IT'S TAJ TIME!!!!!!:)

BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEP!!!! It's that time to wake up and catch the 6:20am train from Delhi to Agra!!!!! Yeah it's freakin early and we get up and head out for the town that hold the most intriguing landmark in India: The Taj Mahal!! A question EVERYONE I know will ask when I get back is: how was the Taj Mahal!! When honestly, yes the Taj Mahal is very cool and amazing to go see, but at least for me personally I was/am WAY more excited for the Himalayas and overall views of Mussoorie than seeing the Taj!! The Taj is something you need to see when you visit India, no doubt, BUT once you've seen it, yeah never going back there again!!! Seen it done it!!! PLUS if you're not Indian it costs you 350 TIMES MORE than it does for Indian locals!!! Indian locals pay 10rp, I (and other non-natives) pay 750rp!! MESSED UP?!?! YEAH!!!:) That's 75 TIMES more that we have to pay!!! I can understand double the price or maybe even triple, but that much of a difference, come on!!! Any Indian government official when visiting America should DEFINITELY have to pay the price for that!! Cause it's just not the Taj as well they do that for, we had to pay the same ridiculous amount for the Agra Fort as well, and I'm sure other famous landmarks do the same thing!! When they come to America we should jack up our prices for them and see how they like it!!! Ridiculous!!! BUT anyways the Taj was amazing to see!!! When you first enter you do not realize how massive it is, then you see it and the people next to it from a distance looks like ANTS!!!!! It has to be at least 500 feet high!!!! The line though was probably the most entertaining part of the Taj!! Just like the Vatican, Washington DC, etc. there is a HUGE line to see inside the Taj!! Which I told Matt would be funny if all that was inside the Taj was an old man on a rocking chair hitting a rubber ball against the paddle and saying "HA! Sucks to be you!!":) But there wasn't sadly!! The line though, holy chaos!!!! No ropes or strings guiding people, we had to form our own lines!! And of course in India or anywhere that means COMPLETE PANDAMONIUM!!!! The guards there were LITERALLY pushing tourists/Indian natives around like punching bags!!!! This one man was carrying a child, and I'm like there's no way he's going to be pushed out of line......BAM pushed by the guard and he almost fell down the stairs!!! CRAZY!!! But so many people tried budging/succeeded at budging in line!!! Oh it is something you need to witness for yourself!! We get inside the Taj finally after an hour wait and it's pretty cool!! Inside you'll also have to see for yourself, not going to tell you!!!:) Also, no pics were allowed inside so don't try looking on my facebook to find out!!! HA!!! We leave the Taj around 4pm and decide to hit up the McDonald's in the BIG BAZAAR we saw on the way walking to the Taj!!! This place is the epiphony of a Western Mall!!! Stores forming a square in the center, little kids play place in the middle of the square, and of course and information kiosk!!! We ate at the McDonald's and then walked around the mall for a while!! Then with some spare time we decided we could make the Agra Fort as well, so we found ourselves an auto-rikshaw and drove to the Fort!!! The fort was amazing, not as amazing as the Taj, but it was up their!! Take Fort Snelling and multiply the overall area by 4, that was the size of Agra Fort!!!! IT WAS HUGE!!!! You could literally fit 4 Fort Snellings in it, and we only got to see 1/4th of it!!! LAME!! But it was very detailed and a lot more spiritual than I anticipated!!!:) After Agra Fort we needed to head back to the train station to catch our 2 hour train ride back home again!! So for the last time we called upon our trusty auto-rikshaw and rode back to the train station!!! There we took the train back to Delhi and met up with Megan at the Metropolis!!! She didn't come with us cause she already saw the Taj, and there really is NOTHING to do in Agra except that or barter all day!! Which she could easily do in Delhi!! We got home, stayed up watching some movies then headed to bed, ready for another 5am wake-up to catch our 6:20am train back to Dehradun!!!

Quarter Break cont......!!:) PART 2!!!!

