Sunny day!

This morning the sun is shining and the laundry is drying and I am happy because I have purchased an illegal indian mobile phone to smuggle into the ashram. Life is good! I can really only call out because I am keeping the ringer off at all times, but at least I am able to talk to Matt more regularly, and even called my family last night to thank Margo for the box of treats that arrived at the post office for me yesterday - delightful!
After hearing about the body cleansing kriyas the other day, Mom said to me on the phone: "Honey, when they offer you the koolaid, don't drink it please." Don't worry I am not. But there are some bright moments too - Saturday nights during satsang we have a talent show. Last night a norweigian (sp?) guy who has not shown much personality yet got up on stage and did a spot on impression of the head swami here, an italian guy who was fortanetly out of town, leading us through a guided meditation. It was fantastic. I laughed so hard I cried. He guided us in the same way the swami does, and then started to improvise - In a thick italian accent, slow, calming voice - "Focus your attention on any spot on your body - for example, the mosquito bite on your left ankle. Or any place that is itchy, irritating or annoying. If you are are a loving, devoted person, focus your attention on the cute Japanese girl sitting behind you. If you are more of an intellectual person, focus your attention on the creature crawling up your back. Ask yourself "why did you start this course in the first place?" Then begin repeating your mantra to yourself. If you don't have a mantra, you can use the universal mantra... "This is boring".
I suppose its not as funny to those of you who haven't listened to the sanctioned version of this speech twice a day for the last two and a half weeks. You'll just have to take my word for it.
This week we start actually teaching yoga. Tomorrow I teach four of my classmates the 3rd course of a four class beginners program. Hopefully I will be able to get through it without sounding too frantic, forgetting any counter stretches, or damaging anyone physically. I'm both excited and nervous about it.
Today we get reassigned for Karma yoga so I don't know what my schedule will be moving forward but I will try to still make it down here periodically to check in. We are also still contemplating the situation in India and what we will do when my time here is up = whether we will follow our original itinerary, taking us north to Mumbai and then Dehli, Agra, Gwalier and Jaipur, or redirect. But I do know I don't want to take off as soon as this class is over - I felt like I haven't had any time to explore and enjoy yet! We'll see what happens.

FREE at last

So the bad news is that my trip to Kanyakumari was cancelled... apparently not enough people signed up, so they will try again next week. The good news is that instead I hopped in a cab with some friends to Kovalam, a beach town about 35 km (one hour on indian roads) away from the ashram. Its amazing. Just being free to do what we want and eat what we want... getting in the cab this morning we were positively giddy! Helen suggested we all write and mail ourselves letters from the ashram so that when we go back to our normal lives and forget how much we missed them, we have a reminder.

Anyway, in the cab on the way here it was rainy, but while we ate breakfast at a little restaurant looking out on the beach the sun came up, and now it is beautiful! And for breakfast I had fried eggs (which I had to send back 3 times until they cooked the whites all the way thru) toast and bacon! Don't tell the swamis!

I am here with a slew of other TTC girls - Helen from London, Helene from Stuttgart, Eva from Vienna, Marguit who is Austrian too but lives in Kerala, Josephine from the Netherlands, Marie-Helen from Quebec and Catherine from Nothern Canada. We plan to eat and wander and shop pretty much all day... so I will have a happy thanksgiving after all, just one day late.

Oh, and mail!

One more thing - I finally got my first piece of mail! Matt mailed me a copy of Us Weekly that arrived yesterday (totally goes against all yoga teachings - I love it!). So It does work, just sporadically, so if you have mailed me something, keep your fingers crossed and I'll let you know when I get it...

Completely safe

First off, let me say I am completely safe. I am very very very far away from Mumbai, probably at least a day by train. And I am in a very very very rural setting, not a hotspot for tourism at all, so not likely to be targeted by anyone. So please don't worry...

Second, Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you to everyone who sent me lovely thankgiving emails and updates. Its so nice to hear from everyone!

For thanksgiving this year, I ate a banana and a granola bar for breakfast (I skipped breakfast for reasons I'll reveal in a minute) and learned to pour salt water in one nostril so it comes out of the other nostril. And that was by the far the tamest of the Kriya (body cleansing techniques) they taught us in this mornings asana class. I also watched people demonstrate and then attempt some of the other kriya - including drinking 8 glasses of salt water and then making yourself throw it back up again, sticking a tube up your nose and pulling it out of your mouth, and the worst one of all, taking a long piece of gauze and slowly swallowing it down to your stomach and then pulling it back out... I took a pass on those techniques, despite the encouragement of our teachers to try everything, and then I took a pass on breakfast too.

