August 19

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, that I can’t trust our made anymore, because she pulled a rather unpleasant trick on me. This Saturday we had school (only 3 periods). The thing is that on Saturdays our school-busses don’t use their normal routes and I was not aware of that, because I had not bothered to ask anyone as I was supposed to go to Chandigarh on Saturday. Of course I was an idiot and forgot again that I’m in India and things rarely go as they are supposed to. This means that our trip to Chandigarh was cancelled on Friday evening. To get back to the point, I waited for my usual bus in the morning and after a half an hour, I returned to have Sukhbir drop me off. On our way to school, we saw a DPS school-bus on the side of the road, so we pulled over and I got on to the bus (in case of emergency, we are allowed to use any route we want to). It appeared that this was actually the bus which I was supposed to catch and my regular number didn’t go on special occasions. Anyway, I got to school without any further problems. Our school-day was pointless in terms of education, but it was fun, because both the English teacher and Physics teacher allowed us to do what ever we wanted to. So we played “truth and dear” the whole time. Our day ended at 11.00 and the buses were supposed to leave at 12. 00. So, taking concern of the fact that I had no idea, where my bus was going to drop me (because of the irregular routes) and the fact that I would have had to wait some 1,5 hours for my bus, I decided to call Sukhbir (as we had previously agreed) but found out that my credit was 0. At first I couldn’t figure it out because I knew, my balance was about 300 Rs. Now, the first thing that came to my mind was to use the school pay-phone but that was broken. The school administrator’s phone didn’t work either. Therefore, I had to wait for 2 hours for our bus to leave (it was supposed to leave at 12. 00 but left about 13.00). The bus dropped me at the place where it had picked me up and, using all of my energy to remember the road, I caught a riksha and told him that I’ll show him the way (because he didn’t know, where New Garden Colony was). Knowing only the direction, but being able to guess, I managed to guide the riksha driver to our house and got home without further problems. However, a question remained about my credit. I started checking my outgoing calls and saw that 95% of them were made to unknown numbers. I also looked at the times when they were taken and saw that most of them were taken on Friday (something like 15 calls) at the time when I know, I was already in school, Harleen and Sukhbir at work and therefore, there was no-one at the house except the maid and Ajaid (Sukhbir’s father). I must mention that I don’t carry my cell-phone to school (except on this Saturday) and I knew there was only one person who could have used it, the maid. Unfortunately I can not put a PIN-code on my card and therefore, my phone was free to be used by our maid. As soon as Sukhbir came home, I told him about this and, keeping everything between the two of us, we are planning to nail that bastard. I mean, 300 Rs. Is not a VERY big money but the fact that she left me in a very bad situation (which might have been even worse) created anger in me. I think I’m going to have this money taken off her wage.

That was the bad news. The good news is that I’m getting along with my classmates very well and am feeling more and more comfortable every day. I won’t be able to go out with them this weekend due to lack of credit on my phone-card but that really doesn’t matter. At some point of time I’m going to see my classmate’s house and meet her parents, because I might be able to convince them to let her go on an exchange year. Also, I had a chemistry test last week (as well as English) and I’m hoping for positive results (in chemistry somewhere around 20 points out of 25 ) and in English, maximum.English seems to be the subject in which I’m the best at the moment and my teacher said on Thursday that I am the only good student in our class (she was exaggerating of course). I also got back my Math test with a score of 1, which is not exactly good, but is progress, comparing to the previous 0. Also, I understand the chapter which we are dealing at the moment rather well and I’m hoping for positive (or at least better) results on the next test.

The next news is that I’m going to have to give a speech on 5th September (the teachers’ day). The only thing is, that I’m supposed to say positive things about Indian educational system and the teachers, but all I can think is criticism.
That’s it for this week,
Bye.