Saturday, April 19, 2008

Himalaya School

I went to get C.'s Report Card from school today and on her last exams (she's in Lower Kindergarten) she got perfect grades in every subject except for Hindi. She lost 2 points for something. I told her to blame it on her mother.

However, her mother's lack of school-learned Hindi skills may not be such a problem in the future. A somewhat new friend of mine, Shelly, who is an American woman working among Muslims in our state, recently returned from a 6 week intensive Hindi course at Landour Language School in Mussoorie. (In the Himalayan mountains, it's a Hill Station. See photo above of the view from the school.)
Shelly told me that what she really wanted to learn was conversational Hindi but that all they teach at the school is Hindi Grammar. Since having that conversation I had been thinking and dreaming and praying and thinking some more. I've got the Hindi conversation skills, but no formal grammar. I picked up all my Hindi by ear.
I, of course, googled the school and stared at it for a while on the computer. The course is 3 months long, or a 6 weeks intensive course or you can take the classes by week - two being minimum.
Two weeks. In the Himalayan mountains. All alone. Improving my Hindi, perhaps significantly. It just sounded too good. I brought it up with O. a couple days ago and he said... "Yeah, sounds good - Go."
So, I'm preparing to go in September, probably over my birthday. Whoo hoo!

2 comments:

the mccollums... said...

WOW!!! That sounds great and what a beautiful place of the world! 6 weeks by yourself?!! congrats!

Rebecca O said...

Alas, only 2 weeks.