i cannot imagine a more perfect few day in a new life. in this new life of mine:
it began a few days ago when Gen and I went out in Portland on Friday night--what a great city! we walked around the city, got a free bike taxi ride to a crepe place and listened to some live music through the open windows of a bar. then we scouted down ice cream cookie sandwiches and ate them. yum.
saturday afternoon after i finished work we took one of Gen's new friends, Evan, with us to the coast, to a tiny town called Pacific City. There we made some new friends: about 30 people were sky diving and they kept just appearing in the sky, and landing on the beach. So i went up to this guy, Steveo who sky dives for a living, and we started chatting and he invited us to a party in town later that night. Which we went to, met some crazy folks and went back to the beach where we built a bonfire and slept out under the stars.
we drove back yesterday (sunday) and picked up Ryan, the other intern here at Carlo & Julian, and all four of us went to the drive-in movie theater in Newburg down the road. We saw Grease. Afterward, Ryan and I came home to our little cabin, and lay on the newly finished deck outside, and searched the skies for shooting stars. we saw 2. maybe 3. the bugs were quite deceiving.
i woke up at 7:30 this morning, as usual, and ryan and i made the trek to the main house for our morning coffee. I washed some clothes, hung them on the line, and started work. Ryan and I painted the porch of our house, then we scrubbed about 50 buckets that we'll use to harvest grapes, then broke for lunch of homemade quesadillas. After that we went into the winery and added SO2 to the barrels of last years wines--adding it works as some part of the second fermentation process. Next we topped other barrels (which means adding more wine so there's no empty space for oxidization to happen) and tasted different varieties, helping Felix decide which we were ready to be bottled. Felix, my boss, is great--he's from Argentina, and knows so so much about wine and wine-making. today he told us alot about the process of getting from grape to barrel to bottle. as expected, i asked a lot of questions.
so, then my working day was over. i called my sister and mom, and booked a ticket home for thanksgiving, went for a run around the little town of Carlton, played make-believe with 5 year old Madeline (the daughter of my boss) about trolls and magic spells, and then came to the house for a delicious dinner of wine (ours! of course), quinoa, veggies from the garden and chicken. I'm not sure, but I think the chicken was also ours and Felix (my boss) killed it earlier today.
now it is after dinner. I will play the piano for a bit, then head back to my little hut which has 1 outlet (we have to choose between light or music at night), and curl up in my sleeping bag, play some guitar and watch for more shooting stars.
tomorrow we are moving pallets around the winery, and cleaning everything in preparation for harvest and crush---which will start sometime later this week.
i love to be here. i love that i get to be here. i love that i am now learing about wine, that i will continue to learn more and more each day. I love that i live in a 200 sqaure foot shack that has no interior walls and only 1 plug. i love that i can see the milky way every single night, that we eat delicious dinners of homemade food, that i get to play make-believe with a 5 year old. that i live 10 miles from Genevieve and can go exploring Oregon wilderness with her and visit cute McMinnville whenever I have time off.
I am truly truly happy to be out here and I can't wait for our first load of grapes to come in so we can really get this crush-party started.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
i am so lucky to have the luxury of time to be where i am.
today i woke up at 9 and,s after my ritual romp in the blueberry and strawberry patches to find fixings for my granola (which i made) to munch for breakfast, I tromped some more off into the garden for some harvesting. i got about 10 onions, handfulls of fresh oregano, basil, rosemary, and parsley, 2 huge baskets of tomatoes, and 5 huge peppers. then i chopped. and I chopped until about 2pm--finally threw it all into a pot and cooked it for a few hours: my own pasta sauce.
today I also finished my second round of ketchup (this time out of tiny golden baby tomatoes which will make it extra sweet), and then went out to the fruit trees and picked armfuls of peaches and then off to the blackberry patch and got a jar of those too. chop chop and into the dish, made a crumble topping and now that's baking in the oven: peach-blackberry crumble. there are 2 new WWOOFers living here too. they're from Wisconsin and a brother a sister. it's great. really nice to have new faces around. and they're loads of fun.
at some point today we also went swimming in the pond out front. we had inner tube races backwards and forwards and every which way. spinning contests and the like.
we've just finished cleaning the kitchen after this massive day of cooking, we're listening to bob dylan, and kiri (the girl) and i are about to do some yoga in the big open main room.
tomorrow we three (ben, kiri, and i) will go to a nearby farm and help there with some potato digging. also i suspect that tomorrow will consist of lots of tomato sauce eating and there's a whole pie to consume as well. lots of cooking comes with lots of eating!
like i said: i am so lucky to have the luxury of time to be doing this. how did i get here? how am i allowed to be doing this? it is so luxurious and relaxing. so time-loving. i mean by that: time is elongated for me here. and nothing is stressful or unpleasant. things just happen. i could live here for a while---probably later in life is better. right now, i can tell that i would feel cooped up quite quickly. i do need a bit more adventures in my life. a few more 5am nights out doing crazy things. but it's incredible to be able to have this taste of it now. and to have the ability to just relax into it. to soak it in.
the buckners are incredible people. so warm and generous. they just open their arms to me and say: COME enjoy this life that we have. work along side us and make and eat and enjoy our food. help us and we will give you a warm home to live in and a beautiful place to explore. i cannot think of a more perfect WWOOF situation in so so many ways.
i am now sitting on my bed with pepper, one of the kitties, purring next to me and she is rubbing her face up to mine, itching to be pet. so i will stop typing. and pet her.
that's about how life is here. and i think it's how life should be. we should be able to just stop and pet the kittens.
today i woke up at 9 and,s after my ritual romp in the blueberry and strawberry patches to find fixings for my granola (which i made) to munch for breakfast, I tromped some more off into the garden for some harvesting. i got about 10 onions, handfulls of fresh oregano, basil, rosemary, and parsley, 2 huge baskets of tomatoes, and 5 huge peppers. then i chopped. and I chopped until about 2pm--finally threw it all into a pot and cooked it for a few hours: my own pasta sauce.
today I also finished my second round of ketchup (this time out of tiny golden baby tomatoes which will make it extra sweet), and then went out to the fruit trees and picked armfuls of peaches and then off to the blackberry patch and got a jar of those too. chop chop and into the dish, made a crumble topping and now that's baking in the oven: peach-blackberry crumble. there are 2 new WWOOFers living here too. they're from Wisconsin and a brother a sister. it's great. really nice to have new faces around. and they're loads of fun.
