Age of Aquarius
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
How are all those finger push-ups going?
Hey, guess what? I STILL have a phone at my disposal where you guys can call me! It's amazing I know, especially since all the phone calls I have been making to you guys over the past 6 months have been dependant on my schedule, now you can choose the most convenient time to call me, kinda like going to Baskin Robbins, there are just so many good options. Now I know what you are thinking, it's a though decision since there are just so many time options to choose from. And I bet everyone's fingers are probably sore from all the finger push ups you guys have been doing in preparation for dialing this long hard Indian phone number, but your going to have to push through the pain and give me a ring because every time there is a phone call I get this wonderful little jolt thinking someone is going to yell out "Juli! You have a phone call from your wonderful friends and family who love you enough to call you in India!" But alas, this scenario is never played out and I am left feeling dejected and sad... So again the numbers are:
00-91-413-2677682
or
00-91-413-2902655
To figure out the time difference you add 10 and a half hours, so when it is 10:30pm your time it is 12pm my time. I am at work by 6:30 every morning and don't go to bed till late, but the best time to call is between 10pm and 12am your time, and you can in the morning my time during work/volunteer hours that's fine.
Now I don't remember if I have mentioned this yet but there are certain rules Sadhana Forest volunteers are asked to abide by. A couple of the important ones are:
1. No drinking or drugs during your ENTIRE stay at the forest, both inside and outside the community
2. No gossiping about other people, if you have something to say say it to their face.
3. No competitive games such as cards or chess because it breaks the working together community atmosphere.
4. No bringing in food that is either processed or non-vegan.
These rules will be important for an understanding of the following post.
March 20: I spent the morning working in the forest passing buckets back and forth in a chain from the mud pool up to the trees we are watering. Since two hours of passing heavy buckets can be quite boring my new victim Tom and I decided to spice it up a bit by playing a little game. I was already receiving each bucket from the mud pool from a frenchie named Silvahn and I would ask him a word in french every time we did a bucket pass and then pass both the bucket and the word on down the line of about 20 volunteers, thus Tom and I learned how to count to 10, the colors, and some useful swear words and pillow talk in French. It was pretty funny toward the end because people at the top of the line would start passing words back down, so we were hearing words and phrases in Japanese, German, Swedish, and Tamil (which is the native Indian language of the region we are in). So that made the time go a lot quicker. Every Friday night it is a ritual to watch an eco movie and have a huge bonfire. All the Sadhana boys bring their drums and guitars and harmonicas and we have a bon fire jam session party. Since it is my wonderful roommate/ chauffeur/ gay boyfriend Tony's birthday tomorrow the guys all stripped down into their little skivies and jumped nearly naked into the mud pool at midnight. It was a good night :)
March 21: It is Tony's birthday today!!! We went out to this AMAZING french restaurant and ate until it hurt. I had a pesto pasta, garlic bread, molten chocolate cake for dessert and Tony and I also had 2 glasses of wine each (thus breaking rule #1), whoops! But you know what, it was his birthday, and we have been here for three weeks already without breaking any of the rules... well I snuck some cheese in once, but I ate it the next day and disposed of all the evidence.
March 22: Lazy lazy lazy Sunday. I found the Douglass Adams book Goodbye and Thanks for All the Fish in the library this morning which made me sooo incredibly happy because it is the fourth in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series and it is exactly where I left off reading the series. So I spent most of the day just lounging around and reading. Oh yeah, we left once to go down the road to buy fresh grape juice smoothies blended with ice and sugar. It seems all our conversations now revolve around food. Some of the important conversation topics include how fantastical our last meal was, what we are currently eating and the non-vegan sauces we wish would be on our Sadhana food, where we are going to eat second dinner while we are still eating our first dinner, the ice cream we get from Richie Rich almost daily, where we can get the best cheese and peanut butter to sneak back into Sadhana (breaking rule number 4), and the fresh pesto and cheddar sandwich from the deli. Another popular topic of conversation at Sadhana is talking about what is going on with your body when you go to the bathroom. How many times a day you have gone today, what color it is, which bathroom is your favorite and for what reasons? Personally I choose the one with the post holding up the roof so I have something to hold on to while I am squatting it out, although others prefer the outside toilets because they enjoy the breeze filtering through. And the best part about this bathroom sharing is that there is absolutely no shame whatsoever to talk about this topic when you are traveling. You can have a bathroom conversation with the cutest guy in the room upon your first meeting and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Strange... yes. Do I like it... maybe a little bit.
