Like a slideshow

First we hung out with Kaitlin in Chicago



And then we waited around for a while in the airport.



We flew over Afghanistan, which particularly delighted me because I was finishing the book "The Kite Runner" at that very moment.



We eventually landed in Delhi,



And a day later in Mussoorie.



p.s. does anyone know how I can put videos on here? Anyway, this is Joanna and Sonya at staff tea in the tea garden (what was Sonya doing there?)



Me with KDB, who's the best baby ever:



We (Nate, Ann, Angie and others) went to dinner at the Smith's, at the top of the hill in Sister's Bazaar.



Nate and I went around the chukkar to the graveyard one afternoon. Everyone thought it was a premature monsoon based on the mist (although it cleared up yesterday)



We went to STAR weekend (where the seniors get told that college is not like high school, and the places they're going to college are not like Woodstock) for the day on Sunday



And I have lots more but Flicker won't let me upload any right now and I don't have time to mess around with it at the moment, so look forward to a sequel in days upcoming.

India Again

First off, I got a new camera the day before we left to come here so I'll be posting some AWESOME pictures (yes, awesome enough to deserve all caps) as soon as I remember to bring my USB cord to school.

It feels like I never left, and also like I shouldn't ever leave. I had never imagined that I would feel this comfortable here. Everything is the same. There are new staff and the kids are older but it feels completely natural, as if I was here all along and saw those things happening.

So far we spent a day in Delhi and took the 12-hour overnight train to Dehradun and got here on Tuesday afternoon. We've spent the last two days hanging around with dopey grins on our faces and fulfilling our old fantasy of being here and enjoying the people without actually having a smidgen of responsibility.

More later this week...

bharat kay agha may pas hee hai (meri Hindi bahut karab hai! or meri spelling bhi hai)

On Friday, Nate and I are heading back to India for three weeks. Right now I'm feeling quite nervous about this whole idea for a myriad of reasons, both welcome and unwelcome. The flights make me nervous, but that's not such a big deal. I'm a little nervous to see all the Woodstock kids again although not for any substantial reason. I know they will have grown up some and that my place and roll there will be largely undefined during this visit, but that's not it either. I'm really starting to feel with an increasing clarity that I'm afraid of how I've changed since I left there, or I'm afraid that my life isn't coming anywhere close to the ideas I had so much hope in when I left.
Friday, we're hopping on a rather expensive Amtrak train to Chicago, where we will be joined by Anne Waltner and hopefully will have some brief fun with Kaitlin. Saturday we'll hop on the plane (so much hopping!) until many, many hours later when we'll take the train from Delhi to Dehradun, and then a taxi ride to Mussoorie that revives my original, long-ago fears of that sickening drive up the mountain that I had gotten completely used to. After my first ride up that road I swore I wouldn't leave the mountain again until it was time to return to the USA, which resolution of course completely dissolved over time until I was comfortable enough to do it myself on the Enfield.
I'm also thinking of my last week in India with Kait and the VanZees. How much time Kait and I spent scarfing German Baked goods and feeling like we should probably be doing something awesome and worthwhile like hiking through the incredible scenery. And wishing for hot (or warm) water.
Our last day in Delhi, I had some kind of stomach thing and was sick and nauseated and overall yucky. I had never been in Old Delhi before, and I can't separate the memory of it with the terrible, sickening feeling of the heat that day. It was oppressive, but in an aggressive way, as if the breeze itself were pummeling us with its incessant, tiny fists of warmth.
The path things have taken since then (and especially over the past month) have made me doubt what I'll be ready for this time. I am ready, though, to get shaken up and take things as they come, because at least for a little while life is really going to be exciting, like it or not.

The End.

p.s. I'll be checking my email there, so feel free to write!

2:57, Community Mercantile

A woman in burgundy scrubs walks through the automatic doors and straight to the opposite side of the store. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail and her skin is shiny from sweating all day. She picks up two 8 oz. bottles of kombucha wonder tea, double checking the price labels of $1.99 under the refrigerated shelves. She pauses on her way to the registers and switches both bottles to one hand, then sets them down on a dinnerware display table as an afterthought. Reaching in a pocket, she produces neatly folded one-dollar bills, which she counts. Five.
"A Sparkling Himalayan Tonic" the bottles claim. She doesn't sigh, but indulges a small memory of her mother that's been floating around the limits of her consciousness all day. Of being a toddler and watching her mother lightly grease a baking pan and dust it with flour. She would lean out of the screen door in her long everyday dress and shake the excess flour from the dusted pan into the bushes outside of their tiny suburban home.
You see, the burgundy-clad woman is so sleep deprived and exhausted that she's just this side of delirium. She thinks of the sparkling Himalayas themselves, and picks the bottles back up.

one miniscule part of one large identity-and-otherwise crisis

So, I think I'm going to learn to play the upright bass. Any thoughts or guidance?

forty hours later

you know, life really never does go the way you expect it to. I can't think of anything philosophical to say about it.

I started the CNA (Certified Nursing Aide - that's the only time I'm typing that out) job a full week ago now. Let's just say my back hurts and there was a lot of vomit in my life tonight (none of it mine, fortunately) but I really love the good moments. I'm sure I'll have more stories to tell about this job than about anything I've ever done.

Don't have any now, though, because sleep is now something I dream about like I used to dream about having a real job. Why always the tradeoff?

India countdown: 13 days