However, the experimenting is not all bad - yesterday in the afternoon asana class I held a new posture I had never done before. I couldn't come into it in my own but someone caught my legs and helped me in, and I was able to hold it unsupported for a few seconds - it's called the Scorpion and you can see what it looks like here: http://www.santosha.com/asanas/scorpion.html.

I won't have internet again until Saturday or so, and my karma yoga gets switched Saturday so I don't know what my schedule will be like, but I will try to find time to write again.

Peace, Yoga, and TP

I want you to know that as I sit and type, there is a chicken that is wandering in and out of the internet cafe. Awesome. :)

It has finally stopped raining, after almost a solid week of pretty consistent downpour. We are supposed to have missed the rainy monsoon season but someone told me that global warming is throwing all the timing off, and we seem to have caught the tail end of it. But yesterday afternoon and today have been dry, giving me a chance to wash the sheet from my bed, which is nice - several of us have found little bits on our bodies in the mornings, and sadly our mosquito nets over our beds are pretty effective so we think there must be bed bugs or fleas in the mattresses (and by mattress I mean tiny, thin bit of foam like a gym mat on my wooden cot - you can't stay in one position for very long or your bones start to ache). I am pretending that washing my sheet is going to make a difference but it may just be one more thing to endure until this is all over. I think if I gain nothing else during this experience, I will come home with an intense appreciation for the amenities in my life, my cozy home, great food, comfortable and clean bed, etc...

What else can I tell you about our accomodations? I am in a small, twin room with two cots and a table and some shelves built into the wall. The floor is dirty - not "you can sweep or wash it clean" dirty but "suck it up, it will always be dirty" dirty, so we are constantly tracking dirt in and out of our bathroom (one big wetroom) and our beds. The bathroom is its own little treat - because toilet paper isn't common in India, you have to buy it from the boutique if you want to use it, and the plumbing can't accomodate it so if you use TP you have to throw it in a bucket and empty it out periodically. It doesn't smell great... I tried it for a couple of days and then resigned myself to the indian method (if you don't know what that is, don't ask). Matt, you'll want to bring some more pocket tissues along with you when you come.

But as I settle into the routine and start to feel a sense of control over everything again, I find I am not as unhappy as I was in the beginning. I now know what I need to carry with me and when, when I will have a moment to sneak away and read, snack, or go to the toilet, what to expect of the classes and lectures, and that makes it easier. I have been feeling more optomistic about making it through my time here (although of course this morning I slept poorly and had trouble getting up and have a headache, so its back to square one). Now, when I think about the amount of time left here, it doesn't make me want to cry the way it did at first. The food continues to be a challenge - I could only eat 3 bites of the breakfast this morning before having to toss the rest away - but there are plenty of snacks around so I won't starve (in fact because of all the snacking I have been doing, I don't think I am losing any weight or anything).

And while much of the course work until now has been challenging (in that is has been so preachy that its hard to take as educational) we seem to be moving onto more solid ground. Our main lectures the past two days have been on anatomy and diet, which is more concrete and interesting to me that some of the other aspects we have covered. We have also begun learning the Bhagavad Gita, Hindu scripture, which is interesting from a historical standpoint, and of course the yoga - next week we start teaching each other, but we are gaining ground everyday. I can now hold my headstand for 20 measured breaths and bring my legs out and back together before coming down WITH control. This morning Eva (from Vienna, Austria) managed to come up into her first headstand on her own ever, and she cried... a measure of how exhausted we all are, but also our excitement at accomplishing our goals. And there are quirky little things too I am learning about... in the sivananda yoga tradition, they believe the mantra's we chant create a certain type of energy that spreads around (this is a simplified explanation - if you want the more intricate version I know a swami from Zimbabwe who can talk you through it for hours!), and there is one mantra in particular that spreads peace (On Namo Narrayanaya). So they chant it for peace but they also believe it creates the same energy when you write it down. So people sit and write the mantra over and over and over, and they collect the papers from anyone who wants to contribute by writing it, and they carry them all up into a cave in the Himalayas where they are kept together for posterity. I think that's kind of cool. I'll be writing a page to conrtibute to the collection before I leave and if anyone else wants to you can mail it to me (although judging by the speed of the mail so far, I may not ever get it) and I will turn it in for you... The address is

Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwantari Ashram
Neyyar Dam P.O.
Thiruvananthapuram Dist (Trivandrum)
Kerala 695 572
India

Okay, got to run back up the hill, or hire a rickshaw to take me...

