Queen of the space cadets.

So, there's this problem I've struggled with for most of my life; maybe it's because I'm indecisive, maybe it's because I'm an only child.  I don't know, but the issue is: being really excited about something for a period of time, and then getting bored and dropping it.  Or doing it less frequently.  Since I was 4 years old, I've been involved in each of the following for about a year or less: figure skating (both ice and on roller skates), ballet, tap-dancing, basketball, cheer leading, track and gymnastics.  Rollerblading, swimming and instrument playing have managed to be the only things I continued to do after a period of lesson-taking.  Oh, and writing, but even that comes and goes.  That being said, I feel this blog has fallen into the former category. 

I really like writing about what I'm doing here, but at the same time, my social life is soaring.  Surprised? Ha, probably not.  Part of moving to a new place is making new friends and striving to form new bonds.  To do so requires a great deal of present-mindedness.  I'm currently struggling with finding some sort of balance between making time for myself to be blogging, journaling and keeping up with emails while at the same time be present in my time here in India and hang out with people and learn about their lives and try and experience new things.  Ahh.  Living in community is awesome, but finding time to be alone is pretty hard. 

Even when you go to the bathroom, there is likely someone in the next stall doing the same thing.  Booyah.  As of late I haven't actually even been sleeping in my own hut.  The ants have officially driven me crazy!  There's this woman here who returned to be a long-termer after a brief hiatus named Jaspreet who is totally amazing; she's my brown other half!  Last week I was telling her about how stressed I was about the ants in my clothes and the ants on my bed and she's just like "Why don't you move?" Her place seemed so cozy and lovely in regards to the stress that I felt when I went to my own hut.  So I stayed in the extra bed in her hut for a  night. Which turned into many nights, until...

Jamey, the guy who used to run the show here at SF, left yesterday to take a vacation, then head to help with the SF Haiti project for a year.  I jumped right on the opportunity to have an ant-free hut and I moved into his old hut this morning.  It's really nice and has an outdoor shower downstairs, along with a double-wide hammock and hammock chair: amazing!  I love it!  It already feels more home-like than my last hut and I haven't seen a single red/black ant yet.  Though I did see a black ant (they're harmless) carrying a red/black ant, hopefully off to eat him and show him who's boss.  I think the black ants are on my side at my new pad.

Aside from that, things have pretty laid back: I haven’t worn a bra in days.  Maybe even weeks.  I don't know how I'm ever going to get another job. I can roll in early in the morning with nappy hair, pajama shorts and a tank top, sans bra, and nobody even flinches. Even bathing is optional. I washed my hair for the first time in 3 weeks. Eww. I was even starting to get grossed out about that one.  I would get it wet by swimming or going to the mud pool, even showering.  Washing my body isn't a problem, but there are no eco-friendly, biodegradable conditioners available around these parts, so I shouldn't even bother washing it or it'll be like Don King hair.  Seriously.  It is now. LOL.

At the end of last week I was really feeling like I needed some sort of change in my life here. I think washing my hair was a good change to help me feel like less of a scrub. But it was hardly what I really needed.  I've been struggling with boredom of the same old thing, already.  I miss all the action of Chicago.  As nice as Auroville is, it's pretty small.  

I'm even getting quite bored with the food.  Despite being a travel blog, the only traveling I'm actually doing these days is in pursuit of  food.  Typical.  I’m trying to only eat one meal away from SF per day.  I get free food here, there shouldn’t be any reason to leave, right? 

Wrong.  Some days the kitchen is on it and some days the kitchen is flipped over on the side of the road, smoking.  Since the shifts change each week for sous chef (the meal planner/organizer/preparer), so does the food and how well it’s put together.  Right now, we have a former vegan raw-food chef staying here, so each meal she’s in charge of is ON.  I always look forward to seeing her smiling face in the kitchen because we’re guaranteed something pretty tasty.  Like beet salad with peanuts, or rice with vanilla and cinnamon, or pumpkin soup with cumin and other tasty spices.  That was last night. Meow.

