Wednesday 28 July 2010

A summary of my first 3 weeks in Delhi so far...

Hi all,

This is Gaspar signing in from Delhi. 3 weeks into my WAM experience, and I’m alive and well! (sort of – I was very sick on monday for the first time)

I was assigned to “Theme Music Institute”, and they were very organised in preparing for my arrival. My name and CV were posted on the walls, I was given a schedule with the name, age, and proficiency of each student, and I was swiftly put to work.

The school has loads of students, which are taught in group classes of about 6 at a time. My pupils pay for a weekly 45min individual lesson with me on top of the regular class. 3 teachers so far have also signed up, and I will be running at least 4 teacher workshops (the first one tomorrow). About half my students are above grade 5, including around five taking grade 8 and a couple of diploma students. They’re all lovely, and I really enjoy the fact that they cover the full spectrum in terms of personality, motivation, work rate, pianistic strength/weakness. I feel like I benefit just as much from teaching them as they do from me. My working week is 3:15 to 7pm weekdays, with a long Saturday (10-7) and free on Sunday. So far that’s in the regions of 27 students – by the end of my first week, I was desperate to stop meeting new faces and start getting on to lessons no.2!

I’ve been managing to get quite a lot of personal practice done, ranging between 2-4 hours most days. The school is open for administrative purposes from 10am, and there isn’t any teaching before 3 so I can just turn up as early as I like. My summer project is to memorise the Tchaikovsky concerto, and progress so far is good! It’s also quite a good way of inspiring my ‘lazier’ pupils – when I show them all 67 virtuoso-filled pages of the score and tell them I have to memorise them, getting to the end of their 2 page-long piece with music doesn’t feel so hard anymore…

The school is quite far from home (8 miles), and coming back in rush hour by auto-rikshaw takes about an hour. It is very hard to find a willing driver in the evening, as many start to avoid long journeys at that time, or demand double the normal price and move on when I try to bargain. However when there is heavy rain and storms, the combination with rush hour turns very nasty indeed. One amusing journey involved 3 hours of standstill traffic, crazy driving, a crash and getting drenched by overtaking cars.

I teach two days a week in another branch in Gurgaon, which is where Lucie, Ffion, Helen and Ed are staying. That involves travelling on the ‘Metro’, which is high above the ground, similar to London’s DLR route through Canary Wharf.

I met the director and the head of international sales of Kawai pianos last week; they spent an afternoon at my school as part of an India sales tour, because Theme has many branches including a dedicated piano/keyboard store and buys exclusively Kawai instruments.

In our first week here the weather was pretty hot, but I was expecting it to be a lot worse so by comparison I’ve found it perfectly bearable (mind you, I have an air-conditioned bedroom and teaching room). Since then the monsoon has arrived and the weather is quite pleasant now. In many ways it reminds me of England – the sky is often a vague carpet of light grey and it rains every now and again (only the rain and resulting puddles are really warm which is a little freaky). I do not find Delhi a beautiful city at all, apart from a few nice tourist sites. I really feel in need of some countryside, and hopefully that may come soon. Otherwise, really enjoying the experience so far, the teaching, and my fellow WAMers’ company.

Till the next entry,

Gaspar

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