and unique ride, but I never would have classified it as terrifying. That title belongs to the cab ride we took from Coimbatore to Kodaikanal. To give you a reference your sharing the road not only with other cars, but (in order from smallest to largest of course); Buses and trucks, Buffalo and cart, just Buffalo, Horses, Rickshaws of every variety you could imagine, Motorcyles (thousand of motorcycles), Bicycles, Pedestrians, and Dogs. Initially, when traffic is really tight, its not a big deal because you don't drive that fast. If there is an intersection ahead with cross traffic, you just nose your way though. The really adventure is when you get out into the country a little. Traffic thins out a little, roads get narrower, and you go much, much faster. At points I noticed we were going upwards of 105kmh, On a road that Americans would call barley larger than a on lane highway.

Here's a hypethetical situation for you. What do you do when you get caught behind a slow moving rickshaw going about a left hand bend? Do you be patient and wait for a safer straight away to pass him. Nah. Patience is for the weak of heart. You toot your horn a few times, gun your underpowered four cylinder SUV, and give your very white, very American passagners (especially the one in the front seat. That was me) a moment of pure terror they will never forget. OH NO! There's a a bus on the other side of that corner heading straight for you and your both gong 100kmh. Do you slow down and retreat behind the safety of the slow rickshaw? of course not. Real men don't back down. You honk your horn, and squeeze between the on coming bus of death, and the rickshaw, with enough space to make your passengers wish they had braught there brown pants.

The kicker is that this taxi ride wasnt a quick 10 minute jaunt acorss down. It a four hour treck out of the city, through the plains, and up the mountain to Kodai. It was easily the most terrifying driving experience I have ever had.

It occured to me once we had arrived safley at Kodai, and I had pried my own death grip from the seat cushion by my knee, that this traffic represents two parts of india that have shocked me the most.

The first is the general sense of controlled chaos. There don't seem to be any strict traffic laws here. If it makes you move forward, you do it. The only common factor is the drive to get to your destination, and you do pretty much anything to acheive that. Talking to some of the Indian teachers I have met here that really manifests it self in the government. There isn't such thing as zoning, you just build whatever needs to be built wherever its most convenient to build it.

The other thing the traffic reflects about India that shocked me was the pragmatic and entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian people. They seem to use whatever they can to achieve there goal, and more often that not that goal seems to be entrepreneurial in nature. There are millions of small privalty owned hotels, shops, resteraunts and bars around. Its quite remarkable. I get the sense that this country could be very wealthy if everyone didn't constanly cut each other off and get in each others way. At the same time, like the traffic, the way they do things here is working to some extant, and maybe that really what matters.

 

 Thats itfor now, gotta go eat lunch with my host teacher,

 Kevin

It all begins

Believe it or not, but this great adventure begins tomorrow. Kind of.
The first leg of my trip take me to Denver (via Omaha to visit my uncle) for my cousins wedding. As hard as it may be for me to keep myself from totally checking out during the wedding, which is on the 4th, I'm actually really looking forward to it. Seeing that side of the family again will be wonderful, plus it will provide a good warm-up for the next 15 weeks.
Bright and early that next morning, 6am to be exact, I take a flight to Chicago. I have a couple hour lay-over in Chicago where I will meet up with Eric and Midori, the two other student teachers who will be flying down from Minneapolis. At 2:45 we all board an Air India flight for a marathon, 15 hour journey directly to Delhi.
As much fun as that flight will be, The real rude awakening will be the 14 hour lay-over we have in Delhi waiting for flight to Coimbatore. We have booked a hotel, which will at least give us a bed to sleep in, but with the time change, and a 7am flight the next morning, I don't expect any of us to get much rest.
At 7am the next morning we fly south to Coimbatore, with one mystery stop on along the way. We've been promised a cab which will meet us at the airport and drive us all the way up the ghat road to Kodaikanal.
All in all, this will prove to be one heck of a journey, which should lead to one heck of a 3 months.

