People have asked me about what things look like or how far we live from things. I created a little video of my walk to school. I made quite a few cuts because the whole walk would be really boring. I’ll try to keep the videos coming.
I also wanted to give a quick link to a short video of a monkey shot from our bedroom.
Rhesus Monkey Playing
I just realized today that I hadn’t posted how people could get a hold of us. Since it uses some pretty fun technology it seems especially fitting for my blog. I’ve used Skype for years now to communicate from one computer to another computer. If you’ve never used it before, please crawl out from under that rock. 
Seriously, it is a great tool to stay in contact with friends and family and the best part is that it’s free! It allows you to have audio and video calls with anyone else who has installed the program on their computer. The part that is really cool is that for $30 a YEAR you can have unlimited calling to the US and Canada. So I can call any number in the us just like I could from my cell phone. Another cool feature is that you can buy a number in the US that will ring to your computer anywhere in the world. So, we bought a number in Minnesota (not available for Iowa yet) that our friends and family can call for free and it will ring on our computer here in India. You might ask what if we aren’t online or are away from our computer? Well it has voice mail of course! Every time I have a new voice message it sends me an email so I know when to check it. So, all that to say, here’s our number, call and say Hi!
507-316-0554
So people have asked me the most about the monkeys. The other day at about 7:30 there was a sound on our roof like someone had tripped on the roof and was now falling to their death. What was it? Monkeys! There are two main type of monkey in our area; the Rhesus are smaller but more aggressive. The Languors are much bigger but more laid back. It just happened that a large troop of Languors decided to play around on our roof. They then ran round in from of out porch for quite a while. I got some video, but it is through our screen, so the quality is pretty bad.
Here’s a picture of a Languor:
Here’s a picture of a Rhesus:
And the video:
So my site seems to be working better. I didn’t do anything, but maybe its fixed now! Anyway, I just wanted to share a quick experience I had today and how typical it is of India. The guy who usually takes the trash out and cleans the floor was doing his thing today and I asked him for some cleaning solution. Of course, he answered me with several quick lines of Hindi?!? So I grabbed my boss, who explained my question. After a minute, the guy came back to my desk, but wouldn’t give me the cleaner. He then proceeded to clean my desk himself. Although this might not seem too strange, it seems to be the way most things work here.
What you have to understand about living here is that even at this very forward thinking school, there is a class system. The “employees” are Indian staff who do the manual labor type jobs around the school. The “staff” are a mix of all different nationalities (including Indian) who do the teaching, support staff, and administration. There are many differences between these two groups, including: housing (some seem like poverty level), pay(although it seems better than much of the community), and general social status. I don’t like the double standard, and I don’t want to conform to it, but I don’t feel like I have another choice.
Most of the employees speak very little English so it is very hard to communicate. So how do you break a mold when you can’t even talk to someone? Thinking back to my example today. If I would have refused to let him clean my desk, I think I would have insulted him more than showed that I wasn’t above cleaning my own desk. And another question I ask is, would this guys be any better off if I didn’t let him clean? The school employs almost twice the number of employees and staff. If they paid more would less people benefit from what must be a good paying job in this area? Anyway I need to run to lunch (that more guys made and will serve to me). Just curious if anyway has any thoughts on this?
