finally: not hot! and a new post

I have been thinking and have come to the conclusion that there are four main reasons (aka excuses) for me being so quiet lately. 1: Holy moley it's been busy at school. In four of my five classes, I'm doing entirely new curriculum and I'm the only one teaching these subjects. Then, in my other class, I've added in a completely new class into my previously existing old class. I used to just have the yearbook class, but now I've gone ahead and added in a video yearbook class. At the same time, in the same place. It was a teeny bit of a "challenge" as we like to say to get that off the ground when I had no idea how to edit video. Which leads me to 2: I had to learn how to edit video. To do that, I made Mum a video for her 60th birthday (Happy Birthday, Mum!) and it took eight trillion years to finish it. Because I didn't know how to edit video. But now I do. And now the video class is coming along pleasantly. But the busy-ness and the learning-something-new meant that I had, oh, less than zero percent interest in getting onto the computer after getting home from work. The busy-ness also includes a number of after school activities (like: video editing!) which are only going to increase as the year goes by and as our drama performances and yearbook deadlines come up and steal all my brain time. This past week we finished auditions for our travelling drama group which will be going to an awesome conference in Shanghai come February. Mm, cold! Mm, hot noodles! It's also been difficult because 3: Phet has been out of town for so long it's not real. He's back now, which is why I'm here relaxing and writing, but he was travelling like a madman for almost two months. Mongolia (lots of meat, gorgeous cashmere gifts), Rome (brought home a 2 kilo block of parmesan along with salami and prociutto), Australia (returned with booze and lovely gifts from his family in Sidney), and I think he also hit Sri Lanka somewhere along the way. While he was gone, very very very happily Emma came to visit. Of course we would have loved to have her stay with us anytime, but it was especially wonderful to come home to a house guest with Phet out of town. Seung Yi and Ji had a FANTASTIC time with their auntie and she played with them hour after hour after hour, which leads me to my final point which is that 4: Anytime that I have had to kick back, I've been spending playing with Seung Yi and Ji. Seung Yi is so much fun these days. She talks up a storm, she now plays by herself (and does stuff like 'read' her books and make comments like "Awesome!" when she finds a picture she particularly likes), and is just generally entertaining as can be.

Today, she woke up and snuggled in bed with her Pa. She has wonderful bed head each and every day. It's so fluffy and cute. And she's currently obsessed with wearing the bunny pajamas that Phet's aunts sewed for Ji, so every morning she's a fluffy headed little bunny baby who giggles and snuggles so sweetly it is almost too perfect to be true. After she got up, she helped Phet make pancakes. She's very insistent on doing everything herself so she pulled her own chair into the kitchen, carried her own plate out to the table, poured her own syrup on the pancakes, then went back into the kitchen to get her own knife (saying loudly while opening the cutlery drawer, "MY knife. MY knife. MY knife."), and then cut her pancake up and ate it all by herself. Then, it was time for a little playing. She got out some playdough and pulled little bits of it apart, saying "puuuullll....puuuulllll". Then, she took out her puzzles and put together three 7-piece puzzles (ie interconnecting, not just those oh-so-simple stick-the-shape-in-the-hole puzzles) a few times. Later on we hung out outside, then we wrestled for awhile, we danced a little bit to the playlist I made for the Halloween party we're hosting this Friday, then we had lunch, and now she's conked out on the living room mats wearing her adorable kelly green sweatpants and a matching t-shirt. How could I not want to hang out with her ALL THE TIME?

Meanwhile, Ji is doing all kinds of great stuff. He is still getting in trouble on a daily (if not hourly) basis for being aaaassss slllllloooooow asssssssss molaaaaaaasssssesssss to do anything. Seriously. If I say, "Ji, could you go get me a glass of water?" before Ji so much as blinks, Seung Yi will have run to the kitchen, climbed up on the counter, pulled open the cupboard door, pulled out a cup, climbed down, filled the cup with water from the dispenser, and then run back to me with the cup of water. He's like, I don't know, living in a universe that moves at an entirely different speed than the one I live in. But I digress. Generally, he's doing great. He learned how to throw a baseball and to catch one too. With a glove! He's practicing his batting with a cricket bat, though, because we can't buy a baseball bat here. He's been swimming like a champ, and this semester he's brushing up on his basketball skills after school (and continuing the knitting too, of course). He's reading much more fluently now, and is working on books with a couple of paragraphs of writing on each page. I bought him a new book the other day about Ulysses, and he came back home and read three chapters of it without being prompted to do so. He's continuing to do gorgeous artwork - he made a good copy of his comic book hero, "The Crosser" and got me to frame it for him. (In exciting framing news, we found a spectacular framer here, who framed an oil painting and a print that one of the high school kids gave me last year, plus several of Ji's art pieces and man, do they ever look great. Oh, and also these very cool cut-paper artworks from Mongolia that Phet brought back...will try to take a photo once the carpenter comes to hang stuff up). At school he seems to be making friends with kids in his class. We were supposed to have a playdate with his friend Matthew today, but his Mum didn't know the driver wouldn't come in because today's Diwali, so hopefully he'll come over tomorrow.

