As Mayuri and I got out of the car last Sunday and walked around the Matthews Library towards the deanery, I felt like a foreigner. “My” school was gone, its clumps of high-school students replaced by groups of Ganesha worshippers in colorful saris.

The grass surrounding the chalk-mural walkway, usually unoccupied during school, was filled with Hindus, conversing energetically in small circles. The ping-pong table, where pods of Abercrombie-clad freshmen gather on school days, was empty, save for a father-son duo dueling in a melee of flashing and clacking.

And­­­­­ the entrances to the classrooms, normally hazard-free, are, on Sundays, jungle gyms of shoes just waiting to snag the, unsuspecting toe or foot. Removing shoes is an act of respect to the Hindus’ place of worship and learning.

My first class of the day was in English teacher Brooke Wells’s room. But Wells wasn’t in his usual leisurely position, talking about “Beowulf” while slinging a fuzzy ball at a student’s head with his lacrosse stick. Instead, a vivacious woman sat cross-legged on the floor next to a candle on a table, effervescently quizzing a group of shy, cross-legged children on passages from the “Mahabharata,” a 1.8-million word Hindu epic. The desks were all empty so that was where we reporters sat, gazing at their school from afar.

Every Sunday at 10 a.m., Country Day seemingly leaves Sacramento and plops down in the middle of downtown New Delhi.

“I like it; it’s always really quiet on Sundays and I know all of the little kids are in their classes. Sometimes they come out all excited!” teacher Patricia Jacobsen said. Jacobsen often works at school on Sundays.

Balvihar, a Sunday school with over 100 students, has been meeting at the school for over 20 years. Balvihar’s program both offers religious education and introduces kids to native Indian dialects.

“It [Balvihar] teaches our children our ways of celebrating Hindu tradition,” Santhana Krishnan, seven-year Balvihar teacher said. They do this by reading the epics and celebrating festivals.

The second class of the day was a speaking class, in a language that I didn’t understand. Fellow reporter Mayuri abandoned me, going to another interview.

The only space left in the packed “Spanish” classroom was the small corner by the door. I squeezed myself into an egg position and watched an older woman point to objects around the room while saying the words in­ Hindi. After trying unsuccessfully to pronounce the word for “cup,” I gave up and let my eyes wander around the classroom.

As before, all of the children sat on the floor; however, this class was so popular that there was no more floor space. Many adults stood in the doorway or sat on tables, supervising children, and joking with the teacher, all in Hindi.

To my right sat a gray-haired man with what would have been a rather grandfatherly countenance were it not for a red stripe down his forehead flanked by one white stripe on either side, indicating he is a follower of the Hindu god Shiva. He glanced my way and I quickly looked away.

That Sunday, they celebrated Diwali, the festival of lights, a holiday as important to the Hindus as Christmas is to the Christians. In celebration the children passed out a Hindi food called burfi, which is a milk-enriched sweet with nuts and sugar. A smaller, darker-skinned boy offered me the plate of burfi.

“No thank you,” I said, glancing around for Mayuri’s help, hoping she would appear to rescue me, startled at being included in what I saw as something like the Christian ritual of communion. However, I learned later that burfi is sacred only if eaten in temple. There, it was more like handing out Christmas cookies.

Outside after class, I spoke with Vrishali, a high-school senior and Balvihar student. No red dot graced her forehead, no sari adorned her body. She wore “normal” clothes, chewed gum, and spoke like a Southern California valley girl.

“Living in America, where else are we going to learn [Hindu traditions]?” she asked. “We can’t learn it in school. What are you going to teach your kids?”

Teacher Bharati Sundarajan responded to that question in this way, “It helps us know where we came from and who we are. This [Balvihar] gives Indians a good source of identity and helps us see our role in society.”