Shit happens....on my shoulder.

The trouble with blogging everyday is that I don't want to. (And I'm only doing what I want these days. It's awesome.)
The trouble with not blogging is that when I do want to, there is too much to say! So much, in fact, that I'm having trouble getting my thoughts to work in a linear fashion. So excuse the onslaught of incohesiveness in advance.

Yesterday we made it to laughing yoga!

Anita, myself, and a girl from South Africa (she's here visiting her mom who owns a wine farm in South Africa who decided to come here once a year and volunteer after her husband died -aside: I love everyone's stories! - Also, they said if I wanted to come to South Africa they'd show me around!) - anyways, we got up at 5:30 and caught a taxi to a place I can't remember the name of. It was by a lake and as we walked around the orange sun rising cast a brilliant light on all the trees and illuminated the people doing morning walks, yoga, meditation, and salutations to the starting day. And through the mist we could hear, ever so softly, and then ever so much louder, "Ha-ha-ho-ho-ha ha ha ha ha."

By the time we walked around the lake there was only like ten minutes left of the group, but we joined in and a woman came over to us to explain the exercises. It was such a wonderful way to start the day, I'm thinking of going again.

The day before we went in a large group to the marble palace which is a beautiful mansion with the most unbelievable marble inlay on the floors. Home to Hindi princes for generations. Still owned by the family of seven brothers. And as correctly described in the guidebook, really eerie; like a scary movie/horror set. Oh the horror!

Then we walked up to find a famous Indian coffee house by the college campus. It was closed, but we let ourselves in anyways. And sat in the empty room, with a distinctly cuban writer's feel and thought about all the stories that had been conjured there. And I'm dying to write. I wish I had brought my laptop. I'm bursting at the seems with characters and situations that have to be stories immediately. All I want to do is write and write and write. Only not blogs. Because no one comments and that's depressing. (this is me making an obvious request:)

Then my ATM card died, and my watch died and a pigeon shit on my shoulder.

So here I am in the middle of India with no access to money. It's a bit unnerving (and inhibits my sense of freedom) but I'm surprisingly fine with it. Brendon was commenting yesterday that it was refreshing how I took my quandary in stride. Because what can you do? But secretly, I'm only calm for two reasons. The first is because I only tend to get anxious at night time. Especially if I'm with people I'm comfortable falling apart in front of. So I just waited until I was alone in my bed at night and realized in a moment's panic, "I'm completely stuck in India and can't leave if I want because I have no money." The second reason is - because honestly what can you do? Poki told me a while ago about an ancient Chinese (I think chinese.) practice of making all major decisions in seven breaths. And I've been trying that. So my ATM card doesn't work, what do I do? "one breath, two breaths, three breaths, four...wire my parents for money." done. How much money, "one breath, two, three, four...done." And then it really is done.

All who know my indecisiveness would be very impressed. This will come in handy later when I have to pick out a new toothbrush.

And the other secret reason (I guess there were three) why I'm not worried is because I'm not alone. I was telling people about my prediciment and Carmel (my new friend ever since I invited her out for a beer two days ago - she's Irish) said, "oh it's no worries. We'd all take care of you. If you need money, we'd get you money" and Joe from New York said he'll give me all the money he has left over on Thursday when he leaves. And Stan and Brendon and Anita - everyone asked.

I'm getting to love my life here. Last night Steffi asked, "why don't you extend your ticket. You should stay longer. What do you have to go home for?" And the last question is haunting me a little bit...

Last night we sat around in our courtyard. hungry. And someone asked, does anyone have any food? I said, I have one onion and garlic. Steffi had three tomatoes and a cucumber. Stan had two bags of pasta. Anita had a papaya. And we pooled our meager food together and gave it to Nico and somehow an amazing meal came out of it.

Time is moving so fast.

Anita and I (and maybe Katerina) are going to go to the Sunderbans this weekend. Hopefully. It's the world's largest system of river deltas, mangrove forrests, and Tigers! We will spend two nights on a river boat drifting through the jungles. Reportedly, the women that live there dress as widows everytime their husbands leave for work, as so many of them have been attacked by tigers, and then change back into their regular clothes when their husbands return. The men, many of them beekeepers I believe, wear masks on the back of their heads because it is believed that a tiger won't attack you if it thinks you are looking at him.

Today I started work at Shisu bhavan, another house for children. I will be going there in the mornings now to work on a mureal! One of the volunteers (an anthropologist, very excited to hear I studied anthropology!) has been coming here for ten years, and she is painting a beautiful beautiful bright mureal in the children's playground. Today she and I scrapped off an old one (pale and depressing) for three hours off the walls - and we're not close to done. Hopefully by tomorrow we can finish up, wash the walls, and then by the end of the week whitewash everything. She's already designed the mureal (it's really bright and beautiful and will completely enclose the playground!) and she'll outline it, then me and another volunteer will paint it in. She's also planning to put candystripes on the play equipment and paint a pond at the bottom of the slides so it will look like you're sliding into a pool of fish!) We're also hoping to bring in barkdust to put around the garden and make the playground a really beautiful oasis for the kids. I'm really, really exicted to work on it and just wish that my mom, sister, and jess were here to work on it because I think they would love it!

I'm still working at Kalighat at night. How will I ever find all the time I'm needing. It's starting to go so quickly. It's caught me completely off guard.