And speaking of Diwali: Happy Diwali! Tara, we sure we wish we'd been with you for your party, but at least we feel content that we helped pick out the candles that Emma brought to you. Our Diwalidays have been just lovely. The week before Emma left the weather finally took a turn for the normal, and now it is drop dead gorgeous season in Delhi. It's warm and sunny and dry during the day and pleasantly cool in the evening. We haven't had the fans on since Emma left. Mind you, it's still hot enough that the kids went swimming at Ji's buddy's birthday on Sunday. (His friend, Karl, was in his class last year and his lovely parents - Lee from Texas and Vanessa from the Philippines - made a point of still inviting Ji to this year's party. I made triple sure that we went because Vanessa is an insanely good cook. Phet rarely goes to birthday parties with us, but this time he hopped on the loot bag limo and came along and was very happy he did. Karl is a very nice young man, but the best part was that we had ooh so good homemade kind of crispy not-potato-but-something-else chips served with two chunky toppings, coconutty spicy meat topping and corn, cheese, and egg topping, and then this was followed by savoury beef stew and the most incredibly delicious fried chicken ever cooked in the history of man.)

Ji and I had a weekend plus three days off and we've mostly just been relaxing and hanging out at home. We did a little shopping and we took the kids in for shots on Saturday. Ji never gets bothered by shots and Seung Yi watched him get his done and then laid down without a peep for her first shot. I was so impressed. She cried a little tiny bit for the second one, but still: wow.

*Later, the next day*

Man, oh man, Diwali is INSANE. Last night the kablooming started just after dusk and continued well on into the evening past midnight. It literally sounded like we were in the middle of a hard-fought battle. There were the long-distance, far-away earth rumblers, then there were the random rat-a-ta-rat-a-ta-ratters mid-distance, and then right next to us were both the cha-cham bam-bam-bam bangers and the incredibly loud sudden-blasters. Our house looked beautiful. Mr. Singh's droopy-eyed son, Angad, went around all the balconies, laying out tealights everywhere. They lined the garden, our walkway, and the gates around the house as well. We went outside to watch a big series of colourful fireworks set off a couple of doors down from us, and then after I kicked it in and went to bed to read yet another romance novel set in the early 1800s (curse you, Emma, curse you!) Phet took Ji and Seung Yi to watch our adolescent neighbours blow up an unbelieveable series of crackers. The best one was the one that had TEN THOUSAND CRACKERS in one long series of blowing ups. Apparently, on a previous year, they had had one with a HUNDRED THOUSAND but they scaled things back this year. See? Insane. Lying down on the mat with Seung Yi at home, all I could hear was Ji's wild laughter and screams of excitement as the guys set off blast after blast after blast. It was a great Diwali.

And today, on our final day off, Phet got his birthday present: tickets to see Russell Peters live in Delhi. Pretty nice, huh? I ordered them and everything. It was funny - no, not the show, of COURSE that was funny - but before the show, on the way there I got really anxious because we were late. I had counted on double the usual amount of time to get to the auditorium but it ended up taking quadruple the time. Stupid traffic. We got there at 6:11, and the tickets said "Six PM Sharp". I was worried we wouldn't get let in. But there were a good number of people lined up to get in through the door...so many, in fact, that I pulled a "Huh, I don't live here, I don't understand how line ups work" and cut into the front of the line. We got into the auditorium (which was about double the size of Danforth Tech's but with less fancy seats and shabbier atmosphere) and only about a quarter of the guests were seated. In the end, the show didn't start until SEVEN. Good ol' me.

The show itself was very amusing. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Actually, I kind of have a headache from laughing so much. But a good headache. I was pleased that - hm, how do I refer to him? Russell? Peters? just "he"? - anyways, I was pleased that he did a good amount of India-specific bits and kept the har-har-Irish-people-are-so-white kind of stuff to just a part of the show. I have no problem with Irish jokes, but I think he's funnier when he riffs on stories rather than just ha ha pieces. Anyways, he got in a ton of great jokes and kept everyone in stitches and it was just awesome to see him up there representing - Canada, of course - in India.

And that, my friends, brings me to the end of my post for today. Let's hope they get frequenter now that I've shovelled away the backlog.

[Delhi-29-October-2008]