Hello everyone!
I hope you are able to find a moment to relax and enjoy the approaching holidays.  Life in Kolkata has become extremely busy for me.  As I said in my last email, I began working at Dolna Day School.  The school has three classes below Class I for two, three and four year olds, through Class XII.  Each week, I see Upper Nursery (the three year olds) through Class VII for forty minutes as well as a Junior and Senior Choir which I see three days a week.  Although teaching is exhausting, particularly in a school that is not the culture I am use to, I am really happy to be back in the classroom.  I am already developing a special relationship with students and teaching them really energizes me.  

I can't say it's all peaches and cream though.  There are so many things I am not used to and so many things that shock me about this school.  For example, there is not one quiet signal used in this school.  Teachers will just yell at students if they're too loud (which is, ahem, very effective...) so I'm putting a lot of time into teaching and training students to respond to quiet signals.  I began working at the beginning of December and today is the Christmas Fete, which as far as I can tell is a big Christmas Carnival.  Each of my choirs will be singing 10-12 songs throughout the Fete.  Yesterday, our rehearsals went really well and I am very proud of the hard work they put into memorizing and doing various musical things I ask of them.  I am, however, looking forward to January when I can really start with basic singing skills.  The upcoming performance forced me to focus on memorizing and learning songs, rather then technique.  Students did make lots of improvements and I think they are enjoying working with me just as much as I am with them.  I made all my choir students (13 in Junior Choir, 45 in senior choir) all name tags because I cannot keep them straight and I am pleased to report not a single choir member lost their name tag!

Aakash has been busy playing with lots of people.  A few nights back he performed with a group for the Kolkata classical guitar festival and tomorrow he's playing with Tanmoy Bose's band, Taltuntra.  He's currently en route home from the airport, where I am hoping he found his mom!  Teresa will be visiting us through January 2nd, and we're looking forward to her visit.  

In addition to the Christmas Fete and Teresa's visit, we've also been busy preparing for Christmas and Aakash's birthday.  I'm excited because Cole Paulson, one of our good friends from high school, recently moved to Delhi and he'll be coming to Kolkata for Christmas.  We're throwing a party on December 24th for our friends who will be in town and I am looking forward to singing Christmas songs.  Cole will be here in time for the party which is exciting.  For those of you who don't know Cole, we have been in plays and choirs together since middle school, so I've been singing Christmas sings with him every year for almost fifteen years.  If you can't tell, we're excited he'll be joining us.

My friend Matt bought me a dab Christmas tree.  Dabs=coconuts.  Basically, if you hack of the branch of a dab tree and remove the dabs, it looks like a cactus Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  It's very beautiful.  Once we get it fully decorated, I will share pictures!

I guess I haven't written since I went to the Sunderbans with Matt and Alec.  It was an absolutely incredible trip, and very close to Kolkata.  We traveled by train and bus for two hours, and hired a boat to live on for two nights.  We spend the next few days zigzagging around islands in the Ganga delta, looking for wildlife and drinking Dab.  (Between the three of us, we drank almost 50 dab.  It was awesome.) We didn't see any tigers (even our guides, who've lived there all their lives have only seen tigers three times), but we saw a crocodile and some incredibly beautiful birds.  It was amazing to be in such a peaceful, open, isolated place after being in Kolkata for so long.  It reminded me a lot of NY's finger lakes. There were narrow and wide parts of the rivers, and at times you could only see the land to the right and left, but not in front or behind you.  Each night, the boat anchored to the dock (and by dock, I mean the muddy space to the side of the river) of the village our driver and cook live in.  Both nights, they brought us into their village and we were able to walk around.  We had to take off our shoes and roll up our pants because walking through the muddy dock meant we would sometimes sink up to our knees.  The villagers were very friendly and inquisitive to the three videshi's (foreigners) walking around their home.  It was the most underdeveloped area Alec and Matt had ever been to in India and it reminded me a lot of Dornakal (the village my dad's from).

Anyways, I guess I'll leave it at that.  Please know you are all in Aakash and my thoughts, especially during the holiday season.  I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.  Hope to talk to you all soon!

Love,
Jayanthi

Hello everyone,
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are excited as the Christmas season starts.  I'm seeing a lot of Christmas decoration happening via Facebook, but I haven't seen too much holiday cheer in Kolkata.

My favorite part of our day trip was going to Crocodile Bank, which was basically a crocodile, turtle, and snake zoo.  We were able to see them feed Jaws, a 16 foot crocodile (the largest gator in captivity).  He's only fed once a week, and it was crazy to see this tiny Indian man taunting and throwing him meat out of a bucket.  Seriously wild.

Coming back to Kolkata very much felt like coming home.  It was nice to have so many projects and friends to come back to, although things were immediately busy.  Aakash started daily rehearsals for the Kolkata jazz festival while I met and interviewed with Dolna Day School, a pre-preschool through class XII school nearby.  Aakash's performance at Jazz Fest was a huge hit.  You can see a great photo and some wonderful quotes here: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1131204/jsp/t2/story_17639614.jsp#.UqBtUGQW1gJ He performed on the Saturday, which was definitely the most attended evening of the three day festival.  In addition to his normal guitar/bass/drum group, Payton, an American Fulbrighter studying Indian vocals in Bhopal, played vibraphone.  They played Aakash's entire Ocean album with Payton playing Ron Miles' trumpet part.  Aakash also asked me to sing on one tune (wahoo!) which was both an honor and just plain fun.  Who knew I would to moving to India would expand my jazz improvisational skills?

As for me, I started teaching at Dolna Day School.  I'm working three days a week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays) although they've made it clear I can work more if I'd like.  The school is very close to our house.  I walk 3-5 minutes to an auto stand where I catch an auto to the other side of a flyover, which takes another 3-5 minutes.  I'm mostly teaching singing, although it seems like I have a lot of freedom and liberty to do what I want.  Right now, the big push is getting the junior choir (around twelve 9-11 year olds) and senior choir (around forty 12-17 year olds) ready for the Christmas Fete where they'll be singing carols.  I see each choir every day I'm there.  I've never taught in a school where an all school event is centered around Christmas and we're actually encouraged to sing carols.  I also see the younger classes once a week, beginning with the three year olds.  The class sizes are enormous.  There are about 60 three year olds, and the other classes comprise of at least forty students.  Most classes are very well behaved and come with their classroom teacher, which will probably be helpful as the novelty of me wears off.  I feel fortunate to have found such a pleasant school to work at and they're planning on performing The Wizard of Oz in May, so we'll start working on that in January.

Anyways, that's my update for now.  This weekend Aakash is attending an all night classical Indian concert and his teacher's concert at a nearby auditorium. I'm going with a few friends to Sundarbans, a nearby mangrove forest/tiger preserve.  Then, Aakash's mom arrives in Kolkata followed by my parents.  It's hard to believe we've been living in India for over three months and it's already time for our folks to come visit!  I hope you're staying warm wherever you are. (Indians have appropriately been busting out the wool scarves- it can get as cold as the mid-70's during the day!)  Know that I miss you all and think of you often.  Hope to catch up soon!

Love,
Jayanthi