Here's grand adventures,
Kevin

Prologue: The W's

I'm going to india. Pretty crazy. In about three weeks too, which is even more crazy.
I figured I'd start a blog so every one can keep up wity my great adventure to Kodaikanal India. As the first entry, I'll start by explaining where I'm going, when I'm going, what I'm doing (as much as I know at least), and maybe talk alittle about why I'm going (although thats admitedly a difficult questins to answer.) Since I won't be able to talk to many of you in person about this trip until I get home, I figured these are the things you would most want to know.

Where am I going?: I'm going to Kodaikanal International School (http://www.kis.in/) in the state of Tamil Nadu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Nadu) in southern India. It's a residential boarding school which serves k-12 students. From what I've heard, the student body is around 50% Indian, 40(ish)% Korean and 10% other.
Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Kodaikanal,+Tamil+Nadu,+India&aq=0&sll=37.160317,-95.712891&sspn=50.649654,113.818359&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Kodaikanal,+Dindigul,+Tamil+Nadu,+India&ll=10.238235,77.489147&spn=0.124162,0.222301&z=13

When am I going?: My first day at Kodai is scheduled as July 6th and I arrive home October 26th. I'm not teaching for the entire time I'm there though. The first day of classes is July 12th, which is very nice because that gives me almost a week to get over the time change and the culture shock. My last day of teaching is early October, which is followed by activity week in which students sign up for short trips and teachers chaparone them. Although this is officially listed as optional, I've heard its pretty much expected that I go along. Honestly, I won't complain though. It sounds like a really fun experience.
Following activity week, the plan is to take about two weeks to travel India. What we will see, I have no clue (We are taking suggestions). The group last year took a very interesting trip through dheli up to the Woodstock international school (the other Indian school that St. Olaf sends studetn teachers to), which we may or may not follow. Who knows?

What am I doing?: This is still a little hazy. My host teacher is a South African piano teacher named Benn. He sounds like a great guy, but I have to admit the placement seems a little strange. He isn't invloved with the band program at all, and only teaches piano. When I asked him what I would be doing, he said I would certainly be teaching brass lesson, be helping with at least one (probably two) of the bands, and that I could help with any classroom instruction that I wanted (within the music department of course). So as to exactly what I'll be doing, thats about all I know. I do know I will be teaching Middle School and/or High School students. I've heard several stories of student teachers having one day of observation before being given the classroom for the rest of their time there. I can't say if that will happen for me, but I'm certainly bracing for that level of autonomy and independence.

Why am I going?: Like I said before this is a really difficult question for me to answer. I've had to answer it a couple times in applications and interviews and I think I've finally come up with a satisfactory answer. Ultimatley its for many reasons. I've always wanted to study abroad for a significant amount of time. I spent three weeks in Germany as a High School student and really loved the experience. I find experiencing new cultures to be very exciting.
I was also really attracted to the prospect of having more independence. Part of me just wants to be thrown to the wolves to see what I can do. This same part of me also thinks that that may be the best way to learn. As Ms. Fizzle said in the magic school bus "take chances, make mistakes, get messy." Obviously I need to be careful because this is a real school with real students, not some made up testing ground.
Finally, I believe this will halp make me a better teacher. There will be significant culture and language barriers that I will need to over come. If the level of independence is what I an bracing for, that will become another challenge for me to get over. If I can teach myself to over come these hurdles though, I think I will be that much better as a teacher when I come back home.

As far as Pictures, I will be posting them on my photobucket. As soon as I put some pictures in it I can share the URL.

 I'm putting this one up pretty early because the rest of june is looking pretty busy. Between My bother's and Cousin's weddings, my bothers reception back in Minneapolis, and all the preperations I will need to make for this adventure of a life time, I didn't think I would have any other chance to write this. My next post will probably be in July when I leave.


Keep your stick on the ice,
Kevin