Tamil Nadu, India – February 6, 2008

Shanti Bhavan –The George Foundation

 

I’ve decided that out of all the room pets we’ve encountered so far, the gecko is my favourite.  The geckos scurry around the top area of the walls and sometimes the ceiling, but what really puts them in my favour is the fact that they happily consume a large quantity of mosquitoes and any other annoying buzzing creatures that fly around.  Not too shabby a quality, when you’re in high mosquito season in India.  Better than the cockroach I think I just saw scurry past (fortunately it was of a very small variety) and by far and wide better than the scorpion we encountered the other evening. 

We’d been getting ready for bed - I was already sporting my lovely purple flowered tank top & pajama shorts (indecent by Indian standards) - when Evy spotted a repulsive brown figure with it’s distinctive tail curled for attack, clinging to the window curtain by her bed.  We did not feel up to dealing with it ourselves, in fact we didn’t quite know what should be done.  So, regardless of my scandalous attire we went out in the hall and called in the troops.  Grandpa Jacques, as he likes to be known, his wife Micheline (both from Montreal) & Katie (from Boston) all came to our aid.  Or rather, Grandpa Jacques came to help & Micheline & Katie came to view the creature/shriek with us.  A quick but lengthy spray of ‘Hit’, an Indian bug repellent of types, appeared to have immediate effect.  The scorpion fell to the ground and seemed almost to melt into itself, apparently it drastically affects their nerve system.  We’re not sure if the Indian bug spray that we bought (‘“Stop” Depa Spray that Protects From Mosquitoes & Blood Sucking Organisms’) will have the same effect.  If so, what sort of effect will it have on us?!  The scorpion appeared to be in some agony, it wasn’t exactly pleasant.  We will unfortunately be arming ourselves with ‘Hit’ however, in case of future need. 

I have become vigilant in two ways with regard to potential future scorpion visits.  For one, I always check under the toilet seat (Aynsley’s point of encounter with a cockroach in Cuba, and one which I’d rather avoid repeating with a scorpion).  I also check the insides of my shoes.  Why specifically my shoes, you might ask?!  That would be because of a story a certain somewhat bloodthirsty teacher told us the other day:

A little girl in Chennai, India didn’t want to put on her shoes.  Her teacher, impatient with the child, wouldn’t listen to her when she claimed something was hurting her foot inside the shoe, and would not let her take the shoes off.  A couple of hours later, the child was dead.  There’d been a scorpion inside her shoe and while a scorpion bite severely injures a full grown adult, it is usually fatal for children.  I may not be a child anymore, but I check my shoes religiously every morning. 

Can anyone diagram the above sentence?  According to ‘Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition’, 1982 edition, ‘I may not be a child anymore, but I check my shoes religiously every morning’ would be considered a compound sentence.  In order to diagram the sentence, first you need to draw a horizontal line and a vertical line.  Then you need to find the first subject, and it’s predicate.  Did I know what the definition of a predicate was yesterday at this time?  No, I did not.  ‘Warriner’s English Grammar & Composition’, however, was able to help me out.  Did I mention that I now teach Grade 6 English Grammar?!  I also teach Grade 6 English Literature, Grade 6 Creative Writing, Grade 6 Geography, Grade 7 Environmental Education, Grade 7 Computers & Grade 8 Geography.  In Grade 8 Geography, we’re currently discussing Canada.  It is now that I really realize how dependent I’ve become on the Internet. 

How do you back up facts you know quickly and without the Internet?  Facts like Nunavut, which to the kids here, with their newest maps of Canada dating from approximately 1994, is completely non-existent.  Or the fact that I don’t feel like I know any interesting facts about New Brunswick.  What happens in New Brunswick, anyway?!*  The world encyclopedia from 1976 sure doesn’t help me. 

In the end I made a long distance call, it was fabulous.  Amusing when you think about it too – Madeleine in India, about to teach a section regarding the Inuit (no, not the Eskimos students, we no longer call them that in this day & age), calls Lindsay, in Canada, who’s just finished teaching the same unit to her class in West Van… What a crazy world this is.  Lindsay was able to Google various facts for me, and by looking at maps of Canada we were able to verbally transfer the approximate border of Nunavut, which she could see, onto the ancient map of Canada that I had in front of me.  Yay reasonably priced long distance telephone cards…

 

* As I post this, days later at an Internet Café in Pondicherry, I would like to say that we just met a fellow Canadian and she just happens to be from New Brunswick.  She unsuspectingly supported my absence of knowledge, claiming that there are no interesting facts about New Brunswick to tell my students…