6
December
The famous Woo
When the lils started school, it was Woo that I worried about. They were both leaving a very loving and comfortable group, moving to a school where they knew no one. it was going to be an adjustment for both, but I thought that Goose would be OK. She is at an age where she still just floats around. No one wants to play with her? She plays alone. She doesn’t want to play with anyone? She just sits and watches. It’s a good age. Woo, on the other hand, is right where friendship starts to matter. School aged lils start to notice when the others embrace or reject them, I didn’t know what was going to happen, so I fretted.
It turned out that I did have some concerns with Goosie. She had a really hard time being away from her brother for the first time ever. Everyday of the first week of school, she came home and said “no friends today” in this sad little voice. She started to have problems with drop off, and really didn’t like school for a short time. We focused our energy on helping her adjust and I stopped worrying about Woo, for the most part.
That is not to say that there weren’t the occasional things that made me raise an eyebrow about Woo’s days. Times like when he came home and told me about the girl who told him she would only be his friend when no one else was there; the day I saw a boy trying really hard to push him down as they walked up the lane towards me; when he complains that they are the ONLY KIDS IN THE WORLD who have to have a quiet time at home; or when he reported that the teachers had given him the “secret job” of telling when other lils throw toys (because those kids are always the most popular). Nothing serious, just little things that I watched.
This week it has become clear that things are going well. Woo has one little friend that he is really tight with, a very sweet little boy. Each day when we arrive, different children either yell hello to him from the second floor balcony of the classroom, or gather excitedly to him in the classroom. He gleefully tells us of all the friends that he plays with each day. The teachers all seem to love him, telling me what a kind and considerate boy he is, and many of the parents know him by name as we pass by them. Then yesterday one of the moms, after being introduced to him, said “Oh! So this is the famous Woo!” I think he is going to be just fine. Although I am a little worried about just what he is famous for…
5
December
O Christmas Tree
This past Saturday we set off on one our our favourite holiday traditions, the family search for our Christmas tree. I have always loved getting the tree, and some of my favourite Christmas memories are of getting trees with my family as a child. Willy and I have continued the tradition of decorating real trees, and have historically taken the family to precut tree lots. Had we been in Canada this year, we were going to go to a “cut your own lot” for a new twist!
Being new to Bangalore, I didn’t really know where to look for trees. I wasn’t even sure that there would be Christmas trees of any sort available, given that the population is very much non-christian. Happily, there are a number of decorations in the stores, including some fake trees. We were more interested in a little tree that would be kept (alive) in a pot and available for planting at a later date, so we started looking at alternatives to traditional pines. Tops of my list were either a Christmas hibiscus, or a Christmas palm tree. We found what was reported to be a large nursery and set off.
The nursery was actually in the middle of Lal Bagh Gardens, a massive and beautiful park just south of the downtown core. We spent a couple of hours wandering around admiring the trees, flowers, and wildlife. It really is an amazing park that I want to go visit some more. It was about an hour from our house, but we packed a picnic lunch and had a nice time.
The visit concluded with a trip to the nursery. We had two tired lils, but the promise of a Christmas tree perked them up, and soon they were running around and goofing off among the plants. After our first pass, we found some flimsy palms, and no hibiscus trees. I wasn’t sure the palms were going to cut it, so I wandered a little deeper, and found the perfect little tree! It’s about four feet tall, and a smidge Charlie Brown. It has soft, short needles, and branches that will be strong enough to hold whatever we come up with for ornaments. It is a pine, but a more tropical type of pine, one that is seen growing in some places in Bangalore, including one on our street! Near as I can tell, it is a “Cook Pine”, also known as the Christmas tree pine. Fitting.
The lils loved it so much that we needed to get them each smaller versions. So we now have three trees, ready for some decorating. They aren’t quite the tropical tree that I envisioned, but the will do just fine!
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1
December
The big countdown
This is the first time that I will have ever spent Christmas outside of Canada, let alone in the tropics. Sure, I have gone south just before and just after Christmas, but this is different. This is the entire Christmas season away from home. I admit that December has snuck up on me somewhat, though I am pretty excited that it is finally here. Not only does this month bring a PILE of family birthdays (mine included!), it brings Christmas too!
It is pretty important to me that the lils experience of India doesn’t leave them feeling like they are missing out, so I have tried to bring traditions with us. One of these traditions it pretty new to us, and it’s all thanks to Andrea from a peek inside the fishbowl. This is the second year that we will be celebrating the countdown to Christmas with a month full of family friendly, holiday themed activities!! Andrea’s family has been doing this for a number of years (though they scaled it back this year), and this is our second year. The idea is a twist on the modern tradition of candy or toy filled advent calendars. I loved the idea as soon as I read the post, and knew that we had to do it. We loved doing it last year.
