Nov 2

            It was the 6^th day of our cultural exchange trip to India, and it was the last day we attend lessons and activities at J.B. Petit High School for Girls. As it was a Friday, it was the “Dress as You Like” day in J.B., when all students are allowed to wear casual wear to school. To my surprise, apart from Fridays, students are actually allowed to wear casual wear to school on their birthdays!

            Math class marked the start of the day. Std. 8A has just started a new topic --- simultaneous equations, which I’ve learnt in last year (S2). They got the concept really quick even though it was a new topic to them!

            After math, it was social studies lesson with the headmistress of J.B. --- Mrs. Kutar. They were learning “Music in Europe”, and Mrs. Kutar introduced the orchestra as well as different “families” of musical instruments of it to the class. Also, we talked about Ludwig Van Beethoven. Although I often play his pieces on the piano, there were some facts on him that I never knew! The biggest difference between their social studies lessons and our liberal studies lessons is that in social studies, they mainly study history, geography, music, art etc. of a certain place (e.g. Europe), whereas in liberal studies we mainly study news that are happening all over the world, which we need a critical mind to give opinions.

            At 10am, all the DGS girls and their host and school buddies went for a visit to the Jain Temple, which was a temple of gods of the Jains. As there are only about 500 Jains in Hong Kong, we have not really heard about it, so we learnt about many facts about Jainism on our way. As Jainism was founded in India during the 6^th century B.C., most of the Jains in the world are found in India, but only 0.5% of the population in India are Jains. Jainism has 24 gods, and in the temple we visited there were only the 1^st and 23^rd gods. The Jains prescribes the path of not harming any living beings, therefore they are strict vegetarians. It was a nice experience where we were able to see the way Jains practise their religion, hence acquiring new knowledge.

            After lunch, we had an Indian dance workshop. There are classical, folk and Bollywood dance. We learnt the basic steps of classical Indian dance --- right left right left, left right left right. With these steps, we could actually dance anything as we like, as there are lots of variations of these steps. There are many kinds of fold dances in India as each state has its own state dance. It is actually a variation of the classical dances where you add in folk movements. As for the Bollywood dance, it is mainly danced in the Indian movie industry, and the dance steps usually rock more. Although it was quite tiring after dancing, we still had a great time.

            After school ends, all of us got tattoos which are done by a natural type of herb. The herb is brown in colour, but when it gets on the skin it turns orange and gets darker as time passes. After 1-2 weeks, it will disappear naturally.

            Time flies, and there are only 2 more days till the end of our cultural exchange trip. I will surely miss Mumbai!