Rain Rain Rain

The good news is, my karma yoga was moved from 10:45 am until 6:30 pm, giving me a nice long break in the morning after breakfast before my noon chanting class where I can sneak away and go to the internet cafe. Today I had a little less time because I was waiting for Matt to call at 10:30 before rushing out... instead of Matt I got a suprise call from my family! Turns out Matt was on a plane during our regularly scheduled call time and so we got my mom, dad, margo and fat baby sawyer to call as replacements. It was great... although Sawyer got very upset about the whole wet, dirty uniform thing. My mom says in solidarity with me, they have decided to forgo the turkey for thanksgiving dinner and instead they have bought extra jars of mushy green vegetables and rice baby food and will all eat that with Sawyer for Thanksgiving. I said unless they plan to do that twice a day for a week I don't think they are going to have the full experience.
Since I had a little less time than usual, I hopped in a rickshaw instead of walking down the hill to the internet cafe. So fun! They aren't pulled by people the way you think of rickshaws, but rather they are like little scooters with a cab on the back, open to the air. It was my first ride in one and I loved it! Now I am at the internet cafe at the bottom of the hill drinking a hot delicious glass of chai tea for 3 rupees from the walla next door while I type. I have to make sure I leave with enough time to get back up the hill and into my uniform before chanting class begins because that woman who teaches that is a bit of a tiger and I wouldn't want to cross her.
It has been raining pretty solidly for the past 4 or 5 days which I actually don't mind so much because the air is cool and not too humid, and at night its so pleasant to sleep (and as a side benefit, people don't sit outside my window and chat after satsang at night when its raining outside). The major drawback is that our laundry won't dry... we have two copies of our uniform and we wash one while we wear the other but with this weather it takes several days for the wet one to dry, and meanwhile the white pants get dirty the second you walk out of your room because there is much everywhere... so its a bit of a flawed system and we are in dirty clothes all the time. But at least we are in it together. There is a growing feeling of community amongst the TTC students that I am enjoying.
What else can I squeeze in before I run back up the hill? I am still trying to meditate, some fellow students have given me some tips on getting started, which is helpful because the swamis aren't really giving us beginner information. This morning I thought for a moment I was getting somewhere but it turned out I was just drifting off to sleep. But I will keep trying...
Okay, must run back up but I will try to come back down again later this week!

sneaking out...

well, not really. chanting classes ended on time, possibly for the first time every, and I have 50 minutes free - unheard of. Last night another inmate at the ashram (that's really how they refer to us btw, joking, I think, but it rings a little too true sometimes) named Francoise (he's french but has been living in India for a while doing waste management for a NGO - everyone has such interesting stories) told me of a back way down to the little town where they have an internet cafe. The back way takes a little less time than the front way (although there is a lot more mud) so I was able to race down here and squeeze in a couple of minutes. Hopefully I can do this a couple of times a week, especially since this comign Friday, which is my next free day, I am planning to take part in an ashram organized trip that will take all day, so no internet for me that day. Instead I'll spend four hours on a bus (with some stops at various temples along the way) going to Kanyakymari- the sourthern most tip of India where the three oceans meet. Its considered a very holy place because of the oceans, but I am really more excited to see such a neat and identifiable geographic landmark.
Okay, must run to get back in time for the 2 pm lecture... they really read you the riot act if you are late, and today we start anatomy and physiology and I don't want to miss out...

Finally!

So in case you were wondering, there is no internet at the ashram. Actually, there is, but they are doing some roadwork which has knocked it out indefinitely. So that plans for the blog have been seriously thwarted.

But today is my one free day off a week from classes. So here I am.

Where to begin? I think I could write for hours and not cover everything. Actually, I have been writing for hours, in my journal, since I haven't really had any other outlet. India is amazing... picture every movie you have ever seen of crazy rural india with traffic and noise and sounds and its exactly like that, from the minute you step off the airplane.

I flew in Trivandrum, on the west coast almost at the bottom of india, where I was easily able to identify several other course members in the airport and we shared a cab to the ashram which is about an hour up in the hills (only 32KM but everything takes a lot longer here).

