Education and Relaxation in Thailand

The school sent Barb to a writing workshop at the Redemptorist Center in Thailand, so we made it our family summer break. Click here for the link to photos.

200606 Bangkok

Going-Down Day

As our school year ended in mid-June, Barbara took her turn at going-down duty. Because many students’ parents are thousands of miles away, Woodstock has an obligation to escort students to the closest airport and rail hub--New Delhi. Barb joined other colleagues in chaperoning 300 students by bus to the DehraDun station and the 6-hour train ride to Delhi. Each chaperone made several late-night trips escorting students to the airport for both domestic and international flights – a lengthy three-day adventure of lost sleep and tearful farewells. But all went smoothly, and afterwards, we enjoyed the quiet of the hillside for a few days.

Movies in Mussoorie?

[excerpt from a recent e-mail to a family friend]
Do we get to go to the movies?

Mussoorie used to have three small movie houses – now sadly, closed. And the movie theater in the closest town, Dehra Dun (an hour down the mountain) shows movies only in Hindi. A big treat is to see a movie at a cineplex in Delhi where we see a Bollywood or Hollywood movie maybe twice a year. So we bought a new TV, got a used DVD player online, and bought a used VCR from friends who moved away from Woodstock recently. We have kids from the dorms over to our house to have dinner and watch a movie. We saw the movie "Gandhi". You should see it because it tells about how India got its independence from Britain, but it is pretty violent. You might like the movie Lagaan better - it’s a famous movie about Indians and Brits playing a cricket match. And it has Bollywood dancing scenes!

We also watched the Matrix which Chris had to watch for his Religious Education class – it has many references to Christianity, but is really violent and a little scary.

Needless to say, we show more family movies when we have boarding kids over. We can get some DVDs here in town, but they are mostly pirated and bad quality.

--Cole and Mom