Cyclone Jal

Like many would-be bloggers, I've gotten more interested in living and enjoying my life than writing about it in recent months. Time for an update.

Right now Cyclone Jal is pouring down rain and some wind, but I just read a message forwarded by the school from the US Embassy that we are advised to stay off the beaches through Nov. 10. Must mean the worst is yet to come--could reach 70-80 mph winds.

This is our Diwali, the biggest holiday here, three-day weekend. We enjoyed a rooftop dinner Friday night with non-stop fireworks 360 degrees across this city of eight million. Up close and miles away, they just kept on coming. It was quite a show...loud and smokey, however, as the evening wore on, and by 10:00 we were ready to retreat to the the muffled quiet of our air conditioners.

We saw a great concert last night--it exceeded all expectations. I was never really interested in all the tribute band hoopla, but we contributed to a local charity and got some VIP seats for The Cavern Beatles from Liverpool. Wow, what an experience. I never really knew much about the Beatles live shows or even who sang which songs, so it was fascinating. All of them were strong vocally, had studied their stage presence, resembled their original Beatle and had all the high notes and gutteral screams nailed. I wish John had agreed to endure it with us to see his name sake, John Winston. He was clearly the band leader.  Of course they started out with their black suits and bangs, then changed into Sgt. Pepper uniforms, and finally Lennon's white suit and glasses, Harrison's denin, and just a shaggy, less uniformed look. The sound was great, and it's amazing the excitement and emotions those old songs create; I was screaming like a 1962 teenager for effect. The vegetarian brownies enhanced every minute. Acoustic solos included Paul's Yesterday, George's Here Comes the Sun, and John's You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. Ringo even did Act Naturally, a tune I didn't realize was the Beatles.

In other news, we had a fun vacation with my mother in October visiting the Taj Mahal, friends in Delhi, the Dune Resort, Pondicherry, Auroville, and some local landmarks, spas, and restaurants here in Chennai. Except for a couple close encounters with monkeys and overzealous vendors, everything went smoothly. I wish she had stayed a few days longer to enjoy UN Day at school and another weekend with us!

 

John and I will be back in Belchertown and West Hartford from Dec. 20 - Jan. 5, with the before Christmas and after New Year's dates up in Belchertown. Would be nice to have a ton of early snow for good skiing those weeks...

John's Swim Meet

It's been a busy start to the new school year with loads of weekend events to attend, a stringent yoga regime, and all of our respective responsibilities--a heavy 9th grade homework load with challenging courses for John, and the influx of many new language learners for Widi and me.

John's been practicing with the high school swim team and got a few medals in 100 meter backstroke and breast stroke and a 200 meter relay with the 15-18 year-old team at yesterday's Big Bad Blue local Chennai tournament. It was a fun day. Widi was the caller, and I was a timer from 9:00 till nearly 5:00 all told...with breaks, fruit smoothies and pizzas along the way. Here are a few shots of John--belly piercing covered as it heals.

He was especially pleased that his combination or ribbons looked like the Italian flag to honor his Italian heritage. While he is still resisting going on the trip, the team travels to the American International School in Mumbai for the big South Asian Inter-Scholastic Association (SAISA) meet in two weeks.

His best friend Harmony, who convinced him to join the team with her, unexpected had to go back to Michigan last week. It was a hard good-bye for John. Still, watching him with peers, parents, and coaches, and judging from the cheers for him while racing and receiving awards, he is very popular with everyone, a big fish in a small pond in a way I can't imagine in Belchertown. I don't think he realizes it as he still talks about wanting to go back to Belchertown High. By day's end he had an invitation to a lovely Indian girl's 16th birthday party.

Brussels & Paris 2010

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Some Highlights in May

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The Waterina is a new hotel that opened recently in our neighborhood. It has a scrumptious Sunday brunch on the rooftop with access to the pool, flower leis, beer tickets, and a lovely view of the ocean. There are a few new shots from Oliver, and then a little end-of-year celebration for my department at our house.

While the Smilebox shows the highs, I had my first lower back episode last week. It had been a  particularly stressful week at school, and right in the middle of a vigorous 6 or 8 rounds of the sun salutation in our yoga class Saturday morning, pop went the muscle.