March 23: I don't know if I have talked about the Swedish girls yet. They are adorable and always have the cutest little braided hairdos which I have also been trying out on my long hair in preparation for Swedish cultural assimilation. Their names are Louiza and Freya and I have been quizzing them all about Sweden for the past week. We have been doing some language exchanges everyday, similar to Friday's bucket exchange. So far I have learned how to say "cheers" and "Im just joking" in Swedish. I count these as among some of the most important phrases, next lesson we are working on pick-up lines and pillow talk, haha.
March 24: I got to work on the Eco-Dome all day today with Tony and Belgium Bakery loving Nicolas. The Eco-Dome was modeled after a project created by NASA in the 70's in preparation for future possibilities of living on the moon. So what we are doing at the moment is making a lime/sand/clay/mud pool water concoction and covering it over this little igloo shaped dome which is about 8 feet tall and 7 feet in diameter. So that has been my job lately in the morning work sessions, do a little slap with the mixture, spread it around evenly, and smooth the surface until it looks polished. Slap, spread, smooth, mix more lime. Slap, spread, smooth, mix more lime. Slap, spread, smooth, mix more lime. If you say it in various tones and volumes you can make quite a few entertaining songs and dances, we only have to resort to that though when no one has a charged Ipod, otherwise we bust out my mini-speakers and have a jam sesh.
March 25: Wednesday is Hummus for dinner night! Everyone gets so excited about this night because all the Israeli guys team up and spend a whole day preparing the hummus. Everyone fights over who is going to be in the kitchen to help cook for the night, and tonight it was me! I was accompanied by the adorable Swedish girls, Belgium Bakery Nicolas, my Tony, and this cute new guy from New Mexico named Mike who is shaping up to be quite a feisty little victim. Since everyone has been well informed about my amazing ability to start fires in the kitchen even if I am just standing still I was assigned to chopping garlic, roll out the pitas, and squeeze lemon juice. The boys worked on pita flipping at the grill while I got to gossip with the Swedish girls (rule number 2 down the drain). It was amazingly fun though, it was really the first time in a while I have gotten in some good girl chat. We have weekly women's circles, but those are more about issues facing women and the concerns we have for the society we live in, not "OMG Mike is soooo cute!" So it was nice for a little change of pace.
I have been thinking about my plans for the rest of my time in India, and since I have met so many amazing people I think I am going to hook up with some of them and travel up to the Rainbow Festival in the North, or maybe ill continue on with Tony for a while more down South. I really have to spend this week working on my plans, but I will keep you guys updated.
Love you everyone and I hope to talk to you soon!
00-91-413-2677682
or
00-91-413-2902655
To figure out the time difference you add 10 and a half hours, so when it is 10:30pm your time it is 12pm my time. I am at work by 6:30 every morning and don't go to bed till late, but the best time to call is between 10pm and 12am your time, and you can in the morning my time during work/volunteer hours that's fine.
Now I don't remember if I have mentioned this yet but there are certain rules Sadhana Forest volunteers are asked to abide by. A couple of the important ones are:
1. No drinking or drugs during your ENTIRE stay at the forest, both inside and outside the community
2. No gossiping about other people, if you have something to say say it to their face.
3. No competitive games such as cards or chess because it breaks the working together community atmosphere.
4. No bringing in food that is either processed or non-vegan.
These rules will be important for an understanding of the following post.
