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