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After more than a month, exhaustion – both mental and physical – is beginning to hit.

I didn’t leave myself time to realize where I am, what’s happened to me. All of a sudden, my life has changed, and it wasn’t an easy or gradual passage.

I’m happy, satisfied. Always. I’m sure I made the right choice, and if I was offered a return ticket, I’d turn it down.

But I’m tired, very tired.

I’m tired because my mind never stops.

I haven’t cried yet since I arrived here. Though every day, for one stupid thing or another, the tears rise and my eyes fill, I never manage to let them fall.

I’m tired, so tired I could whine and throw a hysterical scene. Get out while you can…

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Nostalgia post Birthday Fair Weather Holiday Apples and Pears Mussoorie

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This school dance is serious stuff, there’s even a rehearsal.

MomComm: But what about electing Miss Woodstock? Do they not do that anymore?

My own class of ’81 failed to do so, actually. We voted three times, and each time reached a three way tie between Tina, Vinita, and Reem. I think this was because each represented a "faction": Tina for the missionaries, Vinita for the Indians (though her parents were also missionaries), and Reem for "everyone else".

Our solution? We decided to have three Miss Woodstocks. Then, just to keep people on their toes, we elected Durjoy "Mister Woodstock."

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Junior-Senior Banquet Pictures Choices Made Inspi(red) Weird School Contest

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Yesterday I tried running again.

The Indian children in this area find us extremely interesting, us big white girls.

If there’s a camera, it’s the end of the world. They can hold that smile for up to an hour, but then they attack you and surround you because they know that (in 99 cases out of 100) you have a digital camera and they can see themselves in the photos immediately!

There’s a cook who knows me by now and every morning I go over my Hindi lesson with him. I have to put down my tray and put my hands together to salute him, “namaste” – it’s not complete without the gesture.

MomComm: I wonder if this cook recognizes me in my daughter. All the staff have phenomenal memories, and when alumni return they are proud to introduce us to their sons, now serving Woodstock themselves. At our class reunion in Mussoorie last November (I wasn’t present), one of the bearers said to my classmate Durjoy: “Sahib, you have all grown old and fat!”

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Nostalgia post Birthday Junior-Senior Banquet Pictures Weird School Contest Dorm Life

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moi

photo by Megan

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moi again

(were you beginning to miss my egocentrism?)

Banana eating contest!

(Where have I ended up?!)

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Fair Weather Holiday Junior-Senior Banquet Pictures Slow Dancing Indian Schoolkids