March 20: I spent the morning working in the forest passing buckets back and forth in a chain from the mud pool up to the trees we are watering. Since two hours of passing heavy buckets can be quite boring my new victim Tom and I decided to spice it up a bit by playing a little game. I was already receiving each bucket from the mud pool from a frenchie named Silvahn and I would ask him a word in french every time we did a bucket pass and then pass both the bucket and the word on down the line of about 20 volunteers, thus Tom and I learned how to count to 10, the colors, and some useful swear words and pillow talk in French. It was pretty funny toward the end because people at the top of the line would start passing words back down, so we were hearing words and phrases in Japanese, German, Swedish, and Tamil (which is the native Indian language of the region we are in). So that made the time go a lot quicker. Every Friday night it is a ritual to watch an eco movie and have a huge bonfire. All the Sadhana boys bring their drums and guitars and harmonicas and we have a bon fire jam session party. Since it is my wonderful roommate/ chauffeur/ gay boyfriend Tony's birthday tomorrow the guys all stripped down into their little skivies and jumped nearly naked into the mud pool at midnight. It was a good night :)
March 21: It is Tony's birthday today!!! We went out to this AMAZING french restaurant and ate until it hurt. I had a pesto pasta, garlic bread, molten chocolate cake for dessert and Tony and I also had 2 glasses of wine each (thus breaking rule #1), whoops! But you know what, it was his birthday, and we have been here for three weeks already without breaking any of the rules... well I snuck some cheese in once, but I ate it the next day and disposed of all the evidence.
March 22: Lazy lazy lazy Sunday. I found the Douglass Adams book Goodbye and Thanks for All the Fish in the library this morning which made me sooo incredibly happy because it is the fourth in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series and it is exactly where I left off reading the series. So I spent most of the day just lounging around and reading. Oh yeah, we left once to go down the road to buy fresh grape juice smoothies blended with ice and sugar. It seems all our conversations now revolve around food. Some of the important conversation topics include how fantastical our last meal was, what we are currently eating and the non-vegan sauces we wish would be on our Sadhana food, where we are going to eat second dinner while we are still eating our first dinner, the ice cream we get from Richie Rich almost daily, where we can get the best cheese and peanut butter to sneak back into Sadhana (breaking rule number 4), and the fresh pesto and cheddar sandwich from the deli. Another popular topic of conversation at Sadhana is talking about what is going on with your body when you go to the bathroom. How many times a day you have gone today, what color it is, which bathroom is your favorite and for what reasons? Personally I choose the one with the post holding up the roof so I have something to hold on to while I am squatting it out, although others prefer the outside toilets because they enjoy the breeze filtering through. And the best part about this bathroom sharing is that there is absolutely no shame whatsoever to talk about this topic when you are traveling. You can have a bathroom conversation with the cutest guy in the room upon your first meeting and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Strange... yes. Do I like it... maybe a little bit.
March 23: I don't know if I have talked about the Swedish girls yet. They are adorable and always have the cutest little braided hairdos which I have also been trying out on my long hair in preparation for Swedish cultural assimilation. Their names are Louiza and Freya and I have been quizzing them all about Sweden for the past week. We have been doing some language exchanges everyday, similar to Friday's bucket exchange. So far I have learned how to say "cheers" and "Im just joking" in Swedish. I count these as among some of the most important phrases, next lesson we are working on pick-up lines and pillow talk, haha.
March 24: I got to work on the Eco-Dome all day today with Tony and Belgium Bakery loving Nicolas. The Eco-Dome was modeled after a project created by NASA in the 70's in preparation for future possibilities of living on the moon. So what we are doing at the moment is making a lime/sand/clay/mud pool water concoction and covering it over this little igloo shaped dome which is about 8 feet tall and 7 feet in diameter. So that has been my job lately in the morning work sessions, do a little slap with the mixture, spread it around evenly, and smooth the surface until it looks polished. Slap, spread, smooth, mix more lime. Slap, spread, smooth, mix more lime. Slap, spread, smooth, mix more lime. If you say it in various tones and volumes you can make quite a few entertaining songs and dances, we only have to resort to that though when no one has a charged Ipod, otherwise we bust out my mini-speakers and have a jam sesh.
