The Bus Trip to the End of the World

I can remember field trips from when I was a kid; lots of kids on a bus with lunch boxes full of goodies, our initials written in permanent marker onto our clothes, all of us probably annoying the crap out of our chaperons. Well, Lyndi and I were asked this last week if we wanted to go on a school field trip with 50+ kids to which we replied, "What the heck, Mount Abu sounds nice. Let's go." Maybe we should have asked the details of this excursion before we agreed but then, we probably wouldn't have gone if we had known. And talking about it now, Lyndi and I can't stop ourselves from laughing at the things we saw and heard.

Imagine, 54 excited kids ranging from grades 8 - 12 stacked into a "luxury bus" that doesn't have AC or reclining seats, all eating enough sugar to keep dentists in business for years, chugging the trendy Mountain Dew everyone is so obsessed with here, and then picture these kids saying the following quotes that are still making Lyndi and I laugh a week later....

To Lyndi: "Teacher, black man, White House, Obama". And then he walked away.

"Kitty-ben, you are tired but your face doesn't look tired."

On Mount Abu you had the option to pay to ride a few horses that looked pretty beaten down and tired out. My student, Shrey was talking about going all day and was really excited that I might want to do it too when I said that I had ridden as a kid. We see the horses and he asks me if I want to go. "No, that horse looks really hungry Shrey." He talks to the horses owner for a minute in Hindi and then says, "Don't worry, he will eat at 9 o'clock." Oh, great. That makes me feel better.

Lyndi to Raxa, our Gujarati co-teacher after seeing the little room where we will all sleep curled onto the floor, actually spooning our 11th standard girls (awkward) because of the close quarters: "So, is there another bathroom somewhere besides the one in here for the 15 of us? (she is still hopeful at this point)" Raxa: "What's your problem?"....None, no problem!

Shrey was super excited to find a whistle so he could be cool like the 12th standard boys who were blowing theirs excitedly at any time of day or night. I told him that if he bought one we probably couldn't stay friends because he was sitting next to me. He didn't seem that scared by my threat. Dhaval, his classmate, said, "Teacher, if he buys a whistle, you buy a gun and you shoot him."

Lyndi and I get talked to by random men just about everywhere we go so, it wasn't a huge shock when these random men started to appear and try to talk to us. The difference this time was that the kids could understand what they men were saying to each other before they came up to talk with us and knew they weren't exactly coming with the best intentions. Shrey made me pinky swear I wouldn't talk to strange men and Ashay would mutter under his breath when we walked by interested me, "Don't talk to him. Don't talk to strange men." We had 9th standard protectors :)

Maybe we won't be so quick to jump on the opportunity to take an Indian field trip the next time but I wouldn't trade the laughs on this one for anything. A weekend took me from being just Teacher to Sister (Ben). Three days gained us protectors. And my favorite quote of all is from Riddhi and is why I really can laugh at this hectic, draining weekend now.

"When you first came here, you were our new foreign teacher. We didn't know you. Now you are our friend."