snotty nosed andrea

I just received an email from one of my old Keric Students Rachel! What a nice surprise and what a sweet email. The letters we receive from our students are clearly ESL works of art, the kids usually write bluntly and in a straight forward manner (with a little bit of backwards English thrown in) but something about the wording and the way the letters sound comes out so sweet and makes me smile, widely.

Yesterday we spent the day with the photo project kids. Everyone met at Chingari and the kids got their cameras and pictures back and it was exciting! All the kids showed up (which was something incredible considering it's not easy for people to get around - the bus may not be an option because money isn't an option or constraints with the movement of some of the children) and we went through their photos, scolding parents and siblings for taking the bulk of the pictures (something that clearly happened when a lot of the pictures are at adult eye level) and asking the children which pictures they took, and which ones are their favourites. One of the girls, Ishrat had told us at her house last week, when we asked her what she wanted to take pictures of, she had said herself, well receiving her prints back from the lab we laughed so hard because there she was in EVER picture on the roll striking a pose for the camera. So a little explaining was done as to who should be taking the pictures. And then off we went... filling up autos and the chingari bus, a caravan of 30 of us headed for a park in New Bhopal. The kids were great, Shifan (who has CP) was running RUNNING all over the place snapping this and that. I can't wait to upload the photos and scan what the kids took pictures of.


On Monday I'm going to the State School that a bunch of the Kids go to, (Chingari pays their tuitions, buys their uniforms and busses them back and forth) so the kids can take some pictures of school and their teachers. I'm really excited to go because secretly in my head I want to see what it would be like to work in a school like this (orrrrrrr maybe work in the new school that Chingari is opening when they open up their rehabilitation center for the kids).


anyway, what else... I can't wait to go to Varanasi (and hope hope hope it's not overrun by touts and scammers). Writing this post has actually made me feel so much better, I don't want to be down down...
My body is letting me down. I now have a cold, insomnia and I still have the shits. Adding this to my unstable emotional state from having to switch to a new birth control (something I'm going to have to do AGAIN in 1 month) is making me have a hard day. But (a la rocky) hey, forget about it.... I will be fine tomorrow...pumping some fits in the air and jump up yelling raspberry!

shits and giggles and children that change your life

5 more days left in Bhopal and I just got over my second bout of travelers diarrhea so hopefully I’m good to go...

The last week has been an educational experience in everything that is truly India.. Emily and I have started a photo project with 7 children living in the Basties (the slums, the communities, the colonies, whatever you wanna call them) around Bhopal. Of these Children 3 are physically special needs (they have physical deformities such as bow leggedness, which prevents them from standing or walking normally), 3 are mentally special needs, and 1 is Yogiata, the sister of 2 brothers who were born with physical abnormalities. All these children are born from parents who were somewhere in old Bhopal the night of December 2nd 1984 when the gas cloud from the exploded pesticide factory Union Carbide passed over their homes and changed their lives.

We went into the Basties with a woman who works for Chingari Trust she brought us to each of the homes that the children live at. What an amazing experience to have chai in these houses and get to meet the people who experienced the worst when the carbine factory exploded and hear what they say about that night and what has happened since. Going to the basties is ... pretty insane... these people live in the smallest of spaces, with the largest amount of family, and some of them have next to nothing. And then there are the kids. Adil, Radisha Bi's (one of the women who started Chingari) nephew sat in my lap and covered my eyes before giving me giant bear hugs and kissed me a million times. how can you hold back the tears. How can I type this and not feel what I felt then, I can't. The tears flow. His little legs bent all sorts of ways that they shouldn't be. And his 16 year old body the size of a 3 year old...

the kids in the photo project are so clearly excited that it's terribly contagious. I can't wait to see what kind of pictures we get back and what we can do as the next step.

ok veggie burger calls...

happiness is a warm bed

It's cold here at night time. not canada cold (hahahahhahhaha terri...) but cold enough that emily and i hide inside my mosquito net bed, under the blankets with beer and gin and a hot mac on our laps while we watch the show weeds. we just finished the second season and I actually really liked it. I just soo relate to the drug dealing black people or the rich white people. yeah right

I'm feeling really happy. India is easy in so many ways. I forget where I am and what I do and the future. All that future thinking that i did when i originally went to korea has gone flying out the window. It's all in the moment and the moment is happy sunshine on my face with delicious lunch in my belly. I feel very lucky. So lucky that i can come and travel and do these things, SEE these things, and then put them out of my mind. That's the luckiest part. Slums, oh yeah...slums slums...what..lunch oh ok.... buy more kortas...oh ok...
back to work...

