school, school, school

The kids attend G.D.Goenka World School in Sohna. It is an international school with kids from 16 countries. Unfortunately, none of these other kids are white or from the West! So they stick out just a bit. Isaac tells me there are two blond boys in the entire school, both in 4th grade. The other one is Irish and VERY blond. That sort of takes the pressure off Isaac! There are more Western girls, but still not many. What we do find is many Indians that are here after years in the US, so their children are American born, have little or no accent, often speak no Hindi, and are just as bewildered at the things they see as our kids! There are a few families like that in our neighborhood, and they have been such a help to us! They explain things, translate for us, and help us to figure things out. There are 10 kids from our neighborhood that go to Goenka School too, including 3 little girls around Miranda's age and a kid from California in Isaac's class named Anish. The girls have not been that lucky, but Sam does have a friend named Aparna who grew up in Minnesota and lives not too far away.

The kids wear uniforms every day, with a more casual uniform on Wednesday. They will switch to the winter uniform as soon as I get to the school to buy them. It is still very warm so I have been in no hurry to make them wear wool blazers and tights.

We have to walk about a quarter mile to the bus stop, down a rough, smelly, VERY dusty street, then cross 4 lanes of traffic on Sohna Road. It is optional, and I am currently campaigning to have the bus pick up at the gate. The other (Indian) moms want this too but they are happy to have me be the squeaky wheel. The bus takes about 25 minutes. This is Sohna Road looking one way then the other. Traffic is very light in the morning, later I will post a photo of afternoon traffic. It is NOT light!

The school is on a large and beautiful campus out in the sticks. It has a 5 hole golf course, an Olympic size swimming pool (unfortunately, it is currently under repair, but they still had swimming in the "kiddie pool") and horses to ride!! Sam and Alex both are riding for PE, Alex was even invited to ride everyday :) that annoyed Sam of course. I hope to have photos of that to post soon - they are not as hip on parents wandering around as schools are in the US. The school has over 600 kids, half of which are boarders, who live there, and half are day-boarders who bus in daily. The kids eat breakfast and lunch at school. The food is usually Indian (and ALWAYS vegetarian - Isaac HATES that), but sometimes they have Chinese. Their favorite is the Chinese ice cream. Breakfast is fairly normal - toast and cereal - but after lunch and snack of Indian food, they are not that excited to eat Indian food again for dinner! So Randy and I do not eat Indian.

School is very different - the kids are very loud and boisterous in class, and no one raises their hand - they just yell out. Our kids don't like that very much. Everything seems very chaotic in India and school is no execption. The teachers often don't seem very organized, the class schedules change without notice, and Sam and Alex had trouble for a while with teachers just not showing up (a LOT - Alex had no teacher in class 8 times in one week! not a very happy record). Their early complaints were that the kids were LOUD, crowded in too close and touched them way too much. You may notice in the above photo of them in uniform (first day) Alex is not wearing her skirt. They didn't have her size so she just went in pants, and unfortunately, they all thought she was a boy :( Of course, short hair is not usual, and her name is no help. She was welcomed (and hugged) by all the boys. It was a bad first week.

They were a couple months into the year when we arrived (their summer is May/June) so there was some catching up to do, but they all seem to do well. They all take Hindi class (kindergarten level) and all but Miranda take a third language too - Spanish for Alex and Isaac, French for Sam. Everybody likes that part. The Hindi is hard because they are learning to read and write it too. I wish it was just spoken Hindi. It seems to be slow going. One of my favorite quotes from the first weeks was Sam announcing that she needed 35 rupees for her kindergarten Hindi book!

This is a photo Isaac took while we were at the school for Parent/Teacher conferences. It was disorganized and chaotic (suprise!). We are learning that waiting your turn is an unknown concept here. We were at the school for 4 hours and did not see all 4 teachers.