March 25: Wednesday is Hummus for dinner night! Everyone gets so excited about this night because all the Israeli guys team up and spend a whole day preparing the hummus. Everyone fights over who is going to be in the kitchen to help cook for the night, and tonight it was me! I was accompanied by the adorable Swedish girls, Belgium Bakery Nicolas, my Tony, and this cute new guy from New Mexico named Mike who is shaping up to be quite a feisty little victim. Since everyone has been well informed about my amazing ability to start fires in the kitchen even if I am just standing still I was assigned to chopping garlic, roll out the pitas, and squeeze lemon juice. The boys worked on pita flipping at the grill while I got to gossip with the Swedish girls (rule number 2 down the drain). It was amazingly fun though, it was really the first time in a while I have gotten in some good girl chat. We have weekly women's circles, but those are more about issues facing women and the concerns we have for the society we live in, not "OMG Mike is soooo cute!" So it was nice for a little change of pace.
I have been thinking about my plans for the rest of my time in India, and since I have met so many amazing people I think I am going to hook up with some of them and travel up to the Rainbow Festival in the North, or maybe ill continue on with Tony for a while more down South. I really have to spend this week working on my plans, but I will keep you guys updated.
Love you everyone and I hope to talk to you soon!
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Updates from a hippie commune in India
Since I have been having crazy awesome days almost every single day since arriving in India I feel like it would be cheating my faithful readers if I tried to describe just one or two stories in detail. So instead I have decided to give some short descriptions of highlights from a few key days I have been in India since arriving in Auroville, hope you enjoy :)
March 7: Liz and Stacy and I slid right into the commune way of living by playing the game "7 degrees of Morgan Freeman" with the amazing American couple Greg and Kerri, also our new buddy Nicholas from Belgium used a David Bowie reference AND the midget from the movie Willow to get to Star Wars. We also binged on as much chocolate, sugar, coffee, and cheese as humanly possible in town when we busted out illegal eating activities, this community is completely vegan so I have been having many drool infused dreams about cheese. We are staying in a palm leaved thatched hut with 6 people sleeping downstairs and 5 on the upstairs level. The main hut is the biggest building and also the only one with electricity. All the volunteers hang out in the afternoons and either play guitar, or drums or read and relax and just chill.
March 8: I just participated in a proactive non-violence workshop at the commune and learned the most effective way to block a bull dozer by laying in the street with 5 peoples arms linked in a star formation until police pull someone out of the star. Also if you are doing a sit-in just go limp, like a sac of potatoes so the police dragging your lifeless body out will have a harder time, if you struggle it will look bad when your picture is printed in the media. I also learned effective ways of jamming locks on any facility that goes against your beliefs by putting superglue in the locks to the main building or the supervisors office. I think this is illegal, but somehow it is still a non-violent protest method... When are they passing out the cool-aid? Im feeling kinda thirsty.
March 9: Monday morning, first time probably ever I have been excited to wake up at 6am. Today we worked on bunding dirt paths around the commune. I hate beets. We have had beet stew, beet salad, and even some form of beet dessert with sugar and nuts every day since I have come on the 5th. We were so sick of all the beet concoctions today that we motorbiked it into town and I ate my first real Indian meal with my hands. It was parotta which is kinda like a flaky pita bread dipped in spicy veggie curry and served on a banana leaf. It was so cool to eat only using my hands.
March 10: It is POURING down rain! Making this day energetic, thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time. It is reminding me of Oregon rain, but warmer. Since the whole place is powered by solar panels We had to jump on some work out bikes today that are attached to the generators and peddle our asses off to get enough power to run the blender in the kitchen, haha. I busted out my mini speakers and we hooked up Liz's Ipod and we had a jam sesh while biking for power. Kerri and I switched off between biking and leading the arm workouts which consisted of punching, push ups on the handlebars, and tricep dips. Unfortunately this means that all our dirt path building and bunding efforts have just been washed away, but after second work we had a huge mud slip and slide party, so it kinda made it a little bit better.