at some point today we also went swimming in the pond out front. we had inner tube races backwards and forwards and every which way. spinning contests and the like.
we've just finished cleaning the kitchen after this massive day of cooking, we're listening to bob dylan, and kiri (the girl) and i are about to do some yoga in the big open main room.
tomorrow we three (ben, kiri, and i) will go to a nearby farm and help there with some potato digging. also i suspect that tomorrow will consist of lots of tomato sauce eating and there's a whole pie to consume as well. lots of cooking comes with lots of eating!
like i said: i am so lucky to have the luxury of time to be doing this. how did i get here? how am i allowed to be doing this? it is so luxurious and relaxing. so time-loving. i mean by that: time is elongated for me here. and nothing is stressful or unpleasant. things just happen. i could live here for a while---probably later in life is better. right now, i can tell that i would feel cooped up quite quickly. i do need a bit more adventures in my life. a few more 5am nights out doing crazy things. but it's incredible to be able to have this taste of it now. and to have the ability to just relax into it. to soak it in.
the buckners are incredible people. so warm and generous. they just open their arms to me and say: COME enjoy this life that we have. work along side us and make and eat and enjoy our food. help us and we will give you a warm home to live in and a beautiful place to explore. i cannot think of a more perfect WWOOF situation in so so many ways.
i am now sitting on my bed with pepper, one of the kitties, purring next to me and she is rubbing her face up to mine, itching to be pet. so i will stop typing. and pet her.
that's about how life is here. and i think it's how life should be. we should be able to just stop and pet the kittens.
Monday, August 24, 2009
WWOOF
well, world....I am embarking on a new writing adventure as I am also embarked on this new life adventure. I'm currently living in Redwood Valley, CA about 2 hours north of San Fran with the amazing Buckner family. I am WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) which means that I am working in their garden, on their ranch and in their vineyards in exchange for $0.00 and a room and delicious food and a warm family and community to hang out with.
This means i am pretty much on my own in a lot of respects. I am here exploring the California wine world--to see if wine is something that I could use in life. as in a career of sorts. I am here to explore what a new part of the country feels like--a part of the country that nearly everyone tells me I really belong to. I am also here because when else am I going to be able to take 4 months (or however long this adventure lasts) to do nothing but live in a new place, meet new people who are interesting and friendly, and take some time to think about what I really want to be doing with "LIFE." Yea right.
So I am here and if this all turns out to be a flopp--that is, wine isn't for me for a career--then no big deal because MAN this place is gorgeous and these people are fun and I'm having a blast.
So what else is happening in this place? Let's see: After Gen and I had our oil spill of 2009 (Joey I'm sorry), we stayed at Le Vin winery and vineyard in Cloverdale CA with Eric and Holly Le Vin. That WWOOFing experience was...unexpected. Read sophieandgengowest.blogspot.com to get Gen's concise and wonderfully written review of our time there. For here I'll leave it at this: the place has no beds for the 10 WWOOFers who live there. And there's really not much in terms of order. Rattlesnakes abound, and there's a fair amount of swearing, but lots of music jamming. It was just too crowded for me and to be honest, not what I really had in mind nor what I really want to spend my time on during this adventure in CA.
So, Gen dropped me off at the Buckners and I have been here since Thursday. I have my own beautiful room, I have my guitar, miles to go running on, porches for yoga in the shade of table grapes, delicious food, an incredible veggie garden which is my job to weed and tend to, tons of produce which we harvest and turn into ketchsup (SO sO SO good) and relish. I now know how to can properly in the old fashioned way using boiling water and old Bally jars. There are 3 dogs and 3 cats, Tim & Laura and their son Andrew live here. They turned out to be a Waldorf family. Also my dear friend Tammy from Boston is WWOOFing with a family just down the road. We had a playdate together yesterday and our families had dinner together tonight.
last night we had dinner at my house, then laura took us to local guy's backyard which he has set up like a drive in movie. each weekend he plays a different movie and people come and sit on lawn chairs and watch once the sun goes down. he even has a popcorn making machine which you pay $0.25 for a bag. =) so we watched Mr. Goose something with Cary Grant under the California stars (you can really see the Milky way out here) and had cuddly blankets and popcorn.
Today I helped make relish and can it. so fun. can't really describe how fun and rewarding it feels to pick the veggies, cut them, cook them, then can them and boil them sealed shut, and now they are preserved for as long as they want and the Buckners will eat that relish over the course of the next year. We did that with ketchup also. (which you can also spell "catsup, did you know??) and we had some of it at dinner tonight. WOAH yum yum. like YUMMM.
What do I do? Well. I wake up and go running through the grape vineyards. Then I do some yoga under the grape canopy on the porch. Then I go and pick some fresh blueberries and strawberries and eat them with my granola. Then I help in the house--either canning or making some new concoction--or I help Tim with the vineyard work, or do some weeding in the garden, or eventually I think I might do some ranch work (like shoveling and that kind of thing). Basically I am here to do whatever the family needs me to do, and Tim knows that I am interested in wine and learning about organic grape growing so he is going to let me do as much of my work in the vineyard stuff as I can. Which is awesome. My days are work in the early mornings before it gets hot (doing vineyard work, or ranch or gardening stuff) and quit by 1pm i think, then in the afternoon I am pretty much free, though I then help out with dinner and any house stuff that needs to get done. That's what I'm assuming at least--I have yet to really have to work all that much, mostly it's been pretty sporadic and all over the place, and honestly I really don't feel like I'm working enough for how well I'm eating and sleeping. but I have a feeling once the week starts tomorrow they are definitely going to put me to work and I'll be singing a different tune....
I really love it here. I hope to stay here for a few weeks or even a month, then head up to Oregon and see what I can fine there! possibly even invade gen's new life.
so that's sort of the update. bed now. wake up at 6am tomorrow for vineyard work!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
final
*frankfurt airport, business class lounge. some time on may 8th, as i wait to take my second leg home from India*
The moon refused to chase me yesterday.
I craned to watch out my window
expecting to see it speed just behind the bus--
but the grin of that Cheshire only laughed.
And far above,
distorted and giant,
an eye winked
(a star shimmered)
and the entire sky became one face.
Tears overflow my eyes
and drip
fall
spill.
"Stop. Don't race ahead. It is still real right now."
Laugh, out loud,
and a smile cracks my freckled face--
but I can feel myself crumbling
beneath the weight of this proximity.
Will I remember the child brown and shoeless
wading through garbage and shit,
hoisting her sister on her own three year old hip?
