Spent last week doing last minute revision with my kiddies to try and get them to do alright in their exams. Although, I took advantage of my Wednesday afternoon off to fall asleep on the roof in the sunshine for 3 hours to recover from our ridiculously late night at the wedding, and got very burned on my face as it was cloudy when I fell asleep but sunny when I woke up.
On Thursday we headed off with our big bags to Delhi to catch a train up to Kalka and then onwards to Shimla. You cannot go directly to Shimla as it is right up high in the foothills of the Himalayas so we chose to take the 5 hour toy train up instead of the 2 hour bus around all the horrible hair pin bends. As a result of this decision we had to spend a night in Kalka which is a nothing town with only one decent, cheap hotel with a surprisingly nice attaching restaurant.
The toy train up to Shimla was absolutely stunning with incredible views over the valleys and surrounding hills, so I passed the entirety of the journey gazing out the window, or hanging out of the side of the train having to jump back when we went through one of the 103 tunnels.
We arrived in Shimla (the place where my grandparents dog is named after) at sunset and were amazed by the freshness of the air after Delhi and the lack of rickshaws :o thankfully there were plenty of taxis available to direct us to our hotel, which isn't actually available by car, only by taking the passenger lift up and walking up even more hills to reach it.
Its fun to stay at the YMCA, however, we always reached it completely out of breath as it was up a load of steps and I was also attacked by bed bugs 2 out of 3 of our nights there - but other than that it was perfect with great location and really nice staff.
The other shock we got in Shimla was the considerably reduced temperature - it was blooming freezing after the warmth of Delhi. So to warm ourselves up on Saturday we did the 30 minute walk, directly upwards to the Jakhu monkey temple. On our walk we came across plenty of very sweet looking monkeys, however, when I took a picture of one, it turned savage and bared its teeth at me. Later on, another savage monkey stole Kat's scarf right from her grasp and then sat there holding it, snarling at her viciously - the scarf was never to be seen again but we did see the tatters of previous scarves scattered in the trees above our heads. The temple itself was a bit underwhelming but was accompanied by a massive (30 metres tall), orange statue of a monkey and plenty of scary real life monkeys attempting to steal assorted possessions, including cameras and glasses from a mans face.
After fleeing the temple we walked through the bazaars in the winding streets before returning to our hotel and reading in the slightly warm late afternoon sunshine and then hunting down a decent restaurant.
On Sunday, Nella, Laura and I got up early and went off to church which is the central point of Shimla as it is the massive Christchurch that can be seen from most of the city. It was nice to go back to church, particularly as it was mothers day but we were surprised by how empty the church was...there were only about 15 others there. As we left the church the heavens opened so we fled back to the hotel and took refuge there, 4 of us in one bed to keep dry, warm and away from the bed bugs.
Once it had dried up we ventured out for lunch (at dominoes, shhhh) and then walked the 3km up hill to the Viceral lodge which was basically an Indian style Downton Abbey and is where the channel 4 programme 'Indian Summer' was filmed.
On Monday we killed time before our train doing our favourite activities, eating and shopping and then wandered down hill to the station. The view from the toy train this time was slightly marred by the impending rain clouds but by the end there was a big lightening storm happening so that was fascinating to watch in the valley. However, the storm also meant rain so we found our previous restaurant
and dragged out time there for as long as possible without being a pain and then legged it through the now pouring rain back down to the station at 11pm. Cosied up in our bunks on the sleeper train and tried to get as much sleep as possible before reaching Delhi at 6am.
We treated ourselves to a starbucks breakfast and WiFi at the metro station on the way back before getting back to school at 9.30 on Tuesday morning.
The kids were all doing their assessments so we weren't needed to teach but we were required to mark their papers once completed which was a fairly harrowing task. Kat and I marked our joint grade 2 class and some of the answers were completely illegible, some had just copied out the question and some actually got the answers right. It was really rewarding seeing the kids who had actually taken in what a job was which I had been drilling the definition into them every lesson for the last couple of weeks...who knows what some of the others think a job is! To the question: describe the taste of curry (the answer being spicy) one child wrote; 'curry is softy and tasty and has many things in it like oil, tomatoes, potatoes and vegetables - this pleased both of us stupid amounts. For the afternoon I caught up on lost sleep from the night and then we headed up to see our friend Mr Kumar.
He, as ever, was pleased to see us and so welcoming...although there was a slightly embarrassing mishap when his dog came out of the blue and randomly bit Nella on the arm, pretty hard, but thankfully it is jabbed and a clean, healthy dog.
Wednesday was a much crazier day as we had to invigilate exams in the morning and also carry out our oral exams. It is hard enough keeping the kids quiet at the best of times let alone when they are doing an exam and trying their hardest to cheat by asking older siblings or other kids in the room what the answer is...and very unsubtly at that. Whilst invigilating, Nella and I took it in turns to take our students out for their oral exams which were pretty painful and most of them needed a lot of prompting, but they could have been worse. In the afternoon Kat and I faced the trauma of doing the dreaded Grade 2's oral exams, which involved all of them crowding us whilst we tried to test each individual and as a result there was a lot of cheating!
Having finished marking my 3 classes exam papers I am actually pretty pleased with how they have all done, there are some awful ones; for example my G6 boy who answered the question 'what is a pronoun?' with a poem of sorts saying 'pini is in the box, pini is in the box, stand in the light, pini is in the box' which I found hilarious. However, others had exceeded my expectations and my highest scoring pupil got 48/50 which I was rather chuffed with - shows I have managed to teach them something!
