A lack of education

I came to India expecting to find very strong secondary education institutions - and, indeed, quite a few do exist. After all, everyone in the US knows that engineering seats in the top phD programs across America are filled with Indian and Chinese students (I say only half jokingly!). What Greg and I have both found surprising, though, is the lack of education that seems to take place at many of the universities here.

The main issue is that many students seem to have a difficult time understanding English, the language of instruction in almost all universities. Greg was at a university in southern AP where this was most pronounced: the professor lectured for 45 minutes in English. Then, recognizing that most of what he said was totally beyond his students, he gave a 15 minute re-cap in Telugu. Students are not receiving the full picture on two fronts - first, because a 15 minute summary does not compare with the details present in a full lecture. Second, Telugu just doesn't have all the appropriate words English does, especially in engineering or science disciplines. (aside: I have read articles about trying to "invent" Telugu words for modern research).

I was recently at a university screening the film, "Home," to increase environmental awareness. Students were reticent to offer their opinions in the discussion session, I assumed because they were embarrassed to speak in front of their friends or because they didn't really have an interest in environmental issues. The Indian guy with me, though, asked them to please speak out, "in any language." Still no one took him up on it, but after class the professor again explained that, even in this English-medium university, students had difficulty expressing themselves in English.

How, then, are all these students managing to graduate? We've also learned that the university grading system is - not surprisingly - completely different from the U.S. In many instances, small colleges are affiliated with a large name university. The main university sets a syllabus and writes an exam. All students across all the colleges take the same exact exam at the same exact time. Thus, all a student needs to do is study to a very objective test, that his or her own professor may or may not grade. Anything beyond the scope of the test is lost - the system takes "teaching to the test" to the extreme.

Our Indian colleagues at work were shocked when we explained that, in the US, two students can have the same major at the same college and not take a single class in common. They hardly believed us when we said that many high level classes don't even have exams - a grade is a combination of class participation in seminar discussions and a paper or project. They were incredulous to learn how much leeway an individual professor has.

Perhaps we need to take a broader view - perhaps we are missing something. Certainly at the highest institutions, what described above is not the case. But I can see a lot of room for reform at the mid-level universities that most students attend.

Jet Lag

Jet Lag is a whole new ball game with two kids. Traveling with William, we never thought it was that big a deal as we could alternate in the night who woke up with him. With two kids, though, we've had to take on a "divide and conquer" strategy: Greg sleeps upstairs with William and I sleep downstairs with Patrick. That way, we only wake up when our assigned child wakes up and not each time each child wakes up.

The funny thing about having Shabu and Sarwary around is that I felt compelled to explain the situation to them so they didn't think something funny was going on. After all, they would notice that two beds had been slept in (yes, confession, I do not make my bed on weekdays). I didn't want them to start wondering if Greg and I were fighting!

Five days post-trip, William is almost adjusted. He's now waking up just once/night. Last night, he played with his blocks by himself until Greg decided to go put him in bed.

Patch, though, is still confused - and I'm confused as to why he is confused. He's awake for his normal schedule during the day, but at night he's still waking up every two hours and usually has about an hour to two hours of play time. Plus, now that he's so mobile (bi-directional rolling, clockwise and counter-clockwise spinning), I can't just let him lie awake in bed while I sleep. Hopefully he'll get back to his good sleep schedule soon!

Shall we play cricket?

Maybe it's because we're all a little delirious with jet lag - but William is just cracking us up tonight.

Greg received a viking helmet as a gag gift from work years ago. William often likes to wear this helmet, which is funny enough, but then when you add the Indian accent ("Mama, I'm wearing my yel-met!"), it borders on ridiculous. Now add him in all serious asking an exhausted father: "Dada, shall we play cricket? I can wear my yel-met and hit the bawl!"

Some people take melatonin for jet lag. Some people exercise to keep them awake. We have William, a cricket bat, and a Viking helmet.

It's Manila!

Pam and I got the word today - we're going to Manila! There'll be a much shorter time in DC this round - probably only a month of training (area studies and a bit more consular training). We'll also have a month of home leave, location(s) TBD, before arriving in Manila in March 2011. We'll still have to figure out exactly when we leave Hyderabad, but something right around the new year is most likely. Back for Christmas? Maybe. We'll have to work out the precise dates.

Anyway, the most important thing is that we're going the same place at the same time, and that we can take the boys and the dog. Both of us will be doing consular jobs, which, while not ideal, is also not the end of the world. We both like the (relatively) regular schedule. And in Manila there's much more immigrant visa work and American Citizen Services, so there should be some change from the straight non-immigrant visa work we do in India.

One more day of training before we move on to Maryland for the weekend, then Pennsylvania next week. It's nice to be home, even for a few days!

3 weeks? That's nothing!

If it's been three weeks since Pam posted, it must be close to six months for me. And we have friends coming over for dinner in 20 minutes, so this post won't be long, either.