Also, I've eaten like, too much ice cream and pizza.  I'm over Western food.  This week I made it a priority to eat just Indian food.  It's working pretty well, and it's so much cheaper!  Even cheaper, rather.

Some other priorities this week: starting to more consistently do my yoga self-practice, challenging myself to be in the company of women more often and trying to spend more time with people that are challenging to interact with.  Making these things priorities has really helped me to feel less bored this week. Oh, and I checked the local Auroville newsletter that goes out once a week to see what things are going on in town this weekend.  E.T. is playing tomorrow at 2pm: we're totally going! 

Jaspreet and I are super stoked!  She's also been feeling the bored blues.  Not bored with each other, just Sadhana and Auroville.  The two of us are actually super lucky to have found each other here.  We get along like a house on fire.  I think we burned it down, lol. She's from Texas, yeehaw!  We already finish each other's sentences... And we work in the office together.  It's to the point where we are called "Danpreet." Emails for us aer labeled this way, Aviram addresses things for us to work on this way, people walking past our huts at night holler for us this way; it's rather comical.  Or if we're with Diva: Danpreeva.  It's good to have friends:)

Don't worry friends back home, I miss you plenty.  Each day I set aside time to think about home and what foods I plan to eat and what I'm excited to do with whom when I return.  Anyone want to take a road-trip across the country for a few weeks?  I've actually never gone west in a car further than Chicago, so I think it might be something a few of you should think about.  Get back to me on that.

For further excitement here this week, we had some gnarly thunderstorms last weekend and we spent half the week without power because lightning struck our power inverter.  They were literally some of the scariest of my life, but that might solely be because they were at night (3 nights in a row) and I live in an extremely flammable structure without a real roof.  I actually convinced myself that it might blow over with us in it.  Thunder is much louder and lightning seems more powerful when you're outside with it; I could feel the lightning, the storms seemed so close, and moved so slowly!  Each storm lasted like 10 hours, it was so wild!  It normally is dry here from January through July, thus these were unanticipated, severe storms.  There was probably a tornado watch.  Speaking of tornadoes, I heard there were some pretty deadly ones that moved across the southeast this week: scary and devastating :( 

For happier news, we had a dance party in honor of Jamey's leaving and afterwards we walked through the forest to the mudpool, in the mud, for some moonlight swimming to cool down and rinse off all the sweat. The mudpool has been shrinking away for the past few months, but now it's back to being really deep, you can actually swim in it, not just lay around in the mud with a little water covering you.  It was pretty magical.  Except I blew out my flip-flop.  Yeah, bummer!  I only have one pair, so I have been wearing my sneakers every day since. Eh. Or finding some around the main hut and wearing them to the bathroom, hehe, shhhh.

I want to say so much, but I feel like "blogging" tends to have a shorter length attached with it.  What I want to do now is more related to "noveling" haha.  Once I start, I get into it and don't want to stop.  Alas, "I have promises to keep..." In the meantime, enjoy some photos of Sadhana that I've been meaning to post for some time, think of it as a walking tour of some of the highlights here on the compound:

 This is the area where all the long-timer huts are, fondly referred to as "The Ewok Village."

 This is Paramol, our nighttime security guard.  We are buds.  He always tries to get into pictures with me.

 This is the main hut.  We spend lots of time here.  See that top area?  That's where the office is...

 This is a sign for the toilet, the other kind of office.

 This is the toilet: the long skinny part is where you pee, the big round part is where you poo.

 "Poo here." Self-explanatory.

 A nice, green walkway.  There are hundreds of these here at Sadhana.

 The Healing Hut, a place I grew very fond of in my first days at SF.

 Here's a bed in the Healing Hut, complete with a bed-side sick bin. Definitely used that when I was there.

 

 A simple hand-washing station.  We have no running water so this is cheap technology to use less water: yayy!

 The solar garden.

My new favorite fruit: the jack-fruit.  These things are bigger than basketballs and aren't even ripe yet.  I love them!

 I had no idea this is how pineapples grow.  Each plant only produces one fruit.  We are growing many here.

 Our super-snazzy above ground swimming pool.  It's about 3 feet deep. Fun fun fun.