March 11: Today was Holi festival! Which is also called the Festival of Colours because it is celebrated by hundreds of people throwing coloured powder and coloured water at each other. The awesome American couple Keri and Greg and I went into town and got to throw around a little bit of pink powder and got our hands dyed bright fuchsia. It was awesome.
March 12: The Mud pools are still filled to the brim since it has been raining for the past 2 days. Kerri, my new American friend is a bad ass and proposed we play a little water polo game in the mud pools. I love this idea, and technically it isnt even going against the "no competitive games" rule since the mud pool is outside the Sadhana Forest fence. A new Frenchie just arrived yesterday and he is the smitten image of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, and to top it off he has a skull and cross bones tram stamp tattooed on his lower back. I am smitten!
March 13: I bonded with this Belgian guy named Nicholas tonight who works for Xerox in Ireland. He is hilarious because he has this obsession with chocolate and bakeries and has to have his sugar fix every day. This guy also has the most motorbike troubles out of anyone I have ever met...seriously, anyone ever. So far he has had 2 flat tires, his front light has gone out while driving at night, his back light has gone out in the day, he has run out of gas, and has just broken down completely. And due to this bad motobike luck he has been through about 5 different bikes. He never crashes though, which is very good for his passengers.
March 15: I have a goal for India which I seriously hope I can achieve. This goal is to NOT shit my pants in my entire stay here. There have definitely been some close calls I must admit, and Liz and Tony are thinking about starting a facebook group, haha. But just in case you were curious here is the oven our food is cooked in. Which I think is pretty rad!
Since I am running out of Internet time that is all I have time for right now, but I will wright more updates soon...
I have also decided to stay for another 3 weeks, so if you want to send me something wonderful via fed-ex I have an address where I will definitely receive it, and it goes a little something like this:
Juli Greenwald
Sadhana Forest
Auroville
Tamil Nadu
605101
India
March 7: Liz and Stacy and I slid right into the commune way of living by playing the game "7 degrees of Morgan Freeman" with the amazing American couple Greg and Kerri, also our new buddy Nicholas from Belgium used a David Bowie reference AND the midget from the movie Willow to get to Star Wars. We also binged on as much chocolate, sugar, coffee, and cheese as humanly possible in town when we busted out illegal eating activities, this community is completely vegan so I have been having many drool infused dreams about cheese. We are staying in a palm leaved thatched hut with 6 people sleeping downstairs and 5 on the upstairs level. The main hut is the biggest building and also the only one with electricity. All the volunteers hang out in the afternoons and either play guitar, or drums or read and relax and just chill.
March 8: I just participated in a proactive non-violence workshop at the commune and learned the most effective way to block a bull dozer by laying in the street with 5 peoples arms linked in a star formation until police pull someone out of the star. Also if you are doing a sit-in just go limp, like a sac of potatoes so the police dragging your lifeless body out will have a harder time, if you struggle it will look bad when your picture is printed in the media. I also learned effective ways of jamming locks on any facility that goes against your beliefs by putting superglue in the locks to the main building or the supervisors office. I think this is illegal, but somehow it is still a non-violent protest method... When are they passing out the cool-aid? Im feeling kinda thirsty.
March 9: Monday morning, first time probably ever I have been excited to wake up at 6am. Today we worked on bunding dirt paths around the commune. I hate beets. We have had beet stew, beet salad, and even some form of beet dessert with sugar and nuts every day since I have come on the 5th. We were so sick of all the beet concoctions today that we motorbiked it into town and I ate my first real Indian meal with my hands. It was parotta which is kinda like a flaky pita bread dipped in spicy veggie curry and served on a banana leaf. It was so cool to eat only using my hands.
March 10: It is POURING down rain! Making this day energetic, thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time. It is reminding me of Oregon rain, but warmer. Since the whole place is powered by solar panels We had to jump on some work out bikes today that are attached to the generators and peddle our asses off to get enough power to run the blender in the kitchen, haha. I busted out my mini speakers and we hooked up Liz's Ipod and we had a jam sesh while biking for power. Kerri and I switched off between biking and leading the arm workouts which consisted of punching, push ups on the handlebars, and tricep dips. Unfortunately this means that all our dirt path building and bunding efforts have just been washed away, but after second work we had a huge mud slip and slide party, so it kinda made it a little bit better.
