First Days of (Face to Face) School

Well, yesterday was the first day of school being open to students. If you have read our previous post, you will remember that the school was shut down for a week because of the N1H1 scare. The media here is pretty crazy and in our opinion, over hyping the situation. But that means our school has to take extra precautions to calm fears.

They have asked everyone, students, parents, faculty and staff to take their temperatures before coming to school. If anyone has a fever, they are required to stay home. To help enforce this, they are asked to bring a "coupon" in that has their name, division and temperature on it. For those who don't have access to a thermometer at home, we now have one of those fancy shmancy thermal cameras to check people temperature. That means getting around 1000 people in our secure, turn-style entrance, and checking for their coupon or directing them to walk by the thermal scanner. Oh, and on top of all this, the roads around our school are being re-done and are a complete mess, adding to the chaos of morning drop offs.

Day1: Elizabeth wakes up extra early to get to school and help out with directing the crowd. I get in the shower and about 20 secs later, the water has run out. This is due to the fact that the monsoon has been very weak in Mumbai this season, and there isn't always enough water to go around. The irony of this is that at the moment my shower water runs out, it is pouring down outside and thunder and lighting begins.

All in all, the first morning however, turned out to be OK. We got a little bit of water about 20 minute later, enough for both Elizabeth & Kevin to get in a quick first day of school shower! And by the time we got to school, the rain had stopped. All we had to deal with was getting everyone in collecting coupons and/or going past the thermal scanner. There were a few glitches here and there, but overall pretty successful.

Day 2: Again we wake up to pouring rain. Rain hard enough so that Suri refused to go outside to the bathroom (although, really it doesn't take much rain for that to happen!). So far the few rains we have had this year have been not so much a downpour as a medium to heavy rain, that last about 5 minutes and then are gone. Well, not today! It pours all morning as we get ready, as we drive to school. It's raining so hard that they have actually rearranged the traffic flow to get people as close as possible to the entrance. This is probably a good thing as not only is it pouring, but the street outside, as mentioned before, are under construction, i.e. muddy!

This is by far the hardest rain I have seen since I've been here. Granted that may not say much as both years so far have been pretty tame. However it is still pouring and the new secure entrance they built, with nice indoor gates and booths, has no eves on them, so excess water is pouring into the entrance or right at the threshold of the entrances. Also, the tarp overhangs that are always there has no way to get rid of the water, so the have basically poked a hole in it as a drain, right in the middle of the walkway. And, just when I think it couldn't rain any harder, it does indeed get worse...this happens at least twice in the morning. This is a classic India experience.

In all reality though, besides the downpour, which had some people rather upset, they whole coupon/thermal scan again went well. I was out collecting and directing again for about an hour, in which time my shoes, socks and bottom half of my pants got completely soaked, even though I was not standing in the rain. After the school offered to take me home to change, they jokingly told me I was not aloud to call in sick on Monday.

This whole process will continue for the foreseeable future, or at least until those advising us say we don't need to monitor for fevers. Here are a few of my favorite moments from the last few days:

1. Some parents filled in a months worth of coupons for themselves and their children and turned them in...kind of defeats the purpose.

2. Someone turned in a coupon today that said their temperature was 84 degrees Fahrenheit. There could be a number of reasons for this, but lets hope that wasn't their actual temp!


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K&E