We went to the Ayurvedic doctor the next day. Widi signed up for a 6-day detox program, and I started a 7-day muscle repair regime. Every morning this week I went in from 6-6:40 for a wonderfully healing pummeling treatment. First, Sandia, the masseuse, rubbed hot oil infused with muscle-relaxant herbs on my back for about 3 or 4 minutes. Then, with this mitt that had been heating on a little stove, she pummeled my muscles until it cooled from almost burning to warm; then, she replaced it with the other burning mitt and just pummeled away. My only complaint was that there wasn't a face hole in the massage table, so I had to ask her to massage my neck after all the thrashing and beating was over. And, after a few days, I was back to yoga and now I'm 100%--with nary a painkiller needed.

This is a wonderful, amazing country.

Oliver!

John was in a production of Oliver! last night and he surprised us all with his stage presence and deep singing voice. The dancing was a given, but he did an impressive job with the acting and singing parts. This is a music and drama program for kids in grades 3-8, so he was the oldest one, but he had fun with it and is just the heartthrob of all the little elementary girls. He played Fagan in the show and his big number was Got to Pick a Pocket or Two. He was also in Food, Glorious Food as an orphan and sang off stage with his wireless mic in the numbers he wasn't in. It was quite a thrill for us to watch. There were several talented kids with great singing voices. John was very comfortable and cool on stage. At one point Bill Sikes didn't enter on cue, so he was left making small talk with Nancy while we all waited. I'd love to see him do more drama.

It's too bad the Pioneer Valley School of Performing Arts' waiting list was so long in grade 7. We might not have had to move so far to find a good school for John. Now that we've settled, though, it's going to be hard to get us back.                

In other news, on regular Sunday evening walk down by the beach a couple weeks ago, Widi and I stumbled upon the International Sivananda Yoga Center which is based in Montreal. We signed up for a beginning yoga course and are headed into our third week of four 90-minute classes a week in the evening. Wow, it's pretty intense, but we both love it. There is an Ayruvedic "Kendra" attached to it, meaning a medical center with massage and other herbal cures. We went for our first massages there this morning.

For about $9, we got 50 minutes of massage and 10 minutes of a steam treatment. It was amazing. Not at all the calm pleasurable massage you might get in Bali or at Elizabeth Grady. This was all business, very spartan, full of hot aromatic oils and getting roughed up a bit. There was the long firm massaging of muscles but also a fair amount of slapping and chopping and niggling of sensitive acupressure points. She went back to the feet about four times. On Friday night I had a little sore throat and was taking vitamin C to try to ward of a cold. After this treatment this morning, I'm feeling fantastic. And think of it, all right here in our neighborhood.

John was hoping his friends wouldn't find out about the play. A couple of them did but Ji Won was the only one who made it to see him perform; she brought him red roses! But Ji Won is not to be confused with Ji Woon, John's "girlfriend." He bought her an engagement ring in Singapore and just thinks she's the coolest. I haven't met her yet, and it's all very light hearted, but I will post a photo as soon as I get one. The last shot is of the Oliver cast with Ms. Becky, the director, a wonderful Malaysian woman whom I work closely with in the elementary school.

See you soon!

Photos from our March Vacation

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Jogjakarta Transformed

The last time we visited Jogjakarta--just 18 months ago--it was a dirty, chaotic, loud, polluted city on the scale of the worst of Asian cities. 

And now, miraculously, against the backdrop of our seven months in Chennai, it has been transformed into a clean, orderly, lovely city that hums along charmingly as we move from place to place. Here there are no mountains of garbage and rubble lining the streets; instead, there are rows of trimmed shrubs and flowers, swept sidewalks and neatly covered baskets for rubbish. People obey traffic rules here as traffic moves along effortlessly while in Chennai there are no rules; stray cows, bulls or goat herds stroll into the flow of traffic at will and drivers cross over into the wrong lane to get around them. The hum of motorcycles here is like a gurgling brook after the jarring cacophony of horns, unmufflered auto-rickshaws and motorcycles in Chennai. It is truly amazing how much experience effects perception.

And so we are enjoying our ritual visits around Jogjakarta visiting with Widi's father, now 78, and brothers and sprinkling fresh rose petals on the many ancestral graves on the two sides of Widi's family. These visits take us out of the city through the bucolic rice fields of Central Java into small hamlets for tea and conversation in houses with low doorways. Widi actually banged his head on one this time--which is usually my role. Hard to imagine a doorway that low, isn't it?

There's a thriving aquarium hobby store/pet market in the city and John wants us to look into International Schools here. How fickle he is. It was just last week he wanted to move to Singapore after he found milk tea in the rapid transit station. 

