dalh farts and anticipating hearts

my lag in posting is making me irate because i narrate my days in my head when instead i want to narrate it here, but alas the annoying internet connection is sllllowwww, snail slow. India has been good to me so far. I actually absolutely love it. The smell of cow shit, goat shit, mixed with curry, fresh pineapples, smoke, the garden, incense and people makes me happy. Not horse shit though, that just stinks!

I wake up inside a mosquito net of dreams and rise to the sun and coffee and sometimes the poops. Eat some eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches and start doing my work for the day (now organizing law files in Sambhavna's library then wandering around smoking cigarettes, taking rickshaw rides to a restaurant and paying a dollar for the most delicious lunch ever, reading, reading and stretching. I'm living at Sambhavna clinic, deep inside the lanes of Kwasi Camp or Bafna colony, i don't really know which one it's called. The area is predominately Muslim, with women walking though dusty lane ways in the all covering black burquas and the loudspeakers (which are seriously 10 feet away from my bedroom window) blasting (AND I MEAN BLASTING) the call to prayer 5 times a day, this wakes me up every night. I actually had a dream that a man was in my room singing to me, but it was the call to prayer playing tricks on me. We live in old Bhopal, where it's poor and there are slums and camps and no women on the streets at dark. I spit on the street and fit right in. well no, not really, but i still like it.

The city of Bhopal is quite big and we tend to go to two areas, the chowk (market) in the old town and the new market in new bhopal. The auto (rickshaw) ride to anywhere is also an adventure in itself. Transit is FUN! Last weekend another volunteer Judith and I went to Sanchi a town an hour or two away from here that has a hugeeeee Buddhist site from the 6th century on top of the hill. There were these things called stupas, huge round tombs with stairs and gates and there were ruins of many monasteries. I really had never EVER seen anything like it. On such a large scale anyway. The bus ride to Sanchi was fantastic, it was the first time I've taken the bus anywhere. But alas India seems to be the best of things and the worst, the worst ruins everything of course. But you can't let it get to you. The biggest problem in India is the men. They stare, they leer, they have a sexual maturity of the age of 13.... and 90% of the men are like this. It infuriates me to no end, but you have to let it go and ignore it when they stare STARE at you and bump into you to touch your tits, or grab your ass (thank god i haven't had this experience, poor Emmie).