Given that December snuck up on me, I am the first to admit that we don’t have a full list written out. Part of this is because a number of my items from last year required either snow or more than an insignificant portion of the population actually celebrating Christmas, and the rest is because that is how I role. we did get our first day’s activity in, writing letters to Santa. Well I wrote what the lils dictated. Woo went first, followed by Goose, and here is what they gave me, word for word, with no prompting:
Now we just have to figure out how to get these to Santa in time for the big day!
28
November
This is my dance space
This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine
It’s one of my favourite lines from the movie Dirty Dancing. Johnny uses it when he is trying to teach Baby to dance, and she keeps “invading” his personal space. It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as the two are already lovers, and he seems to be enjoying the fact that Baby can’t respect his dance space. It’s a cute scene and the expression has stuck with me. I have used it a lot, both in seriousness and in jest, when people get a little bit to close to my dance space. Since moving to India, I feel that I now need to come up with a tactful and appropriate variation for the lils.
The first few weeks that we lived here were pretty much all business. We arrived, moved, set up house, and started school and work. We didn’t pay much attention to people around us, and we didn’t do much exploring. As we have become more settled that has changed, and we are starting to go out more and to play in our community. One of our very first outings was on Diwali, and we were somewhat mobbed by a large group of people at one point. They were very happy and celebratory, and just wanted to take pictures, but also touch the lils faces and hair, and hug and kiss them. We were all taken aback, but mostly OK with this. Then it started happening a little bit more on a smaller scale. We were walking at the Nandi Hills, and Goose was scooped up for a picture. We were at the Zoo, and school children kept coming up to Woo and squeezing his cheeks. Every time we walk anywhere, I get asked to stop and pose with the lils, or have them pose with random strangers. It even happens when we are riding our bikes in our neighbourhood.
Last weekend we were at the zoo again for Goose’s birthday. We were having a great day, and the lils were happily roaming the paths from animal to animal. At one point Goose ran from me to Willy and Woo, a distance of about 100m. When she was about halfway there, she went passed a group of women, one of whom grabbed her arm. Goose tried to keep running, but the woman would not let go. I ran up, yelling at her to please let go and to be gentle. When I got to Goose, she was shaken and a little hurt. I picked her up, told the woman that she shouldn’t do that and caught up to the boys. I was a little shaken myself.
That event strikes me as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Since that time, I have noticed that both lils are newly painfully shy with strangers. Neither will speak to anyone they don’t know and Goose has taken to wearing a hat a lot more in public. It is a hat that she can hid under. They grab our legs and turn away when people talk to them now. Drop-off at school became much more of a struggle, in part because the teachers wait at the gate to get the children safely in the school grounds and off the busy road. This is well meaning, but to the lils, it is just another large group of people they barely know reaching out for them.
Some of these we can work on with the lils. We spoke to the school, came up with a solution that works for both of us, and have no more tears at drop off. We have spent some time letting the lils know that in public, people do this because they are curious, but that that doesn’t mean that the lils have to engage them. I ask that Woo and Goose remain polite, and simply say “no thank you” if they are bothered, or that they tell us so that we can say it. We also tell the people that they have to ask the lils, and if they don’t reply or say no, it has to be respected. The problem is that it isn’t respected. It’s hard enough to get them to pose for MY camera, so I am not going to force the lils to pose for a stranger’s picture. They should just be able to enjoy their India experience without worrying about being pinched, prodded, grabbed, and hugged and kissed. I just have to come up with a catchy way to tell people.
25
November
Happy Day
Finally. I had a great day. Possibly the best day since we have moved to India. It’s a relief, a pleasure, and a promise of more to come.
Goose`s class went on a field trip today, and I accompanied. I was mostly going to try and help with her morning transition to school issues, but they have mostly resolved themselves in the last two days. Resolved to the point where she kept telling me to leave this AM before the group left for the trip! A little part of me was also going to check out other peoples houses. This was the point of the trip, the culmination of their learning unit on house styles. Who doesn’t love peeking in other peoples houses?
There were a number of parents on the trip, so I met a number of new people. The buses were full, so I car pooled with two lovely moms, and had plenty of opportunity to talk with and get to know them a bit. I really enjoyed talking with them and connecting. One of the moms has children in both Woo and Goose’s classes, lils that my lils play very nicely with, and consider friends. We have a full family play date planned with them for tomorrow. I think that Willy and I are more excited about this than the lils.
Our trip went long, so we arrived a school with little time left it the day. On a whim, I snatched the lils and played a bit of afternoon hookie (with cookies). We played, danced, napped and just hung out. The highlight was our daily street hockey game, much to the entertainment of all who wandered by.
The day ended with many giggles, cuddles and a surprise call to one of my best friends. This is normal, and I could get used to it.