Tomorrow we move on to Bali where I'm hoping our social obligations will cease. In addition to visiting all the village folks, we've also paid visits to Widi's two brothers and two sisters living in this area--we spent today at a water park with the cousins. On top of all that the past three nights Widi has orchestrated class reunion dinners: college friends, high school friends, and tonight, middle school friends! John and I finally drew the line and said we needed a night off and sent him off alone. The dinners were a lot of fun, I have to admit, but while I'm craving some quiet time to read my novel and do some writing, I'm hearing that the old Galang gang is meeting for dinner in Bali, which will be fun--these are *my* friends too--and his old friend Michael and youngest brother Dono are also visiting us there. Most of all these events have been brewing for months, it seems, through facebook (FB, as Widi likes to say), his favorite hobby these days.

I've got some nice photos of John and his cousins, but they don't seem to want to upload at the moment. Soon I'll tell you about our nostalgic trip back to Galang Island and post the photos then.

Turtles, Fish, and Parakeets

We've skipped a lot of chapters here, but let's pretend we haven't. Here's the latest.

Friday night we attended the release of several Olive Ridley Sea Turtle hatchlings, which nest right along the Chennai coast here where we live. In just the past few years, Indian environmentalists have begun a strong program to protect these little guys who have been collapsing dehydrated as the move toward the lights of the city rather than the ocean. The volunteer group also protects the eggs from predators and escorts them into the ocean.

We also saw some mother turtles who had been maimed by fishermen, who cut off their flippers when they get tangled in the nets and watched a short documentary about the program. Last year Jane Goodall visited to publicize the efforts to educate fishermen and the public to save the turtles. It was quite exciting to see the little ones make their way into the waves. It was a bit of a mob scene, however, as the entire school community was invited. Still, it was great to see this local community come together--an army of volunteers--to protect this endangered species.



Meanwhile, closer to home, John and Widi are having a field day discovering our nearby hobby shops and pet stores. John got that smallish aquarium for his birthday and it has led to a couple larger aquariums, including a surprise delivery came today of a huge 74 gallon one--bought second hand or so I'm told.

The beautiful tropical fish are very inexpensive and if you look at the closeup shot, you'll even see John's Peacock Eel in the center.

John has been learning a lot about maintaining the right temperature in the tanks and how to combat the various parasites and contagious ailments that have come up. He spends a lot of time reading about the various types of tropical fish, snails, shrimp, and eels that are available here, who gets along nicely with whom (and who needs a separate tank), and what each one needs to thrive. Every day after school, he wants to stop at the aquarium store--just to look and see what's new.

 

Widi even decided to break the cardinal rule of "no noisy, smelly pets" and brought home three baby parakeets this week. John is advising him on the proper nutrition and care for these as well.

They stay outside the house in the foyer area, and while they are adorable, I'm still not excited about it.

Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary

Oddly enough Susan finally caught a flight into Chennai at 2:15 AM the day we'd booked a school trip leaving at 5:45 AM. We drank a little more coffee when we got home from the airport, and Widi and I got on the bus for two hours to Vedanthangal, the protected nesting area for large birds that fly south for the winter. It was an amazing experience.

There were thousands of nesting birds set on a pretty pond. Loads of cormorants, herons, storks, pelicans, and many others including the Darter or Snakebird that we had a close encounter with. We watched it fish and then spread its wings nearby to dry. After futilely trying to capture the beauty of the birds with a tiny little Canon, we took a long hike, ran into some festively painted cows and took in the lovely rural scenes. Here are a few photos from the day.

January Highlights

We've finally sorted out our computer issues and our house guest has returned to wintry Amherst. So here now with a moment to spare, here are a few January highlights.

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary with some friends, dragging out the DVD of our wedding in Java and playing it throughout the evening.

Notice the lovely amethyst jewelery Widi got me as a gift. He's made some good choices of little jewelry sets, Christmas was garnet, anniversary was amethyst, and my birthday was jade. I'm becoming a bit of an Edna with all the jewels...

John celebrated his 14th birthday on the 17th and refused to have a party, so we surprised him by bringing cake and ice cream to his English class. His classmates were very appreciative. We got him an aquarium, some eels and fish, and a USB satellite internet connection service, which makes his life a lot easier as we travel around.



Susan Tyler visited us after a harrowing experience getting stuck in Dubai for over two weeks trying to get a visa to visit India. It is a long and sordid tale and once she finally arrived, we got an emergency email that a tree had fallen on her house in Amherst. Still, she happily let us and our driver John drag her around to various temples, historical spots, and musical events. The high point might have been the Sunday we spent with our driver's cousin's family visiting the inner sanctums of the oldest Hindu temple anywhere, receiving VIP service through the hoards of people to get our pujas (special blessings) from various priests. The main reason was for our 20th wedding anniversary, but Susan seemed to be included in all of them as well. Strangely it seemed like she had become part of the marriage before it was all said and done. The family also cooked us a scrumptious Indian meal eaten native off banana leaves without utensils.