We talked with the guy behind the desk and he would not budge, and neither did us!!! So we thought hey, it's only 100rp more a night for each of us, whatever let's pay it and never come back here again after this vacation is over with!!!!:) Got our room key, headed up stairs to our room, and when we walked in we were pleasantly suprised about the niceness that was our room!!!! 1 KING size bed, 2 mini couches, a tv, air conditioning, bathroom, AND fridge!! All of this for 400rp a night, which is about $8!!!:) Yeah suck on that Motel 8 and your "cheap prices"!!! This was also considered a "suite" room!! Which it clearly was!!!:) Okay so being Thursday, our first day in Delhi, it was freakin HOT as heck and we were not used to it yet, so when we got to our room we decided hey let's take a quick 2 hour nap in the nice air conditioned room and refresh our motors!!!! We lay in bed until like 4pm and finally decide to go out and explore Delhi!!!:) Hey it's vacation DON'T JUDGE!!! We get this really cool driver who takes us to the Humayun Tomb, which is considered the baby Taj, a little preview to the Taj on Saturday!!! It was really cool and really amazingly built!!! After walking around for an hour we decided to get some food, and Megan mentioned earlier this restaraunt called "The Big Chille"!! It serves primarily Western food, very similar to the Clock Tower Cafe, but way more expensive!!! We go and the food is AMAZING!!! I had lasagna, cheesey garlic bread, fruit smoothie, AND an OREO CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE!!! All for the cheap price of 900rp!!! Compared to a regular meal in Mussoorie, it's about DOULBE the price!! A regular meal in Mussoorie at a nice eatery is around 3-4oorp!!:) So it's the Olive Garden of Delhi!!! Went home after stuffing our faces and watched MORTAL KOMBAT while passing out from tiredness!!!! The plan for Friday was to wake up early, see the Red Fort, grab lunch and come back to the hotel and eat it!! Well it was Ghandi's Birthday so basically EVERYTHING was shut down!!! AND we didn't even wake up until 11am!! That felt awesome!! We had in mind what we wanted to do for lunch, and that was go to this really Western type grocery store, buy ACTUAL ham and bread and bring it back to the hotel and pig out!! Well it was about a 50/50 chance this place would be open because of Ghandi's birthday!! We arrived in the bazaar where this place was located, saw that 50% of the stores were closed and thought with our luck it will be closed, and BAM IT WAS OPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!:) Got our food, headed back to the hotel where we spent the entire afternoon up until dinner time laying on the bed and eating our Western lunch/snacks!!!! It was amazing!!! Friday night we called up a friend who lived in Delhi and she showed us around her place which was by the US Embassy, which is where she worked!!! We went to this restaraunt called Chalos, and had exquisite lamb and chicken!!!! After that we walked around the very Western type bazaar and called it a night due to the EXTREME earliness we had to get up at for the train to Agra tomorrow!!! That coming up NEXT.....don't go anywhere!!:)

Quarter Break in DELHI/AGRA!!!!!!!!!:)

IT'S BREAK TIME!!! A time where no students are around, or at least not too many!!! A time when you can sleep in and have no CLUE what time it is when you wake up and you know what IT DOESN'T MATTER!! A time when 4 friends can completely drive one friend crazy, sorry Megan!!!! A time when all you want to do is nothing, and you know what that is okay!!! And most importantly a time when you can turn snapple bottle caps into 3 hours of fun and annoyance, again sorry Megan......NOT!!!!!!!:) Soooooo Wednesday 12:59pm.....1 minute away from break.....clock strikes 1pm.....BAM IT'S QUARTER BREAK!!!!! School is officially OUT and I headed home to start packing for our loooooooong weekend trip to Delhi and Agra, the site of......?!?! Anyone, anyone.....VD economics.....Voo-Doo Economics (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)?!?! THAT'S RIGHT THE TAJ MAHAL!!!!!!!!:) So we leave Wednesday night at 9pm to catch the night train in Dehradun!! Oh yeah we're taking the overnight!! Why spend money on a hotel when we can just sleep on a train, which p.s. was the COOLEST train EVER!!!! So we get on the train and we come to our compartment, and it's basically a tri-bunkbed!!! 6 beds total, 3 on each side, with the middle one folded up so we could sit on the bottom one like a bench!!! There were 4 of us, so 2 others were just random folks, which when they arrived were of course Indian, so no communication there!!! The train arrived at the station by 11:20 and we headed off to Delhi by 11:30pm!! So we only stayed up until 12ish and then unfolded the middle bed and headed to bed!!!! Megan and I were top bunks, and Matt and Brady were middle bunks!!! I felt bad for Matt cause he was under me, and all that week let's just say my bowels was playing "A Farting Fanfare For The Common Man"!!! And that night that man was Matt!!! He luckily fell asleep right away so most of the smells were ignored due to sleeping!!! The train pulled into Delhi around 5:20am and you could tell not one of us slept that well on the train!! A LOT of tossing and turning!!! With our energy level low and patience beginning to fade, outside the train station was COMPLETE CHAOS!!!!! Taxi drivers were like vultures and basically pushing each other out of the way to get to us white folk and ask where we're going, do we need a taxi, etc.!!! After a while I just said nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo and held it like that for a minute after taxi driver/taxi driver approached constantly!!!! Matt used his teacher strict voice when saying no, and Megan/Brady were behind us so they didn't have to deal with as many vultures!!!!:) We THOUGHT we were at the New Delhi station which then our hotel was within walking distance!! HOWEVER, we were NOT at the New Delhi station, in fact we were at Old Delhi station which was a wonderful 40km away from New Delhi station on the west part of town!! Thus, could not walk to our hotel!! So we finally gave in to one of the auto-rikshaw drivers and said take us to the Main Bazaar, which is where the Metropolis (our hotel) was located!!!! The ride in the auto-rikshaw made the mornings blunders all disappear!! IT was a BLAST!!! If you're not familiar with an auto-rikshaw, picture a wheelbarrow frame, with an engine, big enough to hold 3 adult size people in the back, with a roof overhead!!!! Now as you know there were 4 of us, so one sat in front while 3 sat in back!! The front seat was lovely cause half of your body was out the door cause the driver took up 3/4th of the seat!!! And that lucky person was Megan!! HA!!!:) We arrived at the hotel within 30 minutes, so the drive wasn't too bad!! But when we checked in there was some disagreeance with the hotel room price and our booking!! It was clear we were supposed to be there, our name was written down, BUT was not made clear when the hotel was booked was apparently the number of people staying in the room!! The price we agreed on was 1200rp a night, but the man behind the desk said no no no no, for 4 people price is 1600rp!!! Since this was NOT our agreement we asked to talk to the man who talked to our travel agent who arranged our booking in the first place!! The guy behind the desk said that person didn't get in until 8am, so we had to wait an hour and a half!!! We went up to the restaraunt they had their and basically crashed and slept for an hour we were all exhausted!!!! When we woke up it was 8am and no sign of this man at all!!! We figured the guy behind the desk had NO clue what he was walking about!! So we waited another hour, until finally we just ordered breakfast and talked to the guy behind the desk again!!! Quarter break cont...

