The Routine

So, here's been my daily schedule this week, with little variation: 7:00AM - Get up. Check out the view from my window. Roll out of bed. 7:10AM - Run around the loop. I'm a real bitch so I probably stop once or twice. 7:40AM - Get back. Shower. 7:50AM - Breakfast downstairs: Tea, toast, eggs, occasionally fruit. 8:00AM - Leave for school. Walk up the massive stairs in the thin air... 8:06AM - Reach top of stairs. 8:10AM - Arrive at school. Wait for my first teacher, Habib Ahmad: grammar.

Habib-ji, or, as we know him, zipper-ji, is a cool guy. He's known as zipper-ji because 4 of 5 days this week when he came to class his fly was down. After you notice for the first time, it's hard to concentrate. Inevitably halfway through class he'll invent a reason to turn around and fix it. Thank God. Habib-ji (ji is an honorific title in Hindi btw) is of average height, average build, thick Indian hair, dark skin, dark eyes, and a thickly settled yet thin mustache. He's funny, and has the classic Indian accent. He's an excellent teacher, though. He tries to get you to experiment with the language, concentrating on the oral aspects and perfect pronunciation rather than rote practice. I learn a lot in Habib-ji's class.

8:20 - Class is supposed to start. ~8:35 - Habib-ji arrives. 8:55 - Habib-ji fixes his fly. 9:10 - Class 1 ends. 9:20 - Class 2 with Jaswinder: writing.

Jaswinder has the most attitude of any Indian woman I've met yet. I'm not entirely sure she likes her job, or likes Americans, or likes writing things over and over again. She's constantly chewing gum, looking out the window while we're working, or telling stories about other students. The jury is out on her. We fill the period everyday, but I can't for the life of me remember what we do in there...

10:00 - Class 2 ends. We walk to Chardukhan ("the 4 stores" in Hindi) down the hill for tea. 10:30 - Class 3 starts with Kumud: grammar.

Kumud is my least favorite teacher. She goes too fast. She writes illegibly on the board and with script characters that none of us know. She attempts to reteach lessons that Habib-ji taught in the morning and only succeeds in obfuscating whatever clarity we were able to attain. Add to that the fact that she smells and won't turn off or not answer her cell phone during class, and there you have it...

11:10 - Class 3 ends. I run out. 11:20 - Class 4 starts with Urmila-ji: writing.

Urmila-ji is my favorite teacher. It's a good thing, too, given who she comes after. Urmila is a large woman who always wears these amazingly ornate saris. I've never seen her not smiling, and she is patient in a way that comes naturally to old, giving women. She corrects with kindness but will harp on you for correct pronunciation of the billions of identical letters in Hindi. Her handwriting is beautiful and reinforces my faith that Hindi is actually a truly beautiful written language. When she speaks her speech is inflected with her constant true smile, giving a sweetness to the language that Kumud notably lacks.

12:10 - Class 4 ends. We walk home. 1:20 - Lunch at the house, prepared by Gambhir.

Gambhir is so cool. He speaks very little english, but he's forgotten more about this region, Indian food, and home repair than anybody I've ever known. He's worked here at Valley View for 12 years or so. Gambhir is also an avid gardener, as the pictures of the house here will attest to. He has a particular affinity for this type of purple flower grown here in India (sorry - can't remember the name). Funnily enough, the local monkey troops picked up on the attentive care Gambhir gave to these particular flowers and decided to raise a ruckus. The story goes that they would drop down from the trees next to these flowers just after he had finished working on them and tear off the flower petals, then just look at Gambhir and run away. Damn monkeys. Gambhir took this personally and decided to get even. So he bought a shotgun. Brinda thought this was a bit much, so she got him Mindy. Mindy is this rather small dog that looks like she's part wolf. Gambhir trained her to go after monkeys at a particular signal ("shhh shhh shhh"). The monkey problem went away, though Gambhir apparently kept the shotgun, just in case.

2:00-6:00 - Chill. Do homework. Play some random card games and maybe Trivial Pursuit. ~6:00 - Tea. 7:30 - Dinner. I'll have to do a seperate update on the food here sometime. 8:10 till whenever - Hardcore, Texas-holdem poker. If you go out, you join the Trivial Pursuit game, probably. We've also been watching the EuroCup on tv these last couple nights. Extremely dramatic. England-Portugal last night was one of the best games I've ever seen. Before Midnight - to sleep. "Rinse and repeat." It's a pretty chill schedule. Lots of leisure time. Lots of hard work. It's nice. More tomorrow. :)