I am a sieve.
And I am filtering--
against my will, the course from the fine--
images of the land of color and filth.
As one, it pumps as a single unit:
simultaneously the peak
and the plunge of human existence.
Should it remain fully tainted?
There is dirt in the pours of my feet,
spotting my toes
like the negative of lice on a bald black head.
Dirt in the cracks of my toenails:
scratch behind my ear and my fingers turn black.
Like ants
in my breakfast,
beads of grime roll and scamper down
my arms and legs
spill out of my navel
cascade down my face.
Pool at my elbows and knees,
collect into a river of grime and then
spills over--
rushes with white churning energy
down
down
out
and down.
Each hair stands on end
each one a vessel
for my human aqueduct to carry what memories
I have into and out of the vault of my brain.
Hair toes fingers are the deltas
from which ants dirt lizards grit
cloth color powder
plastic shit bottles
shoot in one hundred
separate
directions each landing in a place
I could call home.
My body sweats these creatures and filth
as it sifts through what has been real.
No longer absorbing dirt
I now extract an essence not my own--
or newly my own:
as such profoundly disturbing.
Crane around a brown neck to see
the familiar face of the sky--
but the moon would not run.
So what could I do but leave her behind?
I will try to move beyond the shock of these new nuances;
only, I can't find the door towards home.
Even as 1 billion heads nod
'yes, straight and over left (or right),'
no one can tell me where the best part of me landed
on that day 24 lifetimes ago
(or 5 months in my history)
when the grit ants shot from my toes.
The moon refused to chase me yesterday.
I craned to watch out my window
expecting to see it speed just behind the bus--
but the grin of that Cheshire only laughed.
And far above,
distorted and giant,
an eye winked
(a star shimmered)
and the entire sky became one face.
Tears overflow my eyes
and drip
fall
spill.
"Stop. Don't race ahead. It is still real right now."
Laugh, out loud,
and a smile cracks my freckled face--
but I can feel myself crumbling
beneath the weight of this proximity.
Will I remember the child brown and shoeless
wading through garbage and shit,
hoisting her sister on her own three year old hip?
I am a sieve.
And I am filtering--
against my will, the course from the fine--
images of the land of color and filth.
As one, it pumps as a single unit:
simultaneously the peak
and the plunge of human existence.
Should it remain fully tainted?
There is dirt in the pours of my feet,
spotting my toes
like the negative of lice on a bald black head.
Dirt in the cracks of my toenails:
scratch behind my ear and my fingers turn black.
Like ants
in my breakfast,
beads of grime roll and scamper down
my arms and legs
spill out of my navel
cascade down my face.
Pool at my elbows and knees,
collect into a river of grime and then
spills over--
rushes with white churning energy
down
down
out
and down.
Each hair stands on end
each one a vessel
for my human aqueduct to carry what memories
I have into and out of the vault of my brain.
Hair toes fingers are the deltas
from which ants dirt lizards grit
cloth color powder
plastic shit bottles
shoot in one hundred
separate
directions each landing in a place
I could call home.
My body sweats these creatures and filth
as it sifts through what has been real.
No longer absorbing dirt
I now extract an essence not my own--
or newly my own:
as such profoundly disturbing.
Crane around a brown neck to see
the familiar face of the sky--
but the moon would not run.
So what could I do but leave her behind?
I will try to move beyond the shock of these new nuances;
only, I can't find the door towards home.
Even as 1 billion heads nod
'yes, straight and over left (or right),'
no one can tell me where the best part of me landed
on that day 24 lifetimes ago
(or 5 months in my history)
when the grit ants shot from my toes.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
ha! business class lounge!
Well, I am writing this on a German computer and the z and y are switched and there are funnz letters like ä and ö and ü and I cant get the 'at' szmbol to work. But, woah, what a difference this all is! I arrived at the Hyderabad airport (which is all new and fancy) early because I decided I'd rather wait at the air-conditioned airport than in my hot homestay.
I waited around for my check in time to start outside the terminal, got my last iced Eskimo from cafe coffee day, and sat, with stares and glances coming my way every minute. Apparently the windows near where I was sitting were in desperate need of intense cleaning, as were the floors because within about 10 minutes of sitting there, I had at least 3 or 4 airport workers just standing close to me, mop in hand pushing the dirt around, and window cleaners just idly rubbing the same spot over and over. BUT then I checked in and took a portal which whizzed me to another universe via the elevator down to the special lounge for important people like me (fluke, I'm flying business class). And I walk in, in my balloon pants and dirty chokos which I haven't taken off for 5 months and look around at all this food and drinks, and adamantly don't believe the server lady when she tells me everything is free of charge. This guy nearby chucked and said, something funny about that and we started chatting and I felt like I had been zapped into another world that I had forced myself to accept did not exist anymore.
And it wasn't India: it was not what I had come from, not when early yesterday I ate lunch with my host family for the last time and found 3 small ants in my rice,...not when on the way to the airport I saw a 3 year old girl walking through a pile of garbage, carrying her 1 year old sister on her hip. Not the same place that I have been living in where I take trains over night and smell and see piss and shit along the train tracks because the toilets are just holes in the train floor. Certainly not the same place as the mountains and gorgeous rivers and sprawling tea plantations, or the Taj Mahal or the wonderful decay of Kolkata. Not the height nor the depths of the India that I've seen. It was just this rich, too organized place that felt like a pod of westernization. And yet, of course, it was SO amazing to get free food and a beer and not have to worry about my bag being stolen or anything like that. And I was still in Hyderabad.
s
I waited around for my check in time to start outside the terminal, got my last iced Eskimo from cafe coffee day, and sat, with stares and glances coming my way every minute. Apparently the windows near where I was sitting were in desperate need of intense cleaning, as were the floors because within about 10 minutes of sitting there, I had at least 3 or 4 airport workers just standing close to me, mop in hand pushing the dirt around, and window cleaners just idly rubbing the same spot over and over. BUT then I checked in and took a portal which whizzed me to another universe via the elevator down to the special lounge for important people like me (fluke, I'm flying business class). And I walk in, in my balloon pants and dirty chokos which I haven't taken off for 5 months and look around at all this food and drinks, and adamantly don't believe the server lady when she tells me everything is free of charge. This guy nearby chucked and said, something funny about that and we started chatting and I felt like I had been zapped into another world that I had forced myself to accept did not exist anymore.