Nope not caught up yet!!!:)

The funny thing about the move was, within 1 week I was COMPLETELY settled in an feeling right at home at Mt. Hermon!! WHEN the first 3 months I was here and living at Monte Cristo, yeah not feeling like at home at all!!! I mean I bought rugs, towels, FOOD, more towels for Mt. Hermon, nothing was bought for Monte Cristo!!! I think I just felt like, Monte Cristo wasn't a for sure 3 year stay, where as Mt. Hermon definitely feels like this is "home" for 3+ years now!!!!:) AND THE BEST PART OF MT. HERMON APT. #5 IS I have this steel beam on my ceiling in my living room, PERFECT for pull-ups!!!! Granted the grip isn't ideal, BUT toughens you up right!!!;) And I have a rug on the floor, perfect for core work-outs!! It's my own living room/workout area!!!! OH YEAH!!! A PE teachers perfect living room!!!!;) Feeling right at home now I can finally focus on why I'm here, TEACHING!!!! With CC done and accomplished our next big task at hand was preparing for Track and Field season, which coincidentally started 2 weeks after CC InterHouse!! So all the TIME in the world to practice and get ready for that!!!:) Our first major event we had to prepare for was the 1500 Meter Finals!! The next Saturday after I moved!! Do you see how weekends are filling up with NO free time yet?!!?:) The 1500 Meter Finals were races for sub-jr.'s-senior divisions!! So basically 6-12 graders were running in these races!! The day was luckily shorter than CC day!!! Since it was ONLY one event and a shorter race compared to CC, it went from 8-12pm!!! During the next 2 weeks, in addition to finishing the 1500 meter races, we needed to finish other PD (predetermined) Events before Sports Day, cause there was NO WAY we could fit every single track and field event on one day with all those division and students competing!!!! Thus for 2 weeks we held practices after school down at Hanson Field until dinner time!! Basically the school day was from 6:30-6pm!! Oh and I forgot to mention after we opened the gym officially we opened the fitness room in the mornings from 6:30-7:30, which on every Tuesday/Thursday Matt and I supervise!!! ALSO meaning in order for me to get my run and workout in I start at 4:45am!!!! OH those runs are amazing!! Under the moon-->into a beautiful sunrise around the Chukkar!!! With the sun rising from behind the mountains, all I see is the outline of the Himalayan mountain line!!! Ummmm yeah kinda amazing!!!!:) Kinda beats Duluth's morning runs of mini hills and country!!! BUT in the winter I will definitely miss those -40 degree runs with -60 degree wind chills!!! Puts hair on the chest after completing those!!!!:) So with the full days, one can get pretty tired when coming home!!!!;) Anyways, we had Sports Day practices for a week straight THEN had our PD Field event finals the week of Quarter Break and the following week up to Sports Day itself!!!! Now I said in their the week of Quarter Break.....