Ashram life is not easy... much harder than I imagined. Or maybe I never really took the time to imagine what it was going to be like to do this for real. I would say the actual yoga is the easiest part. Its familiar and manageable, and even enjoyable. The things I am struggling with are the schedule, which is ridiculous - barely any downtime is scheduled into each day and all the classes and lectures run over, so you find yourself scrambling to try and run to the bathroom and get water in between things. And the food... we eat two meals a day, in silence, sitting on the floor. All of that would be fine except that literally 90% of our meals so far have consisted primarily of this bland green vegetable stew. At this point, just thinking about it is enough to make me feel nausceous. So I try to eat everything I can (after our morning and evening ceremonies that give you a little sweet thing, and then there is chai tea in the morning and then a fruit in the mid afternoon) that is not green stew, and hope that the snacks I brought will last me through the month. Matt is sending more, and others have offered, but so far I have received no mail so it seems things may take a long time to get here, if they ever do...
The best part of being here so far (besides being in India) are the other people in my course. They are fascinating, extremely international, very diverse. Some of the people I have met include Helen, a yoga teacher from Twickenham who accompanied me this morninig on a local bus to find the internet, Patrick, a belgian who lives in the Congo and runs the UN office to coordinator humanitarian aid there and whose family was evacuated to Rwanada two weeks before he left to come here, my roommate Migumi who is from Japan but is living in Eindhoven in the Netherlands at the moment, and so on and so on...
Otherwise, I am also struggling with how much religion is incorporated into the teachings and practice they are giving us... it really is a bit of a month long conversion. And its very much being presented as - this is the only way to go, and if you listen and reject this, you are making a grave mistake, which is interesting because until now I have found yoga to be very inclusive and welcomeing, and individually focused - do what's right for you, when its right for you... I am trying to view that part of the teachings as sort of an anthropological study - here is where yoga comes from, this is the mentality behind it, this is the thinking that created it, and even with the physical aspects, there is underlying physiology that they explain with the spiritual explanations... but I have to catch myself sometimes and remind myself not to be too negative... that when this is all over and I want to go right back to my exact same life I left behind, which I happen to love, I can, and that won't make me a bad or ignorant person.
So my day starts a 5:30 am when they bang a gong, literally right outside my window. I roll out of bed, put on my uniform (white cotton pants and a yellow t-shirt that i have to handwash periodically so I don't stink), throw some water on my face, thank god I cut all my hair off, and then go down to morning satsang, where we sit silently to meditate, cross legged on the floor, for half an hour (I pretend to mediatate and try not to move - still no breakthrough in that realm). When that ends (7:45 ish) we scramble to find a place in the hall for our yoga mat (with 180 people in the course we are on top of each other) and then after staking our claim we go slug down a cup of chai before our 8 am yoga class starts. The hall where everything happens is open on the sides to the air which is lovely some days, and very hot and sticky some days, but mostly the temperature has been warm and humid but manageable. It poured all day yesterday and sleeping last night was a real treat.
The morning yoga class is when they teach us how to teach, so Ted walks us through the different poses as if we were beginners. Then at 10 we go to breakfast...silently on the floor in the dining hall. Then a little break where Matt calls me at reception, and I hover anxiously waiting for them to call my name. at 10:45 I do my karma yoga (chores) which is to help in the boutique (sells essentials to desperate yoga students who left something crucial behind or just need to buy more toilet paper). 12:00 is a chanting class, which usually runs over until 1:30 and then we have our main lecture at 2 and a yoga class at 4:00. Those are usually pretty much back to back. Then dinner at 6, and then our biggest break of the evening when i shower and relax for a bit. Then evening satsang from 8-10 and I collapse into bed and start all over again.
Ok, have to run, helen is waiting for me. More next friday maybe? Don't know for sure, but Matt will have updates.
Miss you!

dubai

in the airport in dubai - waited in line for at least half an hour or so to get a crack at one of 8 overburdened computers featuring free internet and a constant crowd of online chatters. The Dubai airport is everything you would expect, large, sterile, shiney, florescent, open 24 hours. There's a starbucks (I'll take a photo of the arabic sign), a cosi, a burger king, and even a coldstone creamery (although I ordered my fave and it did not taste so good... they haven't quite mastered the cookie dough thing).
Leaving last night we bumped into our neighbor and his two small boys outside as we were loading my luggage into the car. The older one (4 yrs) looks at me and says: "Miss Abra, you look like a boy!" I think given our recent halloween costumes (Matt dressed as me and I dressed as him, conplete with penciled on goatee) they probably now have some serious questions about my gender.
Okay, so I am going to try and be the thoughtful person who doesn't monopolize the computer for hours on end while people wait patiently for a turn. I have 5 more hours before my India flight leaves, so I am going to enjoy some middle eastern starbucks, read my book, and maybe try to get some sleep.

On my way...

Counting down the minutes - we leave at 7:00 for the airport. I'm nervous, anxious, excited... wondering if I brought enough everything...