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).

days 5 and i'm alive

I have the shits. oh the india shits. but it ain't so bad and hopefully I won't get the full blown delhi belly that so many folks get here, but i'm sure it's going to come sometime... The past few days have definitely made me calm down a bit from the shock of first arrival. It's shocking and a lot of people are very poor but it's home for the next bit so get used to it.

The clinic really is the savour of it all. It's really really amazing to start my trip off here and get used to the land of loud before i really have to plunge right into it. I've started working on my project which is researching on the medicinal garden they have here. Today I spent time with Ratna the woman who runs the garden and made her explain all the ins and outs of it to me. now i'm in love with her. This woman is amazing. She came to the clinic to work in the garden and didn't know much about it, now she is the authority on medicinal herbs. She knows everything about that herbs and what they are used for and what they can do etc etc.

So many people here are like that, insanely inspiring in awesome ways.

i have to go poop again now so I'll cut this short.

SURPRISE

is kind of how i feel right now. india should be called intimidatia or something of the like. it's a bag of everything and my emotions are on high or maybe on low because I'm in a little shell shock bubble also. and today is only my second day, or really my first day because i just taxied through Delhi to get to the train and then get to Bhopal yesterday. how do i write what it's like or how I'm feeling or reacting...because i don't even know how to explain it. i guess picturing what you see in the movies or read is pretty accurate, but then again I'm not Patrick swayze so maybe don't think about the movies (that one with patric swayze being pretty pretty bad). it's overwhelming and scary and beautiful and dirty and poor (sooooo sooo soo poor) it's nothing I've ever seen or done before, ever. ever ever.

the train ride from delhi to bhopal was great. I've never had a sleeper train before and the voices of my neighbours and the rocking motion put me to sleep pretty soon after i lay down. i woke up various times throughout the night usually when we pulled into a station, and i could see the foggy shapes of people waiting at the train station. it was pretty ghostly. the countryside was fantastical. brown and green beauty with fog and sparse trees. arriving in Bhopal was a little like arriving in Delhi (except i had a wonderful Emily Gibson there to meet me!), tuk tuk crazy, yelling, screaming, people seeing you and wanting your attention, money, whatever...

the clinic that i will be staying at for the next month is absolutely beautiful. it's peaceful and airy and just magnificent! there are other volunteers here from all over the place working on various projects, staff that work at the clinic, and chipmunks of the indian kind galore! I've been shadowing ms. emily jane all day and have been trying to get my bearings etc. and smoking a lot of cigarettes. and eating especially delicious food that costs next to nothing.

last week i was in Amsterdam with brock and nash. oh what joy to see nash! hahah, i nearly shit my pants when I saw her! we had a good time drinking and eating and getting tattoos, well just me. it kind of feels like a year ago now, india is too overwhelming to try to get my brain to understand. i'm on auto pilot. oh i feel emotional overload, and i guess that's why i write here! to pawn it off to you dear readers!

night!

tis the eve of the new year and...

i just realized that i'll be 28 in 2008 and 29 in 2009 and how have i not noticed this until now. yes that's what i'm thinking of on this day of days. Well i guess this is some kind of new year post or it could be a travel post (i'm traveling at the moment) or it could be some emotional dissertation, that i'm sure it will be no matter what.



i'm in north holland, and it's a freaking adorable tiny town. and it's full of bikes and indie looking boys with geek glasses riding them. and grandmas and mum's with babies and it's all on the bike! i'm in holland and i can drink the tap water. i didn't realize this until i was here for half a day and looking for a water bottle. drinking water from the tap is a luxury that i wish we had in korea. i think i'll appreciate it even more when i'm drunk/hung over next week and all i'm going to have to do is turn on the tap to rehydrate myself. amazing. i'm in the real version of that street in canada's wonderland and i'm visiting my family which is going amazingly well now. not so at first. ohh a little strange and a little loaded with comments and assumptions and not knowing each other at all (i haven't seen them in 2 and a half years and i only see my dad once ever year or so) but we are getting used to each other which is good, but of course we will all part and recollect maybe in 2 more years...

well it's new years eve and i'm thinking about things and i'm missing louis. but here are some things i want to accomplish. and i think this is good to make a list. and who knows...



i want to be fit, fit fitter and i want to bike, a lot, around a cournty (a small one, a flat one, maybe the one i'm in..) and be able to do it AND not hate it. I want to pay off my student loans and be debt free and feel free to do anything and go anywhere and not have to worry about monthly payments. i want to be less crazed and more aware and be kind to my mother. i want to travel to a million places and i want to see a milliondy things and i want to do it with the boy i love.

bambino where are you?! i could drink you and sing into you and of course nash and michael would be by my side.
happy last day of the year!