And it wasn't India: it was not what I had come from, not when early yesterday I ate lunch with my host family for the last time and found 3 small ants in my rice,...not when on the way to the airport I saw a 3 year old girl walking through a pile of garbage, carrying her 1 year old sister on her hip. Not the same place that I have been living in where I take trains over night and smell and see piss and shit along the train tracks because the toilets are just holes in the train floor. Certainly not the same place as the mountains and gorgeous rivers and sprawling tea plantations, or the Taj Mahal or the wonderful decay of Kolkata. Not the height nor the depths of the India that I've seen. It was just this rich, too organized place that felt like a pod of westernization. And yet, of course, it was SO amazing to get free food and a beer and not have to worry about my bag being stolen or anything like that. And I was still in Hyderabad.
It was amazing how refreshed I felt after a really short time in that luxury. My turn around time has increased so much, so that after only an hour or two in a place less stressful, I already feel ready to get back out there into the real and hard, exciting and fast passed world of REAL India. But of course, I didn't go back out there. Instead I was shuttled from the special lounge via a separate tunnel onto the plane and sat down in my seat, looked out the window at the same image I saw when I sat on my plane going to India and suddenly felt like I was back on my ride going to India 5 months before taking off from Boston.
And then I left India.
Yesterday I cried a lot. And it was not because I was sad to be leaving India--at least I don't think it was. That was certainly not why I felt the impulse to just weep. Maybe on one level I'm sad to leave it because it means this crazy experience is finally over and now I have to go back to a normal life and somehow find a way to integrate the two together; but all that feels and felt secondary. No, I cried yesterday out of fear. Each time I thought about my family and home I just couldn't help myself. I could feel myself, at last, so close to getting back, and yet still was not there. The plane ride from Delhi to Hyderabad was so weird because the entire time I could only think about how the plane was going to blow up or crash or something would go wrong and prevent me from ever actually leaving India. I've never in my life been paranoid about flying or airplanes, but that day getting back and forth from Delhi to Hyderabad, to my homestay and back to the airport my mind was full of the worst thoughts of disasters and crashes--so much that I had to just STOP thinking or else I was going to go crazy. When I got back to my Indian home in Doyans 101 I felt so strangely like I was coming home, it was weird after all that insanity of traveling and yet all I could think about was that I was finally, FINALLY, going to my real home! I realized though, in seeing my little street, my room, the University campus and the small gate into the Guest House, just how far I'd come. How much everything in India--all that stuff that at first felt totally unmanageable and overwhelming--had become customary and doable.
The last leap was to get myself to the airport so I left early and sat on that bus and that's when I cried. Miraculously it went smoother than any other transaction I'd had yet in India, and I got to the airport at 7:30PM for my flight that left at 1AM later that night. It was so terrifying to think being so close to going home, and yet feel still so far away from it. I had been separated physically by 2 continents and 2 oceans the entire time, as well as all the plane and train rides I took, as well as all the emotional barriers necessary to make living in India possible, and yet that day before coming home I was emotionally already home really, but still JUST as far from home as I'd been all semester. There were still the oceans and land masses separating us. And it was scary because I was terrified that somehow there would be something that prevented me from ever actually getting away and finally going home. Some part of me, while living in India, had to convince myself that that was my new life--that it was permanent and real. Because, if I didn't accept it all, then I would never have come to be OK with it all. And so I convinced myself that it was all going to last forever and that there was no end in sight and that is how it was doable on some level, and accept that it was my life for the time that it was. That last day though, was so strange because I saw that it was going to end, but was still just as far from being there as I'd been the whole time. I was terrified that somehow I wouldn't end up making it home and I'd have to stay in India for longer and longer and never make it home. Only now I realize how much I had to twist and warp my mind so that I could accept that I was living in India for 5 months as it was happening.
I was sick on the plane, which was actually great for me because it kept me reminded of where I was coming from. Amidst the luxury of business class I was still confronted by what had been real: the dirt in my fingernails, the holes in my clothes, the dust in my eyes, and the grains in my teeth.
I was sick on the plane, which was actually great for me because it kept me reminded of where I was coming from. Amidst the luxury of business class I was still confronted by what had been real: the dirt in my fingernails, the holes in my clothes, the dust in my eyes, and the grains in my teeth.
weird, because in the entire time I flew from Hyderabad to Boston I didn't smell fresh air for almost 2 days.
that's all.
peace out homeslices. it's been REALZ.
that's all.
peace out homeslices. it's been REALZ.
s
Sunday, May 04, 2008
longest week of my life...
In the last week I have experienced more dips and highs and shifts in my own mentality towards India than in the entire 5 months that I've been here. I have a new appreciation for people who really travel in this country for an extended period of time, and suddenly I realize how lucky I was to have had Hyderbabad, as miserably as that city was, as my home base all semester. India is exhausting, as I've known since minute 1 of being here, but being able to rest and retreat into the campus of HCU and my homestay (again, despite the disappointment there, too), is crucial for maintaining any kind of sanity as a foreigner in this country.
We flew from Hyderabad on the 29th of April, after our last exam ended 4 hours before, to Kolkata, where Mallory has family. After mix ups with dates and time of arrivals, we were whisked away in a van to the house (on the way we were offered food many time, and since we are vegetarians, the only thing we ended up getting were the Indian version of Ho-hos and a GIANT litre bottle of Thumbs Up--India's coke). Had a terrifying time of driving through the streets of Kolkata at 1am and actually for the first time in my life realized and felt fully how vulnerable I am--as a woman, as a white woman, and simply as a foreigner in general. I can't write about that just yet, actually, because I can feel that the full effect of that night and the days in Kolkata actually, are still working on me, and I am still not sure what I will say about it all.
Suffice it to say, for now at least, that Kolkata is my favorite city in India, hands down. It is old and decrepid and it is falling apart at every seam. It is dusty and dirty and full to the brim with cars and taxis, autos and buses. And yet it has a charm to it, and an tradition that is entirely new. Kolkata (Calcutta as it used to be spelled) was the capital of India until like 1911 or something, and then the British shifted it to Delhi. Because of that, Kolkata is filled with old buildings and architecture that is all from British Raj era. And yet it has fallen into a such a state of decay that everything feels to be beautifully crumbling before your eyes. It was also the first city that felt walk-able that I had been to in India and I wish so badly that I had gone to school there and lived there instead of in the Tech Center of Hyderabad! Kolkata is like a game of jenga. the streets are crammed together, and one building juts out so the building next to it caves it. everything fits together so entirely, there is no open space really and it feels overflowing and like it is going to explode at the seems. it feels like an old dress that has really been worn in and is about to rip at the seems. and yet it is able to stay together. there are the sounds of life, poeple LIFE, not cars and buses like in Hyderabad. i loved it entirely.
