Off to India!

Hi everyone! It’s been awhile, but time for another update. A lot has happened since our last post.

Thanksgiving was nice, I went shopping with some of the other teachers and we all hung out after work and started cooking. We didn’t have turkey, but we had 2 rotisserie chickens as well as mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green beans, stuffing, pumpkin and apple pie. You can see a picture here.

At the time of the last post, I think school had been cancelled for 2-3 weeks. They decided to cancel the rest of the trimester and not start up again until January 4th. I’ve still been coming in to work, but no students are around. We’ve had a couple workshops, I learned how to use Scratch and Google SketchUp, and we also had an Art Workshop. Mostly though, just a lot of sitting around not doing much.

Jacob has been consulting with Laureate and has really been enjoying the work. He’s gone down to Hua Hin (a beach town a couple hours south of Bangkok, where we went on our first weekend trip out of Bangkok) the last 3 weeks from Tuesday through Thursday so I’ve missed him in Bangkok, but he’s been having a great time meeting Laureate employees and seeing the work in action. You can see some pictures from our trip to Hua Hin here.

Laureate is an international, for-profit, higher education company. They have 60+ universities and 675,000 students in 28 countries worldwide, and Bill Clinton is an Honorary Chancellor of Laureate International Universities. Laureate has a strong presence in Latin America and Europe, but they are just getting started in Asia, so there is a lot of room for growth here. So far, he's enjoyed all of the people he's met and has enjoyed the projects that he's worked on.

He also just heard back from business schools. He got waitpooled at Stanford but admitted to Emory with a full scholarship! Since he began this project with Laureate, though, he had already been strongly considering foregoing business school for now. This is a job that he would have been looking for post-business school, so if he can get it now that would be great. Anyway, many decisions to be made over the next several weeks.

In other news, we’re heading to India on Monday! We’ll be there for 26 nights and 27 days, and so far have 4 flights booked, 4 trains booked, and 8 hotels booked! We fly into Delhi, where we’re staying with my Uncle Ranjit’s cousin’s daughter. After a few days there we head to Agra (to see the Taj Mahal) and Jaipur (the largest city in Rajasthan, known as “the Pink City”). After Jaipur we’re back in Delhi for a couple days then fly to Darjeeling (a hill station in the North, and home to the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site). We’re in Darjeeling for a little less than a week then off to Kaziranga National Park (one of the oldest National parks in India and the largest habitat for Indian single horned rhinos, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and a tea plantation in Assam. After that, we’ll be in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) for the last few days of the trip. The last week or so, from Kaziranga National park on, we’ll be with Jacob’s aunt and uncle, Anya and Joe. We’re very excited about the trip, and about getting to spend some time with Anya and Joe outside of the U.S.! We will be sure to take tons of pictures (as usual). We’ll be in Jaipur for Christmas and Darjeeling for New Years and hopefully will have good enough internet to Skype for the holidays.

A few days after we return from India, Eloise and Alan will be arriving in Bangkok! We’re still in the planning stages, but we will be up in Chiang Mai for a couple days, and spend the rest of the time sightseeing in Bangkok. We’re excited to see them and to show them where we’ve been living for the last 4 months! More news on that trip in the next post.

Oh, I forgot! I won’t be teaching at DSIL anymore. I’m starting a Master of Education program through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the degree is in Educational Policy Studies with an emphasis in Global Studies in Education. The program starts the third week of January and I’m already registered for my first two courses: Education and Globalization and Human Rights and Justice in Education. The program is all online and takes 2 years to complete. I’ll finish up in December 2013, no matter where we live between now and then!

Anyway, this has gotten long. Check out my picture-a-day blog (you can also just see the photo album for the blog here if that's easier) to see what else we’ve been up to!

We miss everyone, and wish you a Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!