Most of you are aware of my deep love for animals. Well, today's events were started because of that. I insisted that we go see the Pondicherry SPCA and ask about volunteering. It mostly deals with cows but there's also a forlorn looking dog shelter. With no help to be found we decided to leave. It was still early so we went to the botanical gardens, which are the oldest botanical gardens in India. We kinda wander a little but we both are listening for unknown bird calls. Suddenly we hear a aw aw aw. The sound leads us down a path. "Maybe it's a monkey" I say hopefully. "There aren't any monkeys in Pondicherry, you have to go out of the city" he replies. We turn the corner and guess what. 25 ft ahead of us is a wild monkey. And they are wild, the botanical gardens is just like a nature preserve, though an extremely small one.

Anyway, we start to creep forward. Then stop again. Here comes another one! She's fat, extremely pregnant. We near the monkeys again. The female continues on the path but the male starts to climb on the bench. He's close and cute. The male starts to walk away so we decide to follow the female. Before we find her the male runs up with a cookie in his hands and perches on a post eating it ( I mention this because it was cute). When we find the female it turns out to be beyond our wildest dreams. It's a family of monkeys. 6 in all. There was even another female, who'd already given birth! And we were really lucky, too. The baby was a new born, born within the last 24 hours, even! So there was the alpha male, the pregnant female(oldest of the monkeys), younger female, new born, and a pair of yearlings. The yearlings were really cute. I don't know if any of you have seen Orangutan Island or any monkey/chimp shows/videos, but if you have you've probably seen the young primates using young trees as springs and vines to get between trees and to play. That's what the yearlings were doing! ADORABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was 3 ft away from a troop of WILD MONKEYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After our fill of monkeys, we keep walking. We found a red beetle and a common king fisher. Then we found huge brown bats. We saw them stretch their wings. Then one flew to another tree and we got a good look at them. The bat had a 3 ft wingspan! Most of the bats around here are small. Also, I've never seen wild roosting bats!

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know, I know, I should have already written this post, but I wanted to get more information...

First of all, a couple of things you should know but I don't need to elaborate:

1. There are exactly 50 kids in my class, hence many teachers don't take questions except privately. Some don't even stand in front of the class to teach, they just write the lesson on the blackboard

2. (not school related) I can watch Avatar here, in Tamil!

3. For reasons I don't know, I am in 7th grade

4. Here they call grades "standards"

5. Because English is a second language here, the English class is similar to what we learned in 4th grade

6. Everyone is really short here. I'm taller than most of my friends, who are in 7th grade! There's even an eighth grader who only comes up to my waist, the high actual waist (belly button height), not the imaginary one at your thighs below your stomach where most kids think your waist is.

7. Most of these Tamil kids don't speak fluent Tamil! They speak English because they go to an English speaking school. I even knew a word my friend didn't, kudirai (It's hard to spell in English characters, but it's pronounced koo-dee-rye): horse.

8. They only have squat toilets at school, with no toilet paper!!! Any of you wonder why here they eat only with the right hand anymore?

9. There is school on Saturdays

First off they are impossibly strict here. Just today my teacher made 12 kids do 100 squats for not getting their tests signed. And a kid got slapped for writing his homework to small. And all you "manly men" who think it can't be that bad, well, in 1 week the French teacher hit kids 2 boys so much and so hard that they both cried. She'll rap you on the head for misspelling a word, and beat you with a ruler for getting less than 90% on a test. The kids are so scared that they flinch as they come up. Talking in class gets you a slap on the head. And in this country's legal documents it states " all children have a right to be free from physical or mental violence of any form!"

Also, I have a uniform. Pictures are coming. Mon. through Thurs. is a classical Indian outfit. A chudithar (this is for the girls). A long long-sleeved white shirt down to my knees with blue puffy pants (though you can't see that they are puffy, the shirt hides it. The puffy design circulates air.) and a blue dupatta (thick cloth scarf, neatly folded) adorned by the Amalopavam logo. My hair must be in braids, tied with white ribbon. The outfit is completed by a specific kind of black leather sandals. The same on Friday except all white. On some days I have coaching (gym)and then I wear white sneakers and socks (also white).

Pics

More pictures of the market. There are more to come, but click here.

Vultswagon

Yes, I know it's spelled wrong. Actually it's a pretty terrible pun. But first you need to know the story.

So, we get a bus home but the closest place was the main station so we went there. Of course it's a great place for rickshaws to wait. They assume we're ignorant tourists. That we don't know what everything costs or is worth. So they mob. 6 of them just come up to us and say where do you need to go (cause obviously your white and incapable of walking). My dad turns to me and I say I want to walk. So he tells them no thanks. Then we start walking away. And they descend on us again! They say auto rickshaw is much faster. My dad decides to ask "yevlo?" (how much?). Rs.(rupees) 60. 60, really? That's 3 times what a (good) Tamil barterer will pay. We decide not to go by auto. No thanks, is our answer, and we walk away.

