Wai Wai High
It's Saturday at the movies here at Clifton Hostel, an eighty-year-old building I live in with 101 high school boys. Some of them are watching Troy (pirated movies are easy to come by here) in the basement with their girl friends, others are playing soccer and cricket in the halls, others are in the kitchen cooking Wai Wai noodles, the South Asian version of Ramen.
I'm in the office chatting with other boys, watching the Cubs lose on espn.com, and answering phone calls from parents in Delhi, Hyderabad, London and Nigeria. When I'm not in the office I'm wandering the halls, trying to make conversations with students, playing pool with them, and vicariously re-living the excitement of finding a date for the school dance.
A lot of those conversations have been pretty awkward and stunted, and I've been consistently reminded, when meeting new staff and students this past month, that I need a lot of time to get comfortable with new people. It's happening, but slowly, and there have been plenty of times I wish I had a class to teach or a campout to lead--something more structured or defined. 101 kids. . . wow.
But they've got stories to tell, and I'll have time to hear them. A couple new Indian guys came from Saudi Arabia where their dads work for an American oil company. Another kid is from Dharamsala, a few hours away, where the Dalai Lama and his exiled Tibetan government are based. There's a kid with a bow tie and a new punk rock t-shirt every day who's an exchange student from a boarding school in Connecticut. A lot of them are the sons of missionaries and even more are the sons of successful businessmen in Delhi.
Some of them play video games after school all day and others spend their free time studying SAT prep books or reading books by Bill Gates and George Sauros. Some are applying to Ivy League schools and others are buying pot and other drugs from local coolies, we hear. So there's a lot of motivated students, with plenty of pressure from home, no doubt, but there's still a lot of the same kinds of kids you'd find at any other high school.
I think I'm adjusting to India pretty well, but learning my job has been rocky--lots of fun some times and I feel completely incompetant other times. The staff is as diverse as the students, and incredibly well-traveled, and I'm excited about seeking friendships with some of them. But we don't get to see much of teaching staff, since we work when they're off, and vice versa, which has been frustrating.
This is all I have energy for tonight, but soon I hope to write about Hindi lessons, Indian Independence Day (next Saturday), and drooling over stories of the Char Dham Yatra, the pilgrimage to the four main sources of the Ganges, in the mountains above me.
I'm in the office chatting with other boys, watching the Cubs lose on espn.com, and answering phone calls from parents in Delhi, Hyderabad, London and Nigeria. When I'm not in the office I'm wandering the halls, trying to make conversations with students, playing pool with them, and vicariously re-living the excitement of finding a date for the school dance.
A lot of those conversations have been pretty awkward and stunted, and I've been consistently reminded, when meeting new staff and students this past month, that I need a lot of time to get comfortable with new people. It's happening, but slowly, and there have been plenty of times I wish I had a class to teach or a campout to lead--something more structured or defined. 101 kids. . . wow.
But they've got stories to tell, and I'll have time to hear them. A couple new Indian guys came from Saudi Arabia where their dads work for an American oil company. Another kid is from Dharamsala, a few hours away, where the Dalai Lama and his exiled Tibetan government are based. There's a kid with a bow tie and a new punk rock t-shirt every day who's an exchange student from a boarding school in Connecticut. A lot of them are the sons of missionaries and even more are the sons of successful businessmen in Delhi.
Some of them play video games after school all day and others spend their free time studying SAT prep books or reading books by Bill Gates and George Sauros. Some are applying to Ivy League schools and others are buying pot and other drugs from local coolies, we hear. So there's a lot of motivated students, with plenty of pressure from home, no doubt, but there's still a lot of the same kinds of kids you'd find at any other high school.
I think I'm adjusting to India pretty well, but learning my job has been rocky--lots of fun some times and I feel completely incompetant other times. The staff is as diverse as the students, and incredibly well-traveled, and I'm excited about seeking friendships with some of them. But we don't get to see much of teaching staff, since we work when they're off, and vice versa, which has been frustrating.
This is all I have energy for tonight, but soon I hope to write about Hindi lessons, Indian Independence Day (next Saturday), and drooling over stories of the Char Dham Yatra, the pilgrimage to the four main sources of the Ganges, in the mountains above me.
posted by Jonathan Hiskes at 8:36 PM
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