Playing catch up is fun!!!!:)

Soooooooo that was our Cross Country season!! Basically over a span of 2 weeks!! Which as I'm starting to learn real quickly, most of our sports, except soccer and basketball (go figure) are about 2 weeks in length!!! OH and the BIGGEST EVENT PROBABLY THIS ENTIRE YEAR HAPPENED THE DAY BEFORE INTERSCHOOL CROSS COUNTRY!! That of course being our GYM OPENING!!!!!! The New Gym at Woodstock officially opened September 18th, 2009!!!! We had a very nice ceremony in the main part of the gym with the Mumby-Downs families in attendance (the 2 biggest contributors) giving their speeches and whatnot!!! THEN after the ceremony we had a tour of the gym for everyone, and of course EXCELLENT food for dinner!!! We apparently flew in chefs from all over India, making North, South, and Eastern Indian food!!! It was amazing!!! This was definitely bigger than India's Independence Day celebrated at Woodstock, which was funny to think about!!!!;) After dinner was my favorite part: DANCE PARTY IN THE GYM!!!!! All of the staff received yellow jackets for FREE and were wearing them Friday!! So at the dance party it was this big circle of yellow dancing awesomely and very smoothly as well!!!!!:) We all stayed until 9:30ish, when at that point our old age started to kick in and most of us left between 9:30-10!!! Mostly because we had to get up at 7am the next day to help volunteer for Cross Country races!!!!! So that takes up through the middle of September with big events!!!! The next HUGE event in my life would have to be the very next weekend after CC, and that is my moving from Monte Cristo Apt. to Mt. Hermon Apt. #5!!!!!!!!!! The reason being is Woodstock wanted my place at Monte Cristo for a family, since it had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms!!! I was hesistant at first on moving cause I was nice and settled, BUT then they said the magic words: Hobit Hole!!!!:) Apt. #5 at Mt. Hermon is called the Hobit Hole, and with good reason too!!! I checked out the apartment after the CC races and it is AWESOME!!! The doors are 4.5 ft tall, so I need to bend down just to walk around my house, and the best part yet is the complex has INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:) Which I am using right now to update this blog!!!:) So I moved into my NEW APARTMENT the following weekend!! It took me exactly 3 hours to pack EVERYTHING I own and move!!! When it took easily 3+ days to get ready for India!!! Weird how that works!!! How my entire life here can be moved within 3 hours!!! The later part of that Saturday I unpacked all of my things but didn't really get settled in (unpacked and organized) until Sunday, after my trip to the bazaar!!! MY life continued...

FOR EV ER!!!!!!:)