Before I continue I would like to mention I am currently watching the equivalent of an Indian American Idol. Also before I forget, Blue Team should go to www.pcvgames999.webs.com. It's a cool site, I'm a moderator! It's made by Blue Team's very own Jay Z! Clap, Clap!!!

Anyway, they get this shocked look on their face, like, hey, white people decided to walk. Then they start pestering again. Vultures, I tell my dad, slightly hysterical. They're like vultures! My dad seems to be in a bartering mood (though he denies it now, trying to hide his love of arguing). We know as foreigners we can't expect a completely fair price. My dad says Rs. 25. He also wants to walk so he sets it insanely low. No, no, 40, comes the reply. She wants to walk, says he glancing at me. An argument (the one my dad had been itchin' for) ensued. We started to walk. Suddenly one comes and says that he'll take us. So we do take an auto. It's a victory to get a price that low.

So, in short, the drivers of autos are vultures. That makes their weapons of mass destruction (destruction of westerner's wallets, that is) there vulture mobiles. One could even venture to call autos vulture wagons. In short vultswagons.

Market Day

Pictures I took at the Sunday market. There are a lot more, but it took my dad over an hour to upload these. More are coming.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slaybelle/sets/72157614828779037/

Edumucation

Before I forget to mention it there is a mural in my school that reads "Parents are Gods"
Think about that..

Last post I mentioned how proper Indians talk in English. Here's why. I know it sounds silly, but to be fair this is for people learning English as a second language. Here is an excerpt from my English text book.

It is Babu's birtday. He gives a chocolate to Seenu who politely refuses. He says it might harm the teeth. Babu argues
that it will not harm the teeth. Their argument is shown below.

Seenu: Wish you a happy birthday, Babu
Babu: Thank you Seenu. Please have some chocolates.
Seenu: No thank you.
Babu: Why? Do you think that chocolates will harm your teeth?
Seenu: Yes, they will.
Babu: But this is dairy milk chocolate. It won't harm your teeth.
Seenu: Still, I don't agree with you.
Babu: At least try one. It's Amul chocolate.
Seenu: Whatever it is.......I don't want it.
Babu: If you brush your teeth after eating chocolates, nothing will happen
Seenu: However, I am still not convinced.
Babu: Alright, let's go to a dentist and consult.
Seenu: That.s a good idea!

Another one says:

A thief stealthily entered a house. He threatened the inmates with a knife and asked for the jewel box. The child who was sleeping woke up and started crying. They pleaded that they had no jewel box but only an ox. The thief went near the ox to take it away, but it kicked him. The thief lost a tooth and ran away.

This one is from my science book:

a) Leaf margin is notched by broad nosed weevils...b) Citrus leaf lamina with ventral pits is caused by citrus psyllids....e) paddy leaf with elongated deep scarification is caused by leaf beetles and larvae of hispid beetles....f) leaf lamina is extensively skeletonised by leaf skeletonisers.....i) Rice: the binomial of rice is Oryza sativa [and] is attacked by a number of pests...Rice bug sucks the sap from developing grains at the 'milky stage.' It causes 10 to 40 percent loss of rice yield.

And that's just one of six rice pests described! My dad (who is typing this for me right now) is guessing this is because rice is sort of important here.

The Gecko

I know Nadine will like this post. So, yesterday I'm coming out of my room and this shape darts out from beneath my feet. It's a lizard! A gecko to be precise. It looks spotted but I can't tell what kind it is (not that I know any kinds of geckos). I corner it but then it shows me one of its great adaptations. I starts climbing up the wall. It touches ground behind me and runs underneath the door. Then it runs up the door frame and clings to the top where I can't reach. Then he does that gecko thing where he licks his eye. So I call to my dad to help and he is being a wuss. He's afraid to touch it. He does chase it down though. Now to get away the gecko is jumping like a foot through the air. I felt bad for him but we needed to get him outside. Then he jumps on the wall. From there I try to grab him so he jumps at my dad's face. In response my dad screams like a nancy. To be fair, the gecko was fearsome, with its scary gecko teeth all a-gnash. Then my dad went out. I chased it for a little bit. The gecko jumped on my arm. As it jumped off I try to grab the gecko but only manage to grab his tail. This is where it shows me another of its great adaptations. Its tail comes off! Then I scream like a nancy (no offense to any Nancys reading this). In the wild if a bird grabs it by the tail a gecko uses this skill to escape. Oh, and the best part, the tail is still moving. So eventually I catch it in a glass and let it go.

Guess what. Do any of you know the story of Ricki Tiki Tavi? Has anyone seen the drawn or cartoon version of him? That's not what a mongoose looks like. Even the slighter brown mongooses are bigger than that. How do I know this you ask. Well, I happened upon (this is how people talk here, and I'm starting to pick it up, ugg) an indian grey mongoose. In the wild. It was soooo cool.

Ooh look, a chipmunk is eating the grape bait I put out. Gotta go.

Waiting just waiting

I am working on a long general info post so if you don't hear from me for a while, that's why. I'll get it up as soon as possible.