I even took a picture that I really like.
22
November
This is why I am not a boss
Once I had made peace with the fact that we would be hiring a cook, I very much looked forward to it. I envisioned delicious local cuisine, learning this tips and tricks of authentic cooking, and being able to spend the time between school and dinner with the lils, attention focused completely on them. The woman that we hired seemed to be a decent fit for our life. Her references were good, promising a mix of western and local food and she could come at the same time that our maid does, which minimizes the disruption in my life.
She is a lovely woman, and is very patient with my lils. When they are home, she indulges them, letting them help in the kitchen and generally buzz all around. They clearly like her, which is very important to me. She is also very neat and efficient in the kitchen, which being the opposite of this, impresses me to no end. While I was disappointed that the first meal she made for us was quesadillas, they were pretty much the best ques I have ever eaten. These, and the fact that she was willing to take over the grocery shopping made for a very promising start.
There were, however, a few things that made me raise my eyebrow about her. She arrived on the first day and demanded a salary that was higher than what we agreed upon, saying simply that it was what she made. I let her know that she could work on a (paid) trial for two weeks, and if we liked her enough, we would pay her the salary. She then asked for bus pass money, money to get her bus ID, money for a gate pass photo… all of these were presented in a way that made the requests seem normal and necessary. I agreed, in part because they seemed normal and necessary, and in part because I feel that domestic help is underpaid by MY standards. Then the Friday of her second week here, she came to me with a request for a loan of fifteen months salary. I was caught completely off guard, but managed to tell her that I would have to talk to Willy.
We never really considered the request. While we did learn that such loans are not uncommon, they generally take place when someone has been working for a family for a long period of time and has built a trusting, almost familial, relationship. We barely know this woman. The money requested didn’t amount to a fortune, but it was significant enough that we would be impacted, and exceeded the amount that we intended to pay her for her tenure with us. We said no.
Her request did have what was likely an unintended consequence, it opened a dialogue between Willy and I about her performance. It turned out that neither of us was actually happy with her cooking, we were more indifferent. There was already a lot of repetition in her menu selection, the flavours were all pretty similar, and her Indian food was pretty pedestrian. We were getting much better food at the restaurant around the corner and were “cheating” on her once or twice a week. We were also saddened by the lack of depth in her spicing, and the fact that ketchup and soy sauce were regular and consistent staples in the food.
The clincher for us was that the lils were not eating her food. We felt that it went beyond just taste (though this was a big part of it), and spoke to their need to have some normalcy in their lives. They knew that mama hadn’t made the food, and were not interested as a result. I experimented with cooking for them each night, and they loved the food. They started sleeping better, started behaving better, and were much happier. Despite the fact that we could have worked with her to overcome some of the things that were making us unhappy, we decided that we had to let her go. The immediate change in the lils was convincing enough.
I asked the lils to stay in the playroom on Monday morning and waited for her arrival. When she arrived, I stepped outside with her and told her we were letting her go. I gave her our reasons and answered her questions about whether we were hiring another cook or if she could change her cooking to stay with us. She seemed to accept the answers and then reached into her bag to get a beautiful traditional Indian dress that she had sewn for Goose’s birthday, complete with hair clips, necklace, and bangles. She insisted that Goose keep it, and only asked that I send a photo to her.
I still feel awful.
21
November
Like I don’t have enough to worry about…
A couple of posts on our community message board caught my eye today:
#1 : On 21/11/11 neighbour one wrote:
Hi all,
My brother who lives in PM (a neighbouring community) saw a huge snake in his living room y’day. Apparently, there are snake catchers in the area who come and take the snakes away without killing them. Am forwarding the phone nos. below, just fyi. Hope we never have to use them 🙂
Here are the numbers:Closest one:
Mahesh in Varthur:
09916 968 959
09845 714 598Poorthi: (Old Airport Road)
09844530033Sanjeev (Bannerghatta)
097 42084335Mohan (Bhanasvadi)
098 45 080903The attached video shows how a professional Bangalore snake catcher does his job. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du3CHIi6QFY
Ciao, neighbour one
Then the second, which followed pretty quickly and made my eyes bug out a little lot .
#2 : On 21/11/11 neighbour two wrote:
Thanks for sharing the info.
In Ozone (our community), you can also call Prestige help desk. Ozone has one gardener who catches snakes. He caught a cobra from our side yard few months back, with a stick, did not kill it. Also, in the help desk office, the snake catchers numbers are printed and put up, so if we can’t find the numbers handy, they can tell us the numbers 🙂
-Neighbour two
I am good with the geckos, spiders, frogs, bees, and other small mostly harmless creatures. No one warned me about the frigging COBRAS in the yard and possibly house!!