Computer Issues

It was a an itunes update that put my computer over the edge of overstepping the hard drive capacity and froze up the whole system, photos and all. In addition to Widi leaving his netbook in a taxi on our trip, we're trying to assess the damage and reinvest. An external drive and rebooting of the system may save my computer and a MacBook is a tempting possibility as well. Until then, no new photos, and without photos, I'm speechless, it seems. It's just lucky that John's babysitting tonight that I got onto his computer.

My friend Susan Tyler will be arriving on Monday, and just in the nick of time, the school's technicians installed a hot water heater for the shower in the guestroom. Susan does not use the Internet, a la Cousin Chris, and I haven't heard a word from her except the flight number, date and time of arrival through a mutual friend. So, it should be interesting. We tend to do a lot of laughing together, so I'm sure we'll enjoy her stay.

I'm still chuckling about Steve's comment about the Osho Dancing Meditation retreat. He has no no idea how hilarious that little comment was to me. I really do feel like a "lucky dog" and maybe part of it is being surrounded by like-minded people. I tend to forget that the life we've created, while ideal for us, might look very different from another perspective. How many people, honestly now, agree with Steve's twisted sarcastic comment that "a full two years in India" would be like a bad nightmare?

Travel in India

Being away from hot spots to write and post along the way is a great disadvantage, but let me tell you a little more about our trip in retrospect. To start off, three things stand out:

(1) Traveling with a 13-year-old is very different than traveling with a 0-12 year-old.
(2) Travel in India can be challenging.
(3) The Ganges River is a god.

I.
We got a taste of this in Washington, DC, in April, so I shouldn't have been surprised, but John was absolutely uninterested in anything outside the resort/hotel room beyond the beach or an internet cafe. The occasional shopping for snacks or skin care items sometimes motivated him. He was happy to order room service while Widi and I went off on our excursions visiting various historical sites, temples, and craft villages. It was a difficult balance between Widi, who was happy to leave him in the room, and me, who wanted not only to share the time together, but also to not let him miss the rich cultural experiences. After all, this is part of his international experiential education.

We did some negotiating and the first two outings that John reluctantly participated in, the Wednesday Bazaar Panaji River Cruise in Goa and the Jauggernant Temple in Puri, Orissa, were not very pleasant. In Goa, we left late (guess who the late sleeper is?), close to noon in a non-AC taxi, hit a tribal protest march, and got stuck in suffocating traffic, had only had about 15 minutes at the bazaar and got on a tacky, loud river cruise, which wasn't anything like what I had envisioned. John actually enjoyed the cruise and we had a fantastic lunch after the traffic debacle, so the day was somewhat saved.

Then, in Puri, the taxi dropped us about a half mile from the temple, which we couldn't get into as non-Hindus, but wanted to photograph from the library across the street. We couldn't find the library and were wandering along some narrow streets filled with vendors, pedestrians, bulls and goats--some moving rather swiftly in our direction, brushing up against us. We didn't know where we were going and John and I were beginning to panic because of the crowd and the animals. We finally got out of there without our rooftop shots of the famous pilgrimage site to the common refrain of these outings, "Can we go back to the room now?"

Little by little we learned but never gave up on enticing John to see a little of these exotic places. Much to his credit, he got up at 5:00 AM for the freezing sunrise boat tour of the ghats in Varansi and even took some great photos of the sunrise.

II.

It takes a lot more energy to travel in India than other places we've visited. It was harder to find Western food and a shower that didn't get the entire bathroom floor wet. The traffic, crowds, and insanely risky driving chaos can be draining. We loved Varanasi because our hotel was right on the Ganges and we could go most places by boat. Widi is great about negotiating the unknown for us, but I realized that even though people sometimes think he is Indian, it's not as smooth sailing as in Indonesia where he knows the rules.

III.

Varanasi, the old Benares, was the most fascinating place. The oldest city in the world, it was the contemporary of Babylon and Nineveh. There were so many things going on along the ghats to the Ganges, which we both walked and boated by daily. There will be more about this to come and a slide show for those that are interested. The river itself is worshiped as a god, and bathing in it gives great healing, forgives sins, and brings great spiritual benefits. As is customary, we set our intentions afloat with flowers and candle.

Some Photos from the Holidays

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