Holy schnikee it's been WAY TOO LONG since my last post!!!!!!!!! I always say, oh yeah I'll do a summary post next weekend, then the next, then the next goes by and bam no time!!!! Now I've been busy a plethora of times during the summer with summer tennis!! Every hour during the day from 6am-8pm it seems is tennis!! However, there's always been (for the most part) the weekends free and Fridays!!! BUT here, it's summer tennis busy times 4302597!!!! 7 days a week it seems there is something to do or needs to be done!!! This is the FIRST weekend in 5 weeks that I have NOTHING planned on Saturday and it feels awesome!!!!:) So let's get started on the updating my life part, since it's the main reason you read my blogs in the first place!!! Or you just log on because of the sweet music!! I know deep down you love Final Countdown!!;) Well the last post I had was our middle school hike about 8 weeks ago now??! SINCE THEN SO much has happened it's ridiculous!!! I can't even remember if I talked about InterHouse and InterSchool Cross Country!!! If not we had InterHouse Cross Country races on September 11th, 2009!! Yes 9-11!! Except here doesn't really have the same meaning as the states!!! Basically what happens on InterHouse CC Day is the entire school is shut down and dedicated for running CC!!! It's amazing!!! In the morning we have elementary and middle school run their races!!! Distances anywhere from, just around the bend to 4.6km!!! The students, like I mentioned in my earlier blogs, are separated into 3 Houses: Merlins, Condors and the best for last Eagles!!! Yes, staff get a house as well and I'm an Eagle!!! BLUE BABY!!!! FAVORITE COLOR and pretty much the color of every shirt I own!!!!!;) Students come up with these VERY Western type cheers and houses receive extra points for being the most spirited!!! Eagles, of course, WON the MOST SPIRITED AWARD!!! Brought a huge smile to my face!!!! Picking up just where I left off from summer tennis!!!:) Even though, in NO way are they anywhere in the league of dressing up like shakopee tennis!! They'll need to get tutored eventually!!!! So lunch time came and we ate down at Chardukan, which I got this HUGE chocolate pancake and HUGE apple cinnamon waffle, all for an equivalent of $4!!! Cheap food rocks, but still DELICIOUS FOOD!!! After lunch it was high schools turn to run!!! These runs were distances from 4.6km to the senior boys of 6.1km!!! Staff have their choice to run and earn points towards their house, so most of the men staff run with the senior boys, similar to the ladies!!! I would LOVE to say I got first in the senior division race, BUT Kakivi, this extraordinary natural athlete beat me by 10 seconds!! HOWEVER, there was a point in the race he was easily ahead by 45 seconds, SO, only losing by 10 wasn't too shabby for this old man!!!;) Definitely motivated me to start running and training again!!! After InterHouse CC comes InterSchool CC the next weekend (Saturday)!!! This is similar to CC invitationals where 4-5 schools show up and compete vs. each other!!! So we invited Wyneberg-Allen (our biggest rivals) and St. George's College (all boys school)!!! Woodstock totally got 4 2nd places and 4 3rd places during the course of the day!!! Now in all honesty the 4 2nd places were out of 2 teams competing, and the 4 3rd places were out of 3 teams competing!! Thus pretty much got last place in each team race!!! BUT, individually we did have 2 1st place winners and 3 3rd place finishers!!!!!:) That was pretty sweet to see!!! MY life continued....

ANOTHER MIDDLE SCHOOL HIKE!!!!:)

Sooooooooooooo it's kinda been a WHILE since I've written a post!!! My bad been very busy!!!!:) YESTERDAY we had our SECOND middle school hike of the year!!!! 15 students, 5 staff, and 20km of hiking!!! HOLY SCHNIKEE!!!!:) Alarm goes off at 6:30am and packed up 6 LITERS of water, and of course on the way to school stopped off at my shop and got 2 more liters of water AND Tiger cookies!!!! The usual for hike day!!!;) Arrived at school for an excellent breakfast of fried eggs and cereal!!!!! We walked down to Ridgewood and met the troops!! All 15 were waiting and ready to go around 8:30am!!! We took 4 taxis to near a spot called Cloud's End and unpacked there!! So we had 15 middle schoolers 7/8th grade, 5 staff and one adult chaperon!!!! I had 8 liters of water, lunch, 50 cookies, and some other minor things in my pack ready to go (it was kinda heavy, but BRING IT ON)!!!!:) The first 1/3 of the hike was on cement!! It was very mossy on the way down the cement so we had to be careful when hiking downwards!! We hiked downhill the first part and then took our first break right before our nature trail incline!!:) The middle school girls asked for a break EVERY 15 minutes it seemed!! The middle school guys just kept asking is it lunch time or how far have we gone EVERY 15 minutes!! Needless to say it got VERY repetitive VERY fast!!! And of course the pace some of them had was sooooooo SLOW!!! Like walking through cement it seemed!!!! We kept saying COME ON COME ON let's go let's go!!! Trying anything and everything to speed up their pace!! A couple of times we took the stragglers, and not being chauvinistic, but they were often the girls!!! Our goal was to make it to Bhadraj Hill by 1pm!! That's 10km over a 4 1/2 hour time frame!!! Hopefully we can make it and not have to turn around before that!!:) Especially with the pace some of them were walking at!!! We make it to our first checkpoint around 10:30 and that was the bottom of the hill about to begin our incline on the nature trail!!! We ascend up hill and make it to this open area with a little stone platform that is about half way from the start of the nature trail to Bhadraj Hill, and take our second break!!! Now the moods are starting to change from the girls and they begin to whine about being tired and not wanting to go to the temple and blah blah blah!!!:) Continuing on, Matt and Suman are at the back pushing the girls while I'm in the middle, and Stephan and Titu are in lead, leading some of the guys to our final checkpoint before lunch and Bhadraj Hill!!! We arrive at this house on the lower part of the peak where we take our final break before climbing Bhadraj Hill!! It's about noon right now, and we make it to the top of the hill by 12:30, so we totally made it within 30 minutes!! Very awesome!! We have lunch and the rest of the hike cont....