Part one of India Trip 2

Well… now for that more in-depth India trip update.

First… the journey to Ooty: Well, I had to spend the night at the Dressner’s house, because the bus trip was early in the morning.

The bus trip itself wasn’t bad, a bit boring, but not to bad or anything. The bus was AC, so I wasn’t hot or anything.

Then, we crossed the border, which was by far the worse immigration I have ever completed… I thought the Dhaka Airport was slow… this was… pathetic. For some strange reason I had to wait ten minutes before they figured out how to process an American passport…

Anyways… afterwards, I had a decent lunch, and we took a taxi to Calcutta… were we stayed in a cheap hotel (my room must have been like 10’-6’)… dinner was okay… and I had a decent sleep. I woke up at 3:30AM to catch my flight… which wasn’t that nice, but it was a cheap flight, so I can’t argue.

After this flight, I spent the day in Chennai at the house of a mother of a friend of the Dressner’s… in the afternoon I went to the mall… which was nice. Then that night we took the train to a town near Ooty, and a taxi from said town to our hotel in Ooty. Finally, after two days of traveling, I reached Hebron School.

At Hebron:

Hebron was nice. I only got to see one of the two parts of the school (Lushington) the other part (Selbourne), the girl’s dorm, was smaller and not the main part of the school. Anyways… the school was nice, the worst part is that it is on top HUGE hill… and I had to climb this hill… it was a real pain.

Anyways… it was cool seeing where Brian lived, Caleb, and Bala lived, it’s a nice campus. The best thing about this part of my trip was the nightly dramas (that week is drama week, where the parent’s come and see a drama that classes 7, 9, 11, and 13 have prepared for them). I missed class 7, which preformed The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Last Dress Rehearsal… but I got to see Class 9’s Hamlet and Stone Soup, class 11’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Bertie and Wooster, and Class 13’s Les Miserables (not sure about the spelling there…).

A quick review of all the plays:

Hamlet: In all honesty, this play wasn’t that nice… it was a really hard play for class 9 (equal to 9^th grade for all you non-British people)… and much of the play had to be cut and pasted. Its only redeeming elements were the added bits… such as a hilarious take on the player’s performance for the King. Still, it was well done 6/10.

Stone Soup: A funny take on a well known children’s tale. This play was great… it was funny, it had memorable quotes (“What king of idiot do you take me for?!” Says the general, “I don’t know, there are many kinds,” says the old woman…) and was quite funny. 8/10.

To Kill a Mockingbird: Hmm… this one I didn’t think did that well… once again, a very hard play to do, and I’m not sure they hit the mark. I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and to get it right is really difficult. All in all… I don’t think they failed, but I know they could have done a better play considering Stone Soup, a play preformed by a younger class, that IHMO, was better. 6/10

Bertie and Wooster: Better than To Kill a Mockingbird, but not amazing. It had its moment’s and for a Class 11 (equal to 11^th Grade) performance, I thought it was great. There was room for improvement, so it only gets a 8/10.

Les Miserables: Okay, this blew me away. It was amazing. Everything was done perfectly, and, the best thing was the fact that, IIRC, everything was done by students! Granted this was Class 13 (officially, High School Senior class… but honestly the work they are doing is equal to College Freshman or possibly Sophomore for some classes), but still… none of these guys (well… maybe one or two) are drama majors or anything. They are amateurs… how did an amazing job. Now, I have neither read, nor any of the Les Miserables stuff, but the whole play was amazing. We had two, student preformed songs… one of which made the audience cry (the only reason I didn’t cry was because by the end of the song the only thing I was trying to do was NOT CRY), and another which had everyone laughing. Brian’s part in the play was perfectly cast for him. He played the simpleton that was mistaken for the main character and put on trial for crimes he did not commit. He was very confused and funny, he did his performance amazingly. All in all, this play easily gets the 10/10 mark.

That was Hebron.

Later, I’ll give you the rest of my 2^nd India trip this year.