Mallory's family is an interesting bunch. We were not sure the entire time who we were with exactly, or how Mallory is related to them and who. But we made it work in a semi-kind of way. We were staying in the house that her father grew up in, which was really amazing to be in. It felt stifling, though, because since we are both girls, and Mallory is actually a part of the family, they all have this idea that we only want to sit inside all day and that we have no interest in anything cultural except watching movies and getting married eventually (that came up a few times for Mal, which was priceless). Being with them also was hard because we just wanted to walk the city and they wanted to drive us places which takes twice as long, and they took forever to get moving. It reminded me of how my sister describes Spain, where there can only be one activity for the entire day. That is what it was like in Kolkata with Mallory's family. For instance, we didn't get out of the house to go DO something until 4:30pm...and we had said we would leave in the early morning.
Anyway, after too short a time in Kolkata, stinted somewhat by feeling boxed in by expectations, we got on a plane to Delhi where my brain exploded. I really don't like Delhi one bit. It has come a long way, in that it has traffic rules and cleaner streets, and beautiful buildings (like state capitals stuff, etc.) but other than that, it is totally filthy and over conjested and completely lacks that charm that Kolkata seemed to have. Where Kolkata has integrated itself into it's history, Delhi seems t0 have superimposed itself and its history onto a clean paper, and gone from there. It is a strange feeling.
We were exhausted and overwhelmed and so much emotional and physical strain is unbelievably taxing and Delhi is just NOT the place to try to relax. Street vendors are worse than anywhere I have been so far. To the point where if you look them sternly in the eye and saying No. (something that works quite well in many places here) in Delhi they only turn to their friends and laugh at you for losing your temper. But how can they expect me to react! that is the worst part. I can't be polite, and i can't be rude. And I can't ignore them because they follow you for 10 minutes. I hate that harsh people in a fast city like that are capable of forcing me to be become harsh myself. I hate feeling like I have to have a destination when I walk, but here that is what you have to do. If you look like you are just wondering, you are a real gonner.
We found the backpacker's heaven in Delhi, which is only nice in that there are a lot of other white people around (which in Delhi is actually reassuring, let me say). It is insanely hectic and overwhelming and not relaxing, but at least it is cheap and doable and feels somewhat safe. Delhi is full FULL of scams and people just waiting to rip us off, and it so hard to exist in that kind of environment.
We got a driver for the next day to take us and a friend we made, named Will (which was strange to have a 'Will' around), who was from Reading, England, to the Taj Mahal. We paid him too much, and he said he would turn on the AC if we paid him more, but that is just so jerky of him that we said no, because he just wanted US to pay for him to be more comfortable. and he was a terrifying driver and it took 5 hours to get there and 5 to get back and we really didn't do the Taj the best way possible. We were there during the hottest part of the day and they didn't let me pay the Indian price (even with my residency card from HCU) and so I had to pay Rs750 (which is nearly $20!!) haha that is so NOT a lot of money, but of course it seems like it is now to me... But of course, despite all these drawbacks, the Taj was spectacular. Truly and utterly amazing and so beautiful--just jaw dropping. I took lots of pictures, but words and photos have never done the job in the past, and so I won't even attempt to describe the Taj Mahal on this measly blog of mine. Go if you can, and go at sunrise or sunset and DONT go in the heat of the day.
After the Taj, we GOT OUT OF DELHI. We got to Haridwar, where the Ganges comes out of the Himalayas and now we are in Rishikesh which is the yoga and ashram capital of the world, and also where the Beatles came to write their White Album. So that's cool. We've been here for a few days now and have just been lounging as best we can. We did some yoga, we slept a lot, we went up a hike to see a waterfall. We are later going to see the ashram where the Beatles actually stayed, and our plans for the rest of the time here are to take a cooking class, do more yoga, meet up with our friends from HCU who are doing a 10 day retreat in this same town (!!), go white water rafter (?), and potentially go see the puja at Haridwar, where hundreds and hundreds of Hindu pilgrams are flocking around this time of year, to make offerings to the gods and clean themselves in the holy Ganges. We'll see how much of all that we actually do--it's so funny, because every time we travel here we have this elaborate plan to do SO many things and inevitably we change it so many times and just want to relax and take it easy.
At this point, though, I am only interested in making it through the next 4 days and getting my butt back to the US where I can sit on that money ass and watch bad TV while eating gummi bears and twizzlers, ice cream out of the pint, and where i can brush my teeth with the water right from the tap!!
I am more exhausted than I have ever been in my entire life right now. emotionally, and physically and mentally I feel just totally drained. I can't
I am so ready to come home. India has been so incredible and this blog has helped at times and been a pain in the ass at others. I love that I have documented what I have done, but it has been really interesting which experiences and thoughts are blog-able and which are not. I have really had to work through so many different mediums over the course of this trip in my attempts to come to a fuller understanding of what it is I am experiencing, or seeing, or whatever. Somedays it was painting, somedays it was poetry, somedays it was modern Amrican novelists, others it was new age yoga lessons or traditional annoying "yoga is good for the health" (a whole post needs to be for my yoga teachers and all that). Other days it was meditating, others it was thinking and talking, others it was hiking. Sometimes it was screaming, or crying, or dreaming of home.
I dreamt last night that the government got mad at me for changing my mind so many times about Europe that they took away my passport and made my mother go into hiding for trying to cheap the system (which we aren't doing). I dreamt that it all had to do with me on this quest to find the identity of my dad, and that we were flying first class around looking for him, and that there were clean showers (with stalls!) as part of flying first class.
seems indicative of where my head is right now.
That's all for now.
-S
PS:
Two things I keep forgetting to mention about India/my experience that are funny and I don't want to forget them:
1) When Tim, Arletta and I cooked our host family dinner one night, we made pasta and tomato sauce. we used some random spoons and 2 forks that we found miraculously in the house somewhere, but after about 2 minutes, Amma and everyone was eating pasta with their hands. Best moment was at the end when Amma used her hand, as always, to scoop the extra tomato sauce out of the pot onto her/my/everyone's pasta.
2) the way people pause while they talk before saying the important words of their sentences. makes it really hard and kind of makes me feel anxious because you don't know what people are going to say!