Diva and I on a tour-bus to the MatriMandir.  We are happy:)

Monkey see, monkey do.

Wow. Hi. I can't believe how fast time has been passing by.  The first two weeks of being sick and miserable and lying around for 23 hours of the day really went slow; it's amazing what you can accomplish when you feel better.  And have a scooter:)

In the past two weeks, I've been introduced into an entirely new form of a social life: having the scooter.  I love it.  I was finally taken to the secret chai shop that all the "cool kids" kept leaving like four times a day to visit.  And now? I end up going at least once a day, no joke.  The best chai latte you'll ever drink and it costs all of 5 rupees.  CHEEEEAAAAP. For realsies.  It's so easy to sit and drink two, no problem.

Today, it was a bit of a sad day at the chai shop because three of my favorite peeps were leaving to continue their travels in India, and it was our last visit together.  Officially, out of the 70 people that were here when I arrived, there are only about 30, and I am the last one (besides other long-term volunteers) left of that original group. 

Whoa. So yeah, the expression goes "tears dry fast at Sadhana" because there are always new people coming, old people are always going, etc.  I seem to attract change in organizations: I show up, everyone that's been there leaves, and I get to continue on in a constant state of flux.  I guess it's pretty cool?  It's all I know, I must be the catalyst for chaos:)

Back to the chai shop today, it was pretty hilarious, actually.  There are all these little snacks available to eat, like processed, packaged cookies like Bourbon, Hide & Seek (fav!) or Milk Bidi's, along with homemade goods.  I haven't really tried the homemade goods, aside from the peanut brittle, which used to be my favorite until I feel like I cracked a tooth over the weekend, this ol' bird can't afford to visit a dentist in India.  Today we were there with a few peeps I hadn't visited with before and this one young German guy, Tobias, TORE UP the homemade cookies.   I would never have tried them if it weren't for him, lol.  They were alright, but this guy was eating them faster than the cookie monster.  Out of the 6  containers of different cookies, I think between the 7 of us (mostly him) we cleared 50 cookies.  He spent 30 rupees alone on cookies. 

I was laughing about it all day and calling him all sorts of names like snack-a-licious and the German cookie eating machine.  Whew.  (As we speak I'm sitting up in an office and I can hear him below, talking to someone else about the chai shop, lol). It's really an obsession, once you get initiated, you can't get enough of the sweet stuff.  It's also a place to go to smoke cigarettes since doing so anywhere near Sadhana would likely burn this mother down considering all of our huts are made of dried up wood, leaves and rope and it's the dry season.  It hasn't rained the entire time I've been here, holy hell.

It's heating up.  Each day that goes by, I hope that it's going to rain, but in all honesty, it probably won't rain until mid-July.  It's only going to get hotter and drier each day. Meow.  What was I thinking, haha.

Aside from constant chai runs, the past few weeks have been a blur of eating egg-and-cheese in as many forms as I can find it (it's almost a sick obsession, I've had the combination on a sandwich or a pizza or a galette at least 5 times in the past 9 days, this is what vegan boot camp does to a foodie), meeting new people and spending quality time with the oldies, doing so much office work I don't even check my personal email everyday (or blog, sadly) and being really present minded.

I meditated the other day for the first time since I've been here. Whoa.  Most people do it like 30 times a day here and do yoga and all this other stuff to be "present" and "spiritual" but I just hadn't been feeling it or have been surrounded by people so much that it's really hard to make space in your day for it.  Usually if I ever try to meditate it ends up being like 3 deep breaths before I fall asleep, the end.

This meditation came about because I visited the Matri Mandir, which is the heart of Auroville and The Spot to get your meditation on. It's kind of a big deal.  You have to set up an appointment and watch a video and go on a tour and ride a little rickety bus just to get there.  Once you arrive, it's like you've pulled up to a golden EPCOT center (even though I have never been to DisneyWorld, I am familiar with this structure, you might be too). It's like a GIANT golden golfball.  And you're not allowed to take pictures, soI just "borrowed" this little gem from another website, oops. Don't rat me out...

