Full Circle!

Greetings from Hebron School, Ooty!

 

I arrived here last night after a rather long and an "I've-done-this-too-many-times" bus ride from Bangalore. My bus was supposed to leave at 10:01am but was nowhere to be seen till 10:30am! Anyway, I reached here finally around 7pm and there was someone to pick me up and help out with my luggage at the bus stand and take me to Selborne, where I will be living for the next couple of months. For those of you who are clueless, Hebron is a the boarding school I graduated from and is situated in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu in South India. I obviously loved my five years here and have been coming back to visit pretty much every year and am now back again as an IG, which stands for "International Guest". It's a voluntary position, but they give me food and boarding (and really, what else do you need?) and I basically help around at school in whichever area that I can contribute.

 

Anyway, so the funny thing is that the room that I will be sharing with another one of the IGs at Selborne (which is where the girls live, 5 minutes away from the main campus - Lushington Hall) was my first room when I came here as a student in Std. 9! Taryn was the other new girl in my room back in the day, and the others were Niru, Mary and Bhavna (who I also met again at the wedding in Delhi!) Crazy! Anyway, I didn't sleep in there last night because it's being fumigated for bed-bugs and silver-fish! But yeah, talk about coming a full circle, eh?

 

Today morning, I walked over to Lushington with two of the other girls for the Orientation Programme for new staff and IGs. You'd think there was nothing for me to gain from these, seeing as I am well familiar with how Hebron works but it was actually really great! There are a lot of expatriates so a lot of the Orientation is about cultural sensitivity, transitioning, etc and it's just so interesting to hear things that as an Indian, I sort of take forgranted. So I'm seeing things from a completely different perspective... Firstly, as not-a-student and secondly as an Indian but from the outside... You know what I mean? I mean, like how often to you sit and talk about simple things that we do everyday like using your right hand to give and receive things, the indian nod, the mechanisms of eating with your hands? It's really interesting.

 

After that, we went on a little bus-tour of Ooty and I learnt some interesting historical facts too that I had no clue about. And this evening we're going over to Mizpah Home which is a children's home, where I had actually come back to volunteer at for a few days over the summer two years ago so that'll be good. The kids there are so hospitable and lovely!

 

Ahhh, I have so many, so many, memories at Hebron and Ooty! It feels a bit like home and I am glad that I can be here, on top of this hill, where God's creation is just so obvious all around you! Last evening, I was looking out the window as we were driving up the hill and the sun was setting behind the clouds and you could see a little town down the hill that looked like little bits of shiny silver tin foil as the houses reflected the sun's light. It's beautiful. These hills are so beautiful and I keep saying this every time I come up here, and I will never be able to stop saying it because it just doesn't stop being beautiful!!

 

It's gonna be an adventure! I'll keep you updated!