******
i can only write this once i think because it is not the kind of thing that i want to admit or think about. i am terrified of trying to explain all this--India, my brain, my thoughts, my mind, my face, my skin, my days, my classes, my homestay, my world here--to people back home. and it's scary to think about because those people back home are the reason i want to come home right now so badly, and i feel like if i can't explain it to them--to YOU, whoever YOU are--then those people won't get me anymore, or won't realize everything about me.
i adore India so much. i have loved it and hated it at times, and laughed at it and with it, and it sounds so cheesy and sappy but it is so hard to put any of it into words or thoughts or stories. how can i capture 5 months of living in this insane place, and all the things that I have thought about and done into any one story that i can tell people.
and I'm still not sure I can answer that question: Why did you come to India? I still don't know. but these things are too much to think about right now. rather, I'm only going to focus on what it feels like to be in Rishikesh right now, and what it is going to feel like to sit on my couch in Boston in 4 days, eating Ben & Jerry's.
We flew from Hyderabad on the 29th of April, after our last exam ended 4 hours before, to Kolkata, where Mallory has family. After mix ups with dates and time of arrivals, we were whisked away in a van to the house (on the way we were offered food many time, and since we are vegetarians, the only thing we ended up getting were the Indian version of Ho-hos and a GIANT litre bottle of Thumbs Up--India's coke). Had a terrifying time of driving through the streets of Kolkata at 1am and actually for the first time in my life realized and felt fully how vulnerable I am--as a woman, as a white woman, and simply as a foreigner in general. I can't write about that just yet, actually, because I can feel that the full effect of that night and the days in Kolkata actually, are still working on me, and I am still not sure what I will say about it all.
Suffice it to say, for now at least, that Kolkata is my favorite city in India, hands down. It is old and decrepid and it is falling apart at every seam. It is dusty and dirty and full to the brim with cars and taxis, autos and buses. And yet it has a charm to it, and an tradition that is entirely new. Kolkata (Calcutta as it used to be spelled) was the capital of India until like 1911 or something, and then the British shifted it to Delhi. Because of that, Kolkata is filled with old buildings and architecture that is all from British Raj era. And yet it has fallen into a such a state of decay that everything feels to be beautifully crumbling before your eyes. It was also the first city that felt walk-able that I had been to in India and I wish so badly that I had gone to school there and lived there instead of in the Tech Center of Hyderabad! Kolkata is like a game of jenga. the streets are crammed together, and one building juts out so the building next to it caves it. everything fits together so entirely, there is no open space really and it feels overflowing and like it is going to explode at the seems. it feels like an old dress that has really been worn in and is about to rip at the seems. and yet it is able to stay together. there are the sounds of life, poeple LIFE, not cars and buses like in Hyderabad. i loved it entirely.
Mallory's family is an interesting bunch. We were not sure the entire time who we were with exactly, or how Mallory is related to them and who. But we made it work in a semi-kind of way. We were staying in the house that her father grew up in, which was really amazing to be in. It felt stifling, though, because since we are both girls, and Mallory is actually a part of the family, they all have this idea that we only want to sit inside all day and that we have no interest in anything cultural except watching movies and getting married eventually (that came up a few times for Mal, which was priceless). Being with them also was hard because we just wanted to walk the city and they wanted to drive us places which takes twice as long, and they took forever to get moving. It reminded me of how my sister describes Spain, where there can only be one activity for the entire day. That is what it was like in Kolkata with Mallory's family. For instance, we didn't get out of the house to go DO something until 4:30pm...and we had said we would leave in the early morning.
Anyway, after too short a time in Kolkata, stinted somewhat by feeling boxed in by expectations, we got on a plane to Delhi where my brain exploded. I really don't like Delhi one bit. It has come a long way, in that it has traffic rules and cleaner streets, and beautiful buildings (like state capitals stuff, etc.) but other than that, it is totally filthy and over conjested and completely lacks that charm that Kolkata seemed to have. Where Kolkata has integrated itself into it's history, Delhi seems t0 have superimposed itself and its history onto a clean paper, and gone from there. It is a strange feeling.
We were exhausted and overwhelmed and so much emotional and physical strain is unbelievably taxing and Delhi is just NOT the place to try to relax. Street vendors are worse than anywhere I have been so far. To the point where if you look them sternly in the eye and saying No. (something that works quite well in many places here) in Delhi they only turn to their friends and laugh at you for losing your temper. But how can they expect me to react! that is the worst part. I can't be polite, and i can't be rude. And I can't ignore them because they follow you for 10 minutes. I hate that harsh people in a fast city like that are capable of forcing me to be become harsh myself. I hate feeling like I have to have a destination when I walk, but here that is what you have to do. If you look like you are just wondering, you are a real gonner.
We found the backpacker's heaven in Delhi, which is only nice in that there are a lot of other white people around (which in Delhi is actually reassuring, let me say). It is insanely hectic and overwhelming and not relaxing, but at least it is cheap and doable and feels somewhat safe. Delhi is full FULL of scams and people just waiting to rip us off, and it so hard to exist in that kind of environment.
We got a driver for the next day to take us and a friend we made, named Will (which was strange to have a 'Will' around), who was from Reading, England, to the Taj Mahal. We paid him too much, and he said he would turn on the AC if we paid him more, but that is just so jerky of him that we said no, because he just wanted US to pay for him to be more comfortable. and he was a terrifying driver and it took 5 hours to get there and 5 to get back and we really didn't do the Taj the best way possible. We were there during the hottest part of the day and they didn't let me pay the Indian price (even with my residency card from HCU) and so I had to pay Rs750 (which is nearly $20!!) haha that is so NOT a lot of money, but of course it seems like it is now to me... But of course, despite all these drawbacks, the Taj was spectacular. Truly and utterly amazing and so beautiful--just jaw dropping. I took lots of pictures, but words and photos have never done the job in the past, and so I won't even attempt to describe the Taj Mahal on this measly blog of mine. Go if you can, and go at sunrise or sunset and DONT go in the heat of the day.
After the Taj, we GOT OUT OF DELHI. We got to Haridwar, where the Ganges comes out of the Himalayas and now we are in Rishikesh which is the yoga and ashram capital of the world, and also where the Beatles came to write their White Album. So that's cool. We've been here for a few days now and have just been lounging as best we can. We did some yoga, we slept a lot, we went up a hike to see a waterfall. We are later going to see the ashram where the Beatles actually stayed, and our plans for the rest of the time here are to take a cooking class, do more yoga, meet up with our friends from HCU who are doing a 10 day retreat in this same town (!!), go white water rafter (?), and potentially go see the puja at Haridwar, where hundreds and hundreds of Hindu pilgrams are flocking around this time of year, to make offerings to the gods and clean themselves in the holy Ganges. We'll see how much of all that we actually do--it's so funny, because every time we travel here we have this elaborate plan to do SO many things and inevitably we change it so many times and just want to relax and take it easy.
