3rd Day of School

I got to teach today. It was so much fun, and I was so excited. I haven't taught a class since June, and it made me realize, once again, how much I love teaching, and love being in front of students. I observed a 7th grade class learning about the Pythagorean Theorem yesterday, and had some ideas for application that were related. Kanika, the math teacher, was happy to let me teach.

Some things are very different here. The students rise when the teacher enters the classroom. They call their teachers "Sir" and "Mum," like To Sir With Love. They stand when I call on them. They wait at the door and ask if they may enter if they happen to show up late. Other things are different too. Yesterday I had lunch with all the middle math teachers - six of them, all women. They spread a newspaper on the table. They each brought a little something and pass around the food. "Take some," they said to me as I was passed a container of noodles. "How?" I replied. They all eat with their hands and use the newspaper as a plate. I loved it (fits my animal nature so well).

I usually eat my meals at the cafeteria. There is the boarding school option for boys (only a day school for girls). When the boys see me approach the food, they get out of the way and let me take food first. This being a little uncomfortable for me, I now usually wait about 15 minutes before entering the dining room.

I think I am so used to "difference" that sometimes I forget what a unique and interesting experience this is. It has just become "normal" for me. The other day I looked around my little apartment and thought "this is home." For some reason this is so comfortable for me - being in this foreign country, surrounded by people I don't know, a language I don't understand, a culture I just have little glimpses into.

Yesterday, while sitting in a coffee shop, I thought about how I came to this moment. There is a rhythm to the day to day events of our lives, at each moment bringing us to this exact moment, this exact time and place, and no other. It is the only moment there can be, for it is the only moment that IS. Each step we take, whether consciously or not, once again leads us to the only place there is, the only thing that is real - this moment. Hence, the paradox, for as soon as you arrive at the moment, it is gone, and on to the next. There is no moment you can hold on to, for the only thing that is real is the constant change. The fleeting moment, in a breath is real and then is gone as soon as we try to put a handle on it. All we have then are our memories, which are illusion as we trap the moment into timelessness. There is something very frightening about this thought, but it also feels like a relief, like a kind of freedom (and this thought too is an illusion). It all makes me smile.