THEN you go inside and it's like boarding a zen-ed out space ship.  No joke.  Every interior structural surface is made of white marble - the hand-rails, the stairs, the center of the staircase - while the external-interior structure (i.e. walls) are made of gold, with a fountain running down each side.  The only sound is
that of running water as you climb this spiral walkway (not even stairs anymore) around and up the inside of this trippy zen spaceship.  They even make you put on special socks! Once you finally finish this steep climb to the top, you enter the meditation room.

This is when you start to believe you are ACTUALLY on a SPACESHIP.  The room is fairly dark, with really high ceilings and 12 large, white marble pillars encircling the center of the room, with a golden orb on a pedestal in the center.  It's a very cool room, probably air-conditioned to the perfect temperature, and there is plush white carpet.  Perfectly laid upon the white carpet are perfectly square pillows to rest your butt on, so you walk in, choose an area, sit down, and get ready to get your meditate on.

It's definitely one of the wildest, but most calming experiences of my entire life.  This place had an calmness about it that wasn't even eerie; it was like ultimate soothing energy, you couldn't help but meditate there.  I didn't want to laugh or be goofy; I wanted to close my eyes and get internal. I know this sounds totally bizarre and kind of cheesy, but that's only because it TOTALLY was.  Matri Mandir story: done.

Another exciting thing that happened last week was mistaking a moped for a dirt bike.  By this I mean dirt bikes are designed with a suspension that support revving the engine when you approach a steep bit of dirt or land, sailing smoothly over the ensuing valley, and landing safely on the other side.  Mopeds are not designed with this type of suspension.  I can attest to that now.

I was taught a new "short-cut" for getting to the chai shop by a man named Dave from the Cave, who is kind of a wild man.  I nailed this shortcut several times with Ida as my passenger (as she weighs like 4 ounces) and decided to give it a go with a new passenger, someone much taller and heavier than sweet little Ida.  Also, I had the directions of when to rev the engine backwards: you're supposed to go slowly over the steep bump, and rev the engine when you hit the deep sand (a huge obstacle that can cause one to slow down or even have to put their feet down).  I was thinking "Eff it, let's rev the engine so we fly over the sand, screw getting stuck in it!"  So I did. 

We cleared the deep sand, for sure.  Yet, as soon as we re-entered the atmosphere after a brief brush with the sky, we crash landed in the dirt.  I immediately stood up and was like "Ahh, are you okay?" To my passenger, and convinced myself that we were fine.  Except for the piece of my scooter that was lying in the dirt.  We had to pick that up and bring it along with us.  (I'm literally LOL'ing so bad right now that I think the people downstairs are convinced I'm crazy: I cannot tell this story without getting into hysterics! My new nickname for myself is "Born to be Mild."

Everything is fine, we are fine, my passenger got a small scratch on the ankle, just a little blood. I got a little sandy road-rash on my elbow and knee, a ripped-up, bloody pair of leggings and a sprinkling of small bruises on my left side: NBD (no big deal).  The biggest injury? A bruised ego.  I've officially cut myself off from using the shortcut in any way, shape or form.  For now.  I'm still riding the shit out of that scooter, obviously.  The guy I'm renting it from even came the next day and fixed Harvey Dangerfield, without asking questions, though my guilty conscience offered a BS story about the little piece just falling off while I was going over a speed bump (which are everywhere around here).  Sucker. Jk.

I understand this is a pretty enormous post, sans pictures.  I actually took a bunch this week specifically for the purposes of the blog, a little walking tour of Sadhana so you all could see what I see on a daily basis.  It's getting pretty late, but I PROMISE to post them in a few days with some funny little comments.

One last thing: I really did see two monkeys today, in person, not at the zoo.  They were just hopping along on some dirty ol' buildings (ODB!) on Koot Road (the closest place to ride to on a moped, about 2 miles away), I could barely believe it.  I thought they existed only in the wild, but apparently India's small villages are wild enough for monkeys to roam.

In case you were wondering what the infamous Harvey Dangerfield looks like, this is his sexy self. Meow. (Dad, it's made by TVS Motors, India's 3rd largest two-wheeler manufacturer).