Onam, Rangoli, Bukhari

A lexicon for the week

This past week and a half ushered in Onam, a festival that has a long history in the southern Indian state of Kerala and, put simply, celebrates the rice harvest (there’s a long mythological story if you want to look it up). Since some of the students and staff have a background from Kerala, there were symbols and food to celebrate the occasion. The most ornate and beautiful one on campus was the floral rangoli, a traditional (and amazing!) display handcrafted the morning of the first day of the celebration. And although I [jokingly] dared a couple fellow teachers to make “snow angels” in it, it stayed for several days untouched by human or monkey. And this is no ordinary feat considering it was placed directly between the early years classroom (three and four-year-olds) and the dining hall.

Also of note this past week or so was the new flooring we received in our house. Although we only asked for a softball-sized hole to be repaired, the housing department noticed they no longer carry the vinyl from our house, thus leading them to decide on simply laying a new, darker layer on top. Three men came and worked for 10 straight hours, carefully cutting the edges, slathering on contact cement, applying the flooring, then heating it with a heat gun until we had a brand new floor right on top of the old one. They also added the extra material to our front entrance that had previously been bare concrete. This changed the look and feel way more than we expected, and it feels like we’ve added on an extra room!

Finally, the week marked the first time we’ve made a fire in the bukhari (wood stove). I will admit, Leandra did all the work here. It can not be overstated how hard it is to start a fire here. The dampness of EVERYTHING in addition to a lower amount of oxygen at our elevation makes it seem like everything is fire resistant. You can spend an hour lighting paper and cardboard and candles and charcoal logs and it always seems to end the same: a small, pathetic tongue of fire snuffing itself out on the edge of a perfectly fine flammable material. Tonight we shall try once again…

We hear the end of monsoon season is imminent, but it can’t come soon enough.

Lucy, the most cuddly of the neighborhood dogs, saying hello to our neighbor (another Woodstock teacher)

What would a post be without a monkey picture? This guy outside our kitchen window thought he might have found free berries (in reality metal decorations) on our planter.