But what I will say is that we're starting to get excited about coming home for a few weeks. I'm not sure we know why. We've become so accustomed to Indian ways that I'm not sure we remember just how different it is. I suspect the reverse culture shock will be significant. But we're definitely looking forward to seeing friends and family, and of course to having a few weeks off work.

I think the most interesting thing will be seeing how Sarwari does. Will she be as much work as the kids? Will she adjust easily? Will she be too nervous to leave the house? Heck, we have to teach her to do simple things like cross the street - there are no walk/don't walk signs here. We did get her a whole pile of Hindi and Telugu movies to help her while away her hours in PA and TX when she's not technically working. Which will be another interesting thing - will she be able to understand that she can be around us and not working? Is it worth the effort to try to get her to understand? She'll be treated like a real person in the US, not just a servant, and I think that will be a shock for her at times.

Updates to come, hopefully less than six months later.

The Bid List

I can't believe it's been almost three weeks since I've posted. I've had drafts of three posts ... but some how between William and Patrick I just never finished them. So they will be relegated to the trash and I'm just going to start afresh.

We have two-fold excitement in the house this week: leaving for the US in a few days and bidding on our next post. I don't think I need to say much more about getting on a plane for 30 hours ... so I'll tell a little bit about the bidding process.

As untenured officers, our assignments are "directed" - that is, they give us a list of jobs, we rank 20 of them, then they assign. As a tenured officer, the process is much more like finding a normal job -- you see what positions each bureau has available, you send in your resume and "lobby" (aka network), and then a "handshake" is offered. That's for later, though. For now we're still being directed.

The Winter 2010 bid list was just issued on Friday (after the first tranche of people in difficult places like Af-Pak-Iraq were given their jobs). For us, the revised list didn't matter so much. Some of our colleagues were upset that Berlin and Auckland were gone, but those were never options for us to begin with.

Even though the list contained about 300 jobs, realistically, we only had 4 (or maybe 8) cities to choose from. Our criteria: (1) two jobs together where we can take kids (and hopefully Bagwelle!) and (2) jobs with training requirements that fit the rules. Because we had a year of training before coming here (all that Telugu!), we are only eligible for an additional 6 months of training before our next post, which basically rules out learning another language - and rules out a significant number of potential jobs.

This has left us with jobs in Manila and Washington as "perfect" fits (meaning, we leave Hyderabad in January, as scheduled) and Kingston (Jamaica) and Kampala (Uganda) as "imperfect fits (meaning, we leave sometime between December and March). That's the whole kit and kaboodle. Not very much considering the list had 300 positions on it!

Now, we're not complaining; we're mostly just surprised at how short the options are. Both Manila and Kampala are reportedly good places for families. And we have a lot of friends in DC (not to mention family in the US) - though I would prefer not to have to pay for two kids full time in day care! Kingston is less appealing because of the significant crime and the difficulty of consular work there (no, we would not be living on an all-inclusive island resort!).

For awhile we thought we might be able to swing some bids on jobs in Tunis, Singapore and Frankfurt. Tunis and Frankfurt if they bent the time-in-training for one of us (Greg would learn French or me German). Singapore if they let one of us arrive early. But, as it turns out, the training rule is hard and fast. And if we ask for an exception for Singapore, we'd also have to add Lagos and Abuja (both in Nigeria) to the list ... a risk we're not so thrilled to take.

Assignments will likely happen the end of March or early April. Stay tuned ...

Risk and Reward

We have a big dilemna at our house: should we encourage sarwary to
apply for the cleaning position at the consulate? Obviously, for us
this would be a huge loss. I have no idea if we would be able to find
someone as cabable as she whose personality also fits so well with our
family.

But for her, the benefits are tremendous, if she were offered the
position. First, medical care. If any of her immediate family had to
be hospitalized, most - if not all - of the cost would be covered,
avoiding significant potential source of debt. Second, job stability.
She wouldn't have to worry about finding a new employer every 2 years
and how the new family might treat her. Third, retirement fund. I
haven't looked into the details fully, but she would be eligible for
the "provident fund" sponsored by the indian gvt.

True, she'd be back to being a "cleaning lady" and not treated
practically like a member of our household. No one would be there to
buy an extra present for her kids at their birthdays or give her
unused household items (eg, her son gets a lot of hand me downs from
william). And she'd give up the chance that maybe some family in the
future would take her to the US for a posting, enabling her to earn in
two years what would take 10+ years to earn here.

A classic case of risk vs. reward!

From an american citizen perspective, it's interesting to see how my
government can make such a difference in a local person's life by
applying US employment standards across the world. True, it costs more
-- but at some level, it's applying American ideals and not being
hypocritical. Maybe the difference isn't so great for our local
professional staff, but after reading about how even the "labor" staff
get the same privlages and benefits, I was very happy with our
standards. A job like this in india can make a huge difference in
someone's life - even if she would be "just a cleaning lady."