My last couple of days have been full of sweet gestures of support ranging from the card from a neighbor slipped under my door to the beautiful bracelet made from a stone that offers protection that arrived by mail to the ziplock bag of airplane bottles of booz that a friend brought over... everyone has their own special, thoughtful way of wishing me well.

I'm taking the big camera - we went back and forth a million times on whether that was smart or not (apparently there is some petty theft in the living quarters of the ashram) but I think its a measure of my excitement about what I hope to see and experience that I just couldn't stand to go without it.

Anyway, thanks everyone... especially Matt who has been nothing but supportive as I whine about suitcases and work and number of sports bras... and I'll be in touch!

done

More pics:
http://www.flickr.com/gp/43854149@N00/md95dM

The Big Day

Tomorrow's the big day! No, not the day I leave... the day I (potentially) shave my head. I know, what?!?

Basically, the ashram bathrooms don't have hot water. And I have curly hair that can't be managed without extensive hair products, which are challenging to carry around with me. And I am kind of vain about my looks. So I decided that before I go to India, I am (possibly) shaving it all off.

It cuts my cold shower time down to about 3 second. I won't have to carry ANY products around (although depending on how fast it grows Matt have to bring me some gel when he comes to meet me). And, I think it will be therapeutic. It will be the physical manifestation of the knowledge that this trip isn't about how cute I look doing yoga in India, but about learning and growing, and not eating anything infected with bacteria that's going to make me... nevermind.

The idea perculated for a long time, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it. I have always been curious to know what I would look like without hair. Just to clarify, we aren't talking shaving with a razor and shaving cream, but just a really short buzz cut, like I am joining the army (which I think Matt's dad thinks I am).

To milk the moment for as much as possible, I am having some close friends over tomorrow night... and all of my neighbors. When we came home on Friday after work, all our neighbors had gathered on Mike's front porch (house to the right of our house) to celebrate the unseasonably warm weather. As we pulled into the driveway we were swarmed by so many small children that we couldn't even safely open our doors, all shouting "want to come over? we have beer!". So we wandered over to join them and of course we talked about my trip and my plans and they all got very, very, excited about the head-shaving. So excited, that Dave and Justin offered to shave their heads with me, and want the whole neighborhood to get in on the action. So tomorrow we'll have a little gathering at 7:00 pm with perhaps the most random crowd we have gathered to date.

That's all. I'll report back once the deed is done.

What little I know

As I struggle to pack, I am realising how little I know about the place I am going, or what life is going to be like there. It makes it challenging to anticipate what I will need to get through the day/week/month.

As a result, I have been scouring the internet for any little pieces of information I can find about Neyyar Dam, Kerala, the ashram I am going to, what to pack, and what the course will be like.

Here's what I can tell you so far:

There's a lot of talk about swimming in the lake by the ashram. Which sounds great. Especially since the temperature looks to be in the 90's, and we practice yoga outdoors a lot. However, when I google the town of Neyyar Dam, all the tourism sites mention the nearby Crocodile Farm.

My daily schedule will look something like this:
-5.30am Wake-up
-6am Satsang (Meditation, chanting, lecture)
-8am Asanas, pranayama (learning how to practice yoga)
-10am Brunch (from what I have read - everyone is starving by this point)
-11am Karma yoga (an hour of service to the ashram, like cleaning the temple, hopefully not the bathrooms!)
-12noon Bhagavad Gita or Chanting class
-2pm Main lecture
-4pm Asanas, pranayama (Learning how to teach yoga)
-6pm Dinner
-8pm Satsang (Meditation, chanting, lecture)

I'll be staying in a twin room with one other person and my own bathroom, which will not have hot water. Yay me.

The ashram has limited internet facilities (no idea what that means) and a phone available for international calls.

I'll probably cry at least a couple of times during the first week.

If you want to see more about the place I'll be you can look at their site here:
http://www.sivananda.org/neyyardam/

Historic Moments

I thought I would be able to start getting into the groove of writing before I left, like I did when I kept in touch from Amsterdam, but I haven't really had a single second to spare. Time is going so quickly and there seems to be so much to take care of and wrap up before I leave, especially at work. In fact my wrist is aching from typing all day, I have been working so much. But I had to take a moment in the midst of the chaotic preperation to express how excited I am to be heading overseas again with a slightly lighter load - a little less embarrassement over being an american abroad.

Watching the election results last night was a pretty incredible experience, both on my couch and at a local bar surrounded by hundreds of equally excited young people. I'm glad its over, it feels like it has been commanding my attention for months on end, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything!

Now if only Barack was available to help me pack.