March 11: Today was Holi festival! Which is also called the Festival of Colours because it is celebrated by hundreds of people throwing coloured powder and coloured water at each other. The awesome American couple Keri and Greg and I went into town and got to throw around a little bit of pink powder and got our hands dyed bright fuchsia. It was awesome.
March 12: The Mud pools are still filled to the brim since it has been raining for the past 2 days. Kerri, my new American friend is a bad ass and proposed we play a little water polo game in the mud pools. I love this idea, and technically it isnt even going against the "no competitive games" rule since the mud pool is outside the Sadhana Forest fence. A new Frenchie just arrived yesterday and he is the smitten image of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, and to top it off he has a skull and cross bones tram stamp tattooed on his lower back. I am smitten!
March 13: I bonded with this Belgian guy named Nicholas tonight who works for Xerox in Ireland. He is hilarious because he has this obsession with chocolate and bakeries and has to have his sugar fix every day. This guy also has the most motorbike troubles out of anyone I have ever met...seriously, anyone ever. So far he has had 2 flat tires, his front light has gone out while driving at night, his back light has gone out in the day, he has run out of gas, and has just broken down completely. And due to this bad motobike luck he has been through about 5 different bikes. He never crashes though, which is very good for his passengers.
March 15: I have a goal for India which I seriously hope I can achieve. This goal is to NOT shit my pants in my entire stay here. There have definitely been some close calls I must admit, and Liz and Tony are thinking about starting a facebook group, haha. But just in case you were curious here is the oven our food is cooked in. Which I think is pretty rad!
Since I am running out of Internet time that is all I have time for right now, but I will wright more updates soon...
I have also decided to stay for another 3 weeks, so if you want to send me something wonderful via fed-ex I have an address where I will definitely receive it, and it goes a little something like this:
Juli Greenwald
Sadhana Forest
Auroville
Tamil Nadu
605101
India
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Alive and well in INDIA!!
Hey guys, Sorry it has been about a month since I have last updated and have missed out on telling you about Cambodia and the last days in Thailand, although there are some pretty ridonculous facebook pics if you dare to see those. I just wanted to let you know I am alive and well in India!! We are at a community filled with WOOFing workers way down south in a town called Auroville
that is called Sadhana Forest. It is a vegan community which focuses on alternative construction, solar energy, and water resource management. The types of work we can choose to do include tree planting, indigenous plant nursery care, contour bunding, organic gardening, fence building and installing, compost and soil management. Yesterday I helped to build a dirt path from one structure to the other, it was dirty and hot, but felt good to be working and contributing to something. For showering we stand in a bucket of water that we have pumped ourselves from the well and then soap it on up. The toilets are totally Argentina finka style with just a hole in the ground you have to squat over and hope nothing flies up your butt in the process, and im gonna put up pics soon.
We have made friends with a few fellow traveler friends already, my favorites being two guys from Seattle who Liz actually saw at a party a few years ago, some guy from Belgium who is totally awesome, and another British girl named Jenni. We work in the mornings from 6am-830 am, break for breakfast for an hour then go back to work from 930-1130am then have the rest of the day to hang out or go into town, read, or talk or just climb around in this awesome tree house type structure. So there are about 70-ish volunteers in total right now at the forest but since a 5 week agriculture workshop just got over with I think a bunch of people are going to take off and in the next few days it will be a much smaller group of about 30, although we are staying for 2 weeks for sure, they offer all kinds of agricultural and environmental workshops so I was thinking of jumping in on one of those. Its a really chilled out place with a bunch of western volunteers, actually a lot of Americans, and some are WAY too hippied out for my taste, those are mostly the Europeans, but others are just really chill and cool and willing to discuss all kinds of viewpoints and world issues. Im thinking about picking up a book on Buddhism and taking a look at that since I am in such a spiritual atmosphere. Also they have a huge library. We sleep in wooden/thatched huts under mosquito nets and in the daytime it is probably around 100 degrees but at night it gets so cold I feel like I need two blankets. The community we are at doesn't allow games involving conflict, so games like chess or cards are out of the question. That is still really weird to me. Instead we have non-talent shows where people get up and just goof off and do stupid lip syncs or weird "talents" like arm pit farts. Or otherwise we do drum circles around a bonfire. There is also a very nice mud pit near by for swimming/ mud fights.