Cannot believe I only have a week left now in Tikli Bottom!!
Lots of love xxx
On Thursday we headed off with our big bags to Delhi to catch a train up to Kalka and then onwards to Shimla. You cannot go directly to Shimla as it is right up high in the foothills of the Himalayas so we chose to take the 5 hour toy train up instead of the 2 hour bus around all the horrible hair pin bends. As a result of this decision we had to spend a night in Kalka which is a nothing town with only one decent, cheap hotel with a surprisingly nice attaching restaurant.
The toy train up to Shimla was absolutely stunning with incredible views over the valleys and surrounding hills, so I passed the entirety of the journey gazing out the window, or hanging out of the side of the train having to jump back when we went through one of the 103 tunnels.
We arrived in Shimla (the place where my grandparents dog is named after) at sunset and were amazed by the freshness of the air after Delhi and the lack of rickshaws :o thankfully there were plenty of taxis available to direct us to our hotel, which isn't actually available by car, only by taking the passenger lift up and walking up even more hills to reach it.
Its fun to stay at the YMCA, however, we always reached it completely out of breath as it was up a load of steps and I was also attacked by bed bugs 2 out of 3 of our nights there - but other than that it was perfect with great location and really nice staff.
The other shock we got in Shimla was the considerably reduced temperature - it was blooming freezing after the warmth of Delhi. So to warm ourselves up on Saturday we did the 30 minute walk, directly upwards to the Jakhu monkey temple. On our walk we came across plenty of very sweet looking monkeys, however, when I took a picture of one, it turned savage and bared its teeth at me. Later on, another savage monkey stole Kat's scarf right from her grasp and then sat there holding it, snarling at her viciously - the scarf was never to be seen again but we did see the tatters of previous scarves scattered in the trees above our heads. The temple itself was a bit underwhelming but was accompanied by a massive (30 metres tall), orange statue of a monkey and plenty of scary real life monkeys attempting to steal assorted possessions, including cameras and glasses from a mans face.
After fleeing the temple we walked through the bazaars in the winding streets before returning to our hotel and reading in the slightly warm late afternoon sunshine and then hunting down a decent restaurant.
On Sunday, Nella, Laura and I got up early and went off to church which is the central point of Shimla as it is the massive Christchurch that can be seen from most of the city. It was nice to go back to church, particularly as it was mothers day but we were surprised by how empty the church was...there were only about 15 others there. As we left the church the heavens opened so we fled back to the hotel and took refuge there, 4 of us in one bed to keep dry, warm and away from the bed bugs.
Once it had dried up we ventured out for lunch (at dominoes, shhhh) and then walked the 3km up hill to the Viceral lodge which was basically an Indian style Downton Abbey and is where the channel 4 programme 'Indian Summer' was filmed.
On Monday we killed time before our train doing our favourite activities, eating and shopping and then wandered down hill to the station. The view from the toy train this time was slightly marred by the impending rain clouds but by the end there was a big lightening storm happening so that was fascinating to watch in the valley. However, the storm also meant rain so we found our previous restaurant
and dragged out time there for as long as possible without being a pain and then legged it through the now pouring rain back down to the station at 11pm. Cosied up in our bunks on the sleeper train and tried to get as much sleep as possible before reaching Delhi at 6am.
We treated ourselves to a starbucks breakfast and WiFi at the metro station on the way back before getting back to school at 9.30 on Tuesday morning.
The kids were all doing their assessments so we weren't needed to teach but we were required to mark their papers once completed which was a fairly harrowing task. Kat and I marked our joint grade 2 class and some of the answers were completely illegible, some had just copied out the question and some actually got the answers right. It was really rewarding seeing the kids who had actually taken in what a job was which I had been drilling the definition into them every lesson for the last couple of weeks...who knows what some of the others think a job is! To the question: describe the taste of curry (the answer being spicy) one child wrote; 'curry is softy and tasty and has many things in it like oil, tomatoes, potatoes and vegetables - this pleased both of us stupid amounts. For the afternoon I caught up on lost sleep from the night and then we headed up to see our friend Mr Kumar.
He, as ever, was pleased to see us and so welcoming...although there was a slightly embarrassing mishap when his dog came out of the blue and randomly bit Nella on the arm, pretty hard, but thankfully it is jabbed and a clean, healthy dog.
Wednesday was a much crazier day as we had to invigilate exams in the morning and also carry out our oral exams. It is hard enough keeping the kids quiet at the best of times let alone when they are doing an exam and trying their hardest to cheat by asking older siblings or other kids in the room what the answer is...and very unsubtly at that. Whilst invigilating, Nella and I took it in turns to take our students out for their oral exams which were pretty painful and most of them needed a lot of prompting, but they could have been worse. In the afternoon Kat and I faced the trauma of doing the dreaded Grade 2's oral exams, which involved all of them crowding us whilst we tried to test each individual and as a result there was a lot of cheating!
Having finished marking my 3 classes exam papers I am actually pretty pleased with how they have all done, there are some awful ones; for example my G6 boy who answered the question 'what is a pronoun?' with a poem of sorts saying 'pini is in the box, pini is in the box, stand in the light, pini is in the box' which I found hilarious. However, others had exceeded my expectations and my highest scoring pupil got 48/50 which I was rather chuffed with - shows I have managed to teach them something!
Cannot believe I only have a week left now in Tikli Bottom!!
Lots of love xxx
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