rishikesh

This past weekend we went to rishikesh, a small town straddling the ganges river between crazy mountains 200km or so north of delhi. It was beautiful. There wasn't much to do beyond walk around a do yoga, so thats what we did. We took a yoga class with one of the few legit yoga teachers, and it was honestly pretty intense physically. my limbs went to unnatural places, and they even had me doing a head stand. I also took a sitar lesson with two other volunteers which was good. My teacher was this white guy from tennesee, but he has been india for four years studying sitar and indian percussion. I'm considering buying a sitar. You can get one for about $200, whereas in the states would cost $1000. we'll see, its an amazing instrument.

Work has been good, same old stuff. Every day the girls and I head in, work, play for a few hours, and then peace. I've begun to get a good grasp on the names of the older kids, who
I enjoy working with a lot because we communicate easier and it's more relaxed. The little kids' names, I'm still working out. Many of them have nicknames of my choosing. There's about 25 of them, I'll get it eventually.

work and the weekend

Work has been great. For the first part of the day, I work with the little kids, who although may be cute, are rediculously insane. As soon as the teacher leaves, they go insane, and its almost impossible to calm them down. It is also not a big deal to slap kids in the head and face here, as the teacher lets us know, although im not too comfortable with that at the moment. For this reason it is hard to get stuff done, and the language barrier only makes things more interesting. They know parts of the alphabet, so when we sing it it ends up sounding more like " A B C D glip glop gloo, L M N O P..." (literally).
the second part of the day work with the older kids who are between 8 and 14. They all speak more english, and its nice to communicate more freely. With them, we just work on more advanced reading.

This past weekend, me and the girls went to Pushkar, a small "spiritual" town surounding a lake. It looked like it was out of alladin. We took the sleeper train third class, and arrived in ajmer at 4 in the morning. We finally negotiated a price with the rickshawdrivers to get us to pushkar, although our driver (who looked like an Indian jim carey) was about to get a knuckle sandwich by me for being so rediculously persistent after we told him to piss off. He ended up giving us the price we wanted so it worked out.
Arriving in pushkar was sureal. They dropped us off at the town gate, and we had no idea how to get to the hotel besides the crude map that fellow volunteer Stuart had drawn us. As we walked along the streets, I literally felt like I was in a horror movie. The streets were competely deserted and silent, except all around us were hudreds of bodies of all the hobos sleeping on everything that wasn't wet or covered in shit. However, all the stray dogs and cows were awake and were glad to escort us to our hotel, which we eventually found after walking about a kilometer.
the hotel was sick, it overlooked the lake and a view that looked like it was out of a storybook. During the day, we did all that there was to do short of taking yoga classes. We walked around the whole lake (probably like two miles), saw the shops and temples. I also learned how to play basic sitar (after staying in the music shop for a unreasonably longtime without buying anything), and got an awesome drum lesson from this crazy dude whose father played with the greatful dead percussion section. The town is kind of sad in some ways because it completely runs on tourism. It is pretty much one giant bazaar,and everyone is trying to take money from you one way or another. There was nothing to do at night. The next day, I played more drums and then we trained home to the lovely CCS house. It was a good weekend. Next weekend we'll probably go to Rejekesh with a bunch of other volunteers.

Below: photos from Pushkar

driving, working

Driving here can only be described as organized chaos. On the road, you will find cars, buses, rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, bikes, bikes carrying massive amounts of material, trucks, people, and cows, all moving at the sametime. To compound matters even worse, there are no lanes on many roads, and when there are, no one pays attentionto them. Driving is eat or be eaten, and as a result, cars are honking more then they're not. My first impression was that everyone wasreally angry, but in fact it is only because everyone is letting everyone else know where they are at all times. Its like bats. Suprisingly, this system works, and there seem to be few accidents with major consequences other than a dented bumper. I went to my placement for the first time today. Essentially, it is a school for children whose fathers are construction laborers. One nice women kindly took the children in, and now, years later, has a deal to provide schooling for the children while the building contractor supplies the location. Its pretty bare, and there are not a lot of supplies, but the kids are adorable. Becky, Rachel, and I begin work in ernest tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.

I'm in India

So I'm here, and it's pretty geat. This has to be quick because its dinner soon/the internet is crap here, but here's whats up.

The flights were unneventful, but getting off the plane was a cool experience. Walking outside after everything was great. It's in the 60's here and it smelled like spices outside.

I'm living in a middle class neighborhood in an apartment complex called Hauz Khas. Its nice, although the cars runningby the place never stop beeping.

The other volunteers are pretty cool. Today, we did a little sightseeing, and saw the Lotus Temple and the grave of some Mongol Emperor whose name I now forget.

I have to get off now, but everything is well, and I'll write again when more stuff happens.

Costa Rica in review

It was pretty cool.

The first post

I'm going to be honest with everyone who will eventually read this: I hate the idea of doing this.

Every personal blog I've read has sucked, mostly because I don't care about the everyday, unimportant details of your life. Until now, I guess I've just been paying it forward to the internet by not having a blog.

However, things are different now. I'm doing some cool stuff these days, and I want everyone who cares to know about it. At the very least, this beats the long and often broken email chain that started with my parents while in Costa Rica that may or may not have reached everyone.

In less than two days, I leave for New Delhi, India, where I will be working with kids in some fashion (I'm honestly not really sure exactly what I'm doing because I haven't been receiving all the right emails). Its ok though, and I'm sure things will work out fine. This trip is part of a larger volunteer/work trip I am taking this year that will bring me to India, Israel, and Tanzania and has already brought me to Costa Rica (which was pretty great). Accompanying me are my friends Rachel and Becky, who are both awesome.

Hopefully this blog will serve its purpose well, informing my family and friends of what I'm up to while abroad without having to screw around with those emails. If I am able to keep everyone updated in these blunt, poorly written accounts, I will feel as if I have begun to accomplish my goal of saying more than "It was good," when people ask me how my trip was.

Anyway, I'll write more when I actually leave this country.