So we haven't actually experienced "real" India yet since we have just been volunteering at this hippie community, but in two weeks we are thinking about going to Goa where all the beaches are and then maybe farther north to see the Taj mahal, meet up with Liz's friend Anna and maybe meditate and do yoga for a few weeks at an ashram. There is a phone you can call and the numbers are:
00-91-413-2677682
or
00-91-413-2902655
The time difference is subtracting 10 and a half hours, so when it is 12:00pm my time it is 10:30pm your time, but on the weekdays im going to be getting up at 6am my time to work, and you can call during work/volunteer hours thats fine. Im going to try to get a new Indian cell number soon so ill give you guys that too.
Love you guys,
Juli
that is called Sadhana Forest. It is a vegan community which focuses on alternative construction, solar energy, and water resource management. The types of work we can choose to do include tree planting, indigenous plant nursery care, contour bunding, organic gardening, fence building and installing, compost and soil management. Yesterday I helped to build a dirt path from one structure to the other, it was dirty and hot, but felt good to be working and contributing to something. For showering we stand in a bucket of water that we have pumped ourselves from the well and then soap it on up. The toilets are totally Argentina finka style with just a hole in the ground you have to squat over and hope nothing flies up your butt in the process, and im gonna put up pics soon.
We have made friends with a few fellow traveler friends already, my favorites being two guys from Seattle who Liz actually saw at a party a few years ago, some guy from Belgium who is totally awesome, and another British girl named Jenni. We work in the mornings from 6am-830 am, break for breakfast for an hour then go back to work from 930-1130am then have the rest of the day to hang out or go into town, read, or talk or just climb around in this awesome tree house type structure. So there are about 70-ish volunteers in total right now at the forest but since a 5 week agriculture workshop just got over with I think a bunch of people are going to take off and in the next few days it will be a much smaller group of about 30, although we are staying for 2 weeks for sure, they offer all kinds of agricultural and environmental workshops so I was thinking of jumping in on one of those. Its a really chilled out place with a bunch of western volunteers, actually a lot of Americans, and some are WAY too hippied out for my taste, those are mostly the Europeans, but others are just really chill and cool and willing to discuss all kinds of viewpoints and world issues. Im thinking about picking up a book on Buddhism and taking a look at that since I am in such a spiritual atmosphere. Also they have a huge library. We sleep in wooden/thatched huts under mosquito nets and in the daytime it is probably around 100 degrees but at night it gets so cold I feel like I need two blankets. The community we are at doesn't allow games involving conflict, so games like chess or cards are out of the question. That is still really weird to me. Instead we have non-talent shows where people get up and just goof off and do stupid lip syncs or weird "talents" like arm pit farts. Or otherwise we do drum circles around a bonfire. There is also a very nice mud pit near by for swimming/ mud fights.
So we haven't actually experienced "real" India yet since we have just been volunteering at this hippie community, but in two weeks we are thinking about going to Goa where all the beaches are and then maybe farther north to see the Taj mahal, meet up with Liz's friend Anna and maybe meditate and do yoga for a few weeks at an ashram. There is a phone you can call and the numbers are:
00-91-413-2677682
or
00-91-413-2902655
The time difference is subtracting 10 and a half hours, so when it is 12:00pm my time it is 10:30pm your time, but on the weekdays im going to be getting up at 6am my time to work, and you can call during work/volunteer hours thats fine. Im going to try to get a new Indian cell number soon so ill give you guys that too.
Love you guys,
Juli