At this point, though, I am only interested in making it through the next 4 days and getting my butt back to the US where I can sit on that money ass and watch bad TV while eating gummi bears and twizzlers, ice cream out of the pint, and where i can brush my teeth with the water right from the tap!!
I am more exhausted than I have ever been in my entire life right now. emotionally, and physically and mentally I feel just totally drained. I can't
I am so ready to come home. India has been so incredible and this blog has helped at times and been a pain in the ass at others. I love that I have documented what I have done, but it has been really interesting which experiences and thoughts are blog-able and which are not. I have really had to work through so many different mediums over the course of this trip in my attempts to come to a fuller understanding of what it is I am experiencing, or seeing, or whatever. Somedays it was painting, somedays it was poetry, somedays it was modern Amrican novelists, others it was new age yoga lessons or traditional annoying "yoga is good for the health" (a whole post needs to be for my yoga teachers and all that). Other days it was meditating, others it was thinking and talking, others it was hiking. Sometimes it was screaming, or crying, or dreaming of home.
I dreamt last night that the government got mad at me for changing my mind so many times about Europe that they took away my passport and made my mother go into hiding for trying to cheap the system (which we aren't doing). I dreamt that it all had to do with me on this quest to find the identity of my dad, and that we were flying first class around looking for him, and that there were clean showers (with stalls!) as part of flying first class.
seems indicative of where my head is right now.
That's all for now.
-S
PS:
Two things I keep forgetting to mention about India/my experience that are funny and I don't want to forget them:
1) When Tim, Arletta and I cooked our host family dinner one night, we made pasta and tomato sauce. we used some random spoons and 2 forks that we found miraculously in the house somewhere, but after about 2 minutes, Amma and everyone was eating pasta with their hands. Best moment was at the end when Amma used her hand, as always, to scoop the extra tomato sauce out of the pot onto her/my/everyone's pasta.
2) the way people pause while they talk before saying the important words of their sentences. makes it really hard and kind of makes me feel anxious because you don't know what people are going to say!
******
i can only write this once i think because it is not the kind of thing that i want to admit or think about. i am terrified of trying to explain all this--India, my brain, my thoughts, my mind, my face, my skin, my days, my classes, my homestay, my world here--to people back home. and it's scary to think about because those people back home are the reason i want to come home right now so badly, and i feel like if i can't explain it to them--to YOU, whoever YOU are--then those people won't get me anymore, or won't realize everything about me.
i adore India so much. i have loved it and hated it at times, and laughed at it and with it, and it sounds so cheesy and sappy but it is so hard to put any of it into words or thoughts or stories. how can i capture 5 months of living in this insane place, and all the things that I have thought about and done into any one story that i can tell people.
and I'm still not sure I can answer that question: Why did you come to India? I still don't know. but these things are too much to think about right now. rather, I'm only going to focus on what it feels like to be in Rishikesh right now, and what it is going to feel like to sit on my couch in Boston in 4 days, eating Ben & Jerry's.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
well...
Terrible blogger that I've been the last month, it's nothing to what is about to happen. Which is that tonight I'm getting on a plane, heading to Kolkata to stay with Mallory's family, then to Delhi, to the Taj Mahal, up to the Himalayas, back to Hyderabad and then I fly out to Europe, where I prance around there for 2 weeks until the end of May.
Since last writing, mountains of things have happen, of course. I don't actually have the time to write about it all fully, but bullet points for now so that I remember it all later and can write it for real later.
1) Took the yoga exam, which lasted an entire weekend and was beyond frustrating and stupid, but I passed first class, and now I am certified yoga instructor. which hopefully sounds good at a least.
2) Wrote a billion papers and toured the coffee shops of Hyderabad to find a descent place to write them in. Discover of that excursion: coffee shops in India are not conducive for studying because they blast techno music all day long. And they only have one CD, which is just on repeat the whole time. w
3) Went on a weekend trip to visit the Ellora and Ajanta caves which are magnificent. Mind-blowing actually, that they were built/carved so long ago when I can't even imagine how you could construct them using modern equipment. It was one of my favorite places I've been to in India and I will have to devote a lot to describing it fully.
4) Went to cricket game in Hyderabad, which took over 3 hours to get to because it's India. They had brought in cheerleaders from some American football team who danced around every time Hyderabad's team (the Deccan Chargers) got a 4 or 6 (cricket is really weird but I kind of get it now actually). The cheerleaders being there were one of the most disconcerting things I've seen while being here actually because each time they got up, the guys in the crowd would just go crazy and it was just exactly why Indians have this warped view of American girls. And it was just sick looking at these girls who just LOVED the attention. Gross and messed up.
5) Went to this woman's house in Banjara Hills to learn how to cook Biryani which is this rice dish that Hyderabad is famous for. She was adorable and I loved it.
6) Sang kereoke at a "pub" one night.
7) Took some finals, finished classes and turned in papers. Am now finished with the school part of being in India and it feels absolutely amazing!
8) Got so overwhelmed with India and everything about it, that I felt like just screaming. Did scream a bit. Probably at the wrong people. Got amazing advice from my Mother and thought I didn't need it, but it turns out I did and now I am so grateful for the little sentence "do not push off when you leave".
9) Had dinner with my host family for the last 2 night and was amazed at how fun it was. Last night she got ice cream even, which was amazing.
10) Experienced what living in 107 degree heat feels like. and what sleeping in 90 degrees with no AC and oops the power goes out a lot in the summer because of the heat and so no fans...
