As the last two evenings have been “Curriculum Night” at the school, Susan and I have been busy hopping to and from the school, giving our presentations and then putting on our ‘parent hat’ to sit in on the kids’ teachers.
Tonight, I had to get the kids home from school, get them all homeworked, get some food in them, and make sure everything was ok before going back to school to see Breck’s class presentation. Then, because Susan was still doing her spiel for another hour, I got to rush back home and put them to bed.
This doesn’t really sound like the sort of stuff that exciting evenings are made of, until you remember that this is in India – and all that transportation is done in rickshaws. That is not usually such a big deal, but today was different. I took three (four, really, as you’ll see) trips, and each had interesting and unique aspects about them:
Rickshaw #1 – As the kids and I were coming home from school, our driver spat out a big red stream of betel juice as we waited for the light to turn, which prompted Alea to mutter, “Gross.” Then Breck saw a hijra – what is often called a “eunuch” here: a man dressed up as a woman – begging at a corner and we had quite the discussion about them.
Rickshaw #2 – When I headed out to go back to the school, I realized that our elevator had broken in the building: 7 flights down (and no excitement about the return back up!). When I caught the rickshaw, things seemed to be going well, up until the point that we hit another rickshaw going through an intersection. As it was the first “accident” I’d been in, it was an interesting mess. Neither vehicle seemed to suffer too much damage, and the drivers pulled over, yelled at each other for a few minutes, and then proceeded on their ways. I suppose we were in need of a blessing, which is why a cow stuck its head inside at the next stoplight and licked my hand! That is another “never before” event for me.
Rickshaw #3 – After the school presentation, where I sat in the 4th grade room with the school superintendent and his wife, the associate superintendent, my principal, and the high school principal’s husband (along with many other parents), I hopped back in another rick to get home. This ride started with us sitting behind a delivery truck that had 2 men sitting in the back eating their dinner, which was followed by us getting involved in a yelling match with a rider in another rickshaw. We got stuck in traffic, and inched our way up to where a passenger was yelling and gesticulating and slapping his driver. The other driver was almost in tears, and my guy started yelling across at the passenger, and pretty soon the three of them were at each others’ throats. Mind you, this conversation was all in Marathi, which I don’t understand at all, so I’m only guessing here that it had something to do with the driver not going the direction the passenger wanted and now he was mad about being stuck in traffic.
Luckily for me, we got out of that situation when the rickshaw I was in stalled, and the driver couldn’t get it going. He pushed it for a while, fiddled around in the back, and finally looked at me with a shrug. Then when I tried to be a nice guy and pay him – even though we’d gotten barely halfway home – he started yelling at me to pay double the meter (something that is just not done!). That was not a pleasant way to start my walk down the road!
Rickshaw #4 – After having a couple of ricks not take me (either because they didn’t want to go in the direction of our home or because they didn’t understand what I was saying!), one picked me up. He had a couple of incense sticks burning and was about as mellow as they come. He deftly steered around the traffic jams, and got us on the right course. We ended up having to take a little detour, however, when we came across a huge hole in the road with literally a gushing river of water in it. It seemed to be a broken water main, and there were guys down there in the mud trying to scoop out oozing black sewer stuff with what looked like oversized dinner plate.
And then I made it to Kiara – just in time to walk all those stairs. Ahh, there’s no place like home!
Through our first year here, we’ve posted a number of pages centered around things that we see in our daily life. As the school year is almost over, and we will be in the US for most of the break, this is the 
India is a vegetarian’s heaven. Besides all the fresh fruits and veggies that are available in the markets, at roadside stands, and in neighborhood carts, the idea of vegetarianism permeates the culture. Religiously, it makes sense. Since India welcomes all sorts of different faiths, including those that won’t eat beef (Hinduism), those that won’t eat pork (Islam and Judaism), those that don’t believe in killing any creatures at all (Jainism), and those that don’t prohibit meat but still kinda sorta recommend against eating dead animals (Buddhism), the easiest way to avoid any misunderstandings is to stick to a vegetarian path.
Finally got the 
One of the toughest things for the kids to get used to is the poverty. Mumbai is an enormous city, and India is still a very poor country, and people from all over head to the big metropolis in the hopes of building a better life. Unfortunately for them, most end up in the sort of filth and squalor pictured here, where children with their heads shaved for lice squat in the street, surrounded by garbage, to relieve themselves. This was taken out our bus window one (typical) day heading home from school.
…must all have name tags on them. We’ve found this out as we’ve traveled around the country, and it is kind of a fun little routine for us. When you check in, you have to fill out a name tag and put it on your bag. Then when you go through security (which involves a metal detector and a pat-down search – all done in a separate line and behind a curtained divider for the women), the guard stamps your tag. When you leave the waiting room for the bus to take you to the airplane stairs (jetways are unknown here), another guard checks to make sure you have a stamp. If not, back to security for you!
We have returned from the sunny south of India, after 10 days of backwater boat rides and the four s’s – sun, sand, salt, and seafood!!
Today is the big Parade of Nations (PON), not to be confused with yesterday’s Festival of Nations (FON). As a huge international school, we make quite a big deal over celebrating the national diversity roaming our halls. Looking at the setup statistics for the events today, there are students from 51 different countries walking the halls here out of a population of around 660!
Obviously a bit different than in years past!
What a rookie mistake. You’d think that after 38 years of life and more than 6 months in Mumbai I would have learned my lesson.
We went out, and before we even got into a rick, I realized that I had made a mistake of colossal proportions. People were all over the place, simply covered head to foot in pink, blue, purple, yellow, green, silver: every color imaginable. As we made our way north, we passed motorcycles full of painted families, rickshaws jammed with smiling kids, the streets teeming with colorful Indians. They would smile and wave at Breck and me, just happy to be out and about with the fresh paint dripping everywhere. And I had gone out without a camera.
With all the racket and traffic, the city fathers have decided that a day of quiet is just what the doctor ordered. April 7th is being orchestrated as No Horn Day in Mumbai. I’ll believe it when I see (hear) it. There is no way typical Indian drivers are going to lay off the horn – it is just too crazy to deal with cars, rickshaws, bikes, motorcycles, buses, trucks, horses, cows, dogs, pedestrians, beggars, sellers, sweepers, potholes, construction: all while driving on the wrong side of the road!!
Saturday was a full day at school. Dave got up early to go in for middle school girls’ volleyball practice (no, he’s not playing on the team – he’s coachingthe team!). Breck’s indoor soccer season then wrapped up this weekend with a tournament that afternoon at the school. The kids played hard and stuffed themselves between games on all the food parents had brought for the pot luck dinner. Alea got to go swimming during some of the matches, as one of her friends was at school (also to watch her brother – who was on Breck’s team – play in the tournament). In the end, his team ended up with a 4th place trophy, lots of smiles all around, and some standing invitations for play dates.
So in a country where the majority of people don’t have running water, most of them are used to squatting in an open field and ‘wiping’ with water. If they do have access to a toilet, it is usually a “Squatty” with two foot places and a hole in the middle with a bucket of water for playing Captain Kirk. Not too big a deal, but it took me a while to figure out why we kept seeing people walking around in the morning with water bottles in their hands.
The highlight of the school’s social calendar is a huge gala dinner, dance, and PTA fundraising party. This year it was held at the Grand Hyatt hotel, and gave Dave and Susan a chance to dress up and spend a night out.
So Breck had an interesting experience this weekend. He and Dave went to a hole-in-the-wall studio where he had an afternoon 