11) Had a dress made from scratch by a tailor in Lingampally, a town down the road from where I live). Fiasco. Language problem: he spoke not a word of English and so we had to communicate through the usual sign language/Hindi/Telegu. Problem being we wanted him to make us a western style dress, and had him copy my friend's. But being India, obviously, meant we walked in on Tuesday, when he said it would be ready, to find the fabric lying exactly where we had left it on Friday when we asked him to make it. So we yelled and came back the next day, only to find they didn't fit right at all. So I returned the next day to find, once more, my dress in the same state I had left it...So I went to buy new fabric with a small boy who sort of spoke English and I sat in that store while the tailor made me a whole new dress and I waited for 3 hours for him to do it, because clearly each time I left he wouldn't work on it until I came back to pick it up again. This is widely ineffective, but I did it anyways. While there I had an epiphany about my time in India and everything about being here. thinking about what it means to live in this place and get used to seeing toads crushed everywhere on the road, and lizards on the walls everywhere, and ants in the houses, and people staring constantly, and people being so excited about themselves, and the whole culture of laughing at other people, but being incapable of laughing at themselves. All this I was thinking about while this poor man sat and sewed me a new dress (which he thought was a shirt because it is short...) after he had messed up the first one, when only trying his best to make something he had never made before. and he sat there and sewed for me, this white girl who is never going to come back to him, and he didn't do his other work that had to get done, and the entire time I just kept getting angry and mad and yelling and swearing and being blown away by a system that is so unproductive....but he didn't once even look at me in a mean or hostile way, he just did it. And it was so strange. Indians are so nice, and yet they are so mean, and sometimes they really surprise you with how rude they are, and other times it is incredible how easy going they can be.
What a wild experience it has all been. Now 10 more days of traveling and then off to Europe where I will have to patch together some semblance of appropriate clothing to look semi-decent and not hole-ridden and in tatters (which is how all my clothes are from being here). And I will see the Eiffel Tower, and eat cheese and drink wine, and I will dance around Paris and pretend that I am a Polish actress so we can try to get into the Cannes film festival (which is happening in Paris while we are there!!)
So so much to think and write about and still so much to see. I can't believe I'm going to the Taj Mahal and that I get to trek in the Himalayas!! I am beyond excited.
Will try to get to internet cafes along the way to post thoughts as I travel for the next month....If anyone reading this has contacts we could stay with in France or around Europe at all, let me know!
xoxo
sb
Since last writing, mountains of things have happen, of course. I don't actually have the time to write about it all fully, but bullet points for now so that I remember it all later and can write it for real later.
1) Took the yoga exam, which lasted an entire weekend and was beyond frustrating and stupid, but I passed first class, and now I am certified yoga instructor. which hopefully sounds good at a least.
2) Wrote a billion papers and toured the coffee shops of Hyderabad to find a descent place to write them in. Discover of that excursion: coffee shops in India are not conducive for studying because they blast techno music all day long. And they only have one CD, which is just on repeat the whole time. w
3) Went on a weekend trip to visit the Ellora and Ajanta caves which are magnificent. Mind-blowing actually, that they were built/carved so long ago when I can't even imagine how you could construct them using modern equipment. It was one of my favorite places I've been to in India and I will have to devote a lot to describing it fully.
4) Went to cricket game in Hyderabad, which took over 3 hours to get to because it's India. They had brought in cheerleaders from some American football team who danced around every time Hyderabad's team (the Deccan Chargers) got a 4 or 6 (cricket is really weird but I kind of get it now actually). The cheerleaders being there were one of the most disconcerting things I've seen while being here actually because each time they got up, the guys in the crowd would just go crazy and it was just exactly why Indians have this warped view of American girls. And it was just sick looking at these girls who just LOVED the attention. Gross and messed up.
5) Went to this woman's house in Banjara Hills to learn how to cook Biryani which is this rice dish that Hyderabad is famous for. She was adorable and I loved it.
6) Sang kereoke at a "pub" one night.
7) Took some finals, finished classes and turned in papers. Am now finished with the school part of being in India and it feels absolutely amazing!
8) Got so overwhelmed with India and everything about it, that I felt like just screaming. Did scream a bit. Probably at the wrong people. Got amazing advice from my Mother and thought I didn't need it, but it turns out I did and now I am so grateful for the little sentence "do not push off when you leave".
9) Had dinner with my host family for the last 2 night and was amazed at how fun it was. Last night she got ice cream even, which was amazing.
10) Experienced what living in 107 degree heat feels like. and what sleeping in 90 degrees with no AC and oops the power goes out a lot in the summer because of the heat and so no fans...
11) Had a dress made from scratch by a tailor in Lingampally, a town down the road from where I live). Fiasco. Language problem: he spoke not a word of English and so we had to communicate through the usual sign language/Hindi/Telegu. Problem being we wanted him to make us a western style dress, and had him copy my friend's. But being India, obviously, meant we walked in on Tuesday, when he said it would be ready, to find the fabric lying exactly where we had left it on Friday when we asked him to make it. So we yelled and came back the next day, only to find they didn't fit right at all. So I returned the next day to find, once more, my dress in the same state I had left it...So I went to buy new fabric with a small boy who sort of spoke English and I sat in that store while the tailor made me a whole new dress and I waited for 3 hours for him to do it, because clearly each time I left he wouldn't work on it until I came back to pick it up again. This is widely ineffective, but I did it anyways. While there I had an epiphany about my time in India and everything about being here. thinking about what it means to live in this place and get used to seeing toads crushed everywhere on the road, and lizards on the walls everywhere, and ants in the houses, and people staring constantly, and people being so excited about themselves, and the whole culture of laughing at other people, but being incapable of laughing at themselves. All this I was thinking about while this poor man sat and sewed me a new dress (which he thought was a shirt because it is short...) after he had messed up the first one, when only trying his best to make something he had never made before. and he sat there and sewed for me, this white girl who is never going to come back to him, and he didn't do his other work that had to get done, and the entire time I just kept getting angry and mad and yelling and swearing and being blown away by a system that is so unproductive....but he didn't once even look at me in a mean or hostile way, he just did it. And it was so strange. Indians are so nice, and yet they are so mean, and sometimes they really surprise you with how rude they are, and other times it is incredible how easy going they can be.
What a wild experience it has all been. Now 10 more days of traveling and then off to Europe where I will have to patch together some semblance of appropriate clothing to look semi-decent and not hole-ridden and in tatters (which is how all my clothes are from being here). And I will see the Eiffel Tower, and eat cheese and drink wine, and I will dance around Paris and pretend that I am a Polish actress so we can try to get into the Cannes film festival (which is happening in Paris while we are there!!)
So so much to think and write about and still so much to see. I can't believe I'm going to the Taj Mahal and that I get to trek in the Himalayas!! I am beyond excited.
Will try to get to internet cafes along the way to post thoughts as I travel for the next month....If anyone reading this has contacts we could stay with in France or around Europe at all, let me know!
xoxo
sb
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