New Friends in Old Cities and Horn Desensitization

1/30/2011 Varanasi, India

Sad to leave, but happy to arrive. In the little more than a week that we have been here we have grown to call our supposedly “temporary” hostel home. While the 150 rupee ($3 US) room never got any bigger, and the shared bathroom never became less occupied, we somehow managed to become very comfortable in our living situation. Maybe it was the great people who worked there or the interesting travelers that wondered in and out, or maybe the wonderful rooftop where we spent our mornings meditating and doing yoga or watching the monkeys and kites fly from rooftop to rooftop. Or possibly it was its location in the heart of the labyrinth which housed the hundreds of venders and shopkeepers who kept our stomachs both very happy and very unhappy. Regardless, our home away from home had grown very dear to us.

On the other hand, the place where we were moving was an opportunity we could not pass up.

Our new friends whom we had grown quite close to over a week of trials and tribulations of building a treehouse for the school where we were working, had invited us to stay for free at a beautiful compound where they were residing. No mattress, no hot water, and no restaurant, but 5 minutes from the school, instead of an hour, a kitchen, and really good people in the end won out.

Also today, we finished the treehouse! Yeahhhhh! An accomplishment we celebrated with pizza (yes pizza!), apply pie, and a fresh green salad! All firsts for Brooke and I since we departed the States. Wonderful!

1/31/2011 Varanasi

Walking along the crazy streets full of traffic today (no other kind of street here in India) a thought occurred to me. When I go back to countries without such crazy drivers and without the constant use of a horn, I will be much more likely to be hit by a car. Why? I have become immune to car horns. Well, immune might not be the best term as I do still hear them and get annoyed by them, but outwardly you would not even know. You might see me walking along a street with hundreds honking right behind and in front of me and it would seem as if I were deaf. I’m desensitized I guess you would say- there are just so many honking horns at all time and for all reasons, that I no longer even react. I figure they will go around me or, more likely, I am no in the way at all but they just want to exert their presence on the world. In other more sane driving countries the horn would be used more likely to warn you of something like the imminent danger of them hitting you- and I would not react, not even blink. When the time comes to return to the US, it will take some adjusting to!

Also of interest today- the tree house was christened today at the school by scores of very happy children!

Kites, Treehouses and Culture

1/28/2011 Varanasi, India

With my spirit not yet ruined by all the hustlers in India, I decided to take a chance and accept a guy’s offer to help him fly his kite. As it turned out, it ended without the usual request for money and I had one of my better cultural exchanges here in India. Indians and especially those from Varanasi are fanatical about kite flying! From the top of our guest house we can sometimes count over 100 of them bouncing around in the sky while their strings weave a brilliant spider web from the clouds to the different rooftops across the city. On this day we were along the Ganges and started talking to a group of guys flying their kites high above the opposite bank a couple hundred meters away. About 20 meters down river from us there was another group of guys also flying around the same area. After a few lost in translation moments it was finally explained to me that the two groups were in the middle of a heated kite fight. One at a time a kite from our group would go up against one from the opposing.

Whoever was able to cut their opponents glass covered string would move on to be pitted against the next in line while the loser sadly watched his kite slowly flutter to the ground where the children raced to collect their gratuitous prize. I was never actually allowed to fight, but in between rounds I became the good luck charm as after each time I flew the kite the owner won his battle. This happened an unprecedented 13 times in a row often with my kite winning so quickly, I would never even get the chance to see the attack. The entire hour we were flying there was great conversations and cultural exchanges as we shared in the jubilation of each win and the camaraderie of knowing that no matter how many scornful looks we received from our opponents, they would never figure out our secret weapon (Me). When our magic finally ran out on fight number fourteen, Brooke and I shook everyone’s hand and broke away from our new Indian friends to become tourist again, cherishing our small glimpse into this great culture.

1/29/2011 Varanasi, India

Environmental Presentation… Great to be working! Today we gave our first of two environmental presentations to the children of Asha Deep Vidyashram. This deserves way more than just a simple sentence, but we’ve already written a lot for the website which will be updated this week so better to check that out instead- www.GROWInitiative.org. (Including from the second of our presentations, teacher trainings, treehouse building, etc.)

Interesting Motto...Even for India

Monkey Business!

Ever thought you wanted a pet monkey? Well come to India and you will find more monkey business than you could have ever imagined. Here the monkeys are more like the squirrels in their abundance but much more amusing to watch. There are good monkeys, bad monkeys, big monkeys and small monkeys. Some are mischievous, and some are docile, but they are all adorable with their human like characteristics! Here are just a few of our favorite monkey highlights:

While lying on our bed in our hostel our door slowly began to open. Gently and silently a cute little monkey head pokes around the door. While we were “aaawwwing” how adorable it was the mean little bugger darted in the room, grabbed our bananas, hissed at us as I started to get up and like Kiser Sosee, was gone never to be seen again.

Not learning our lesson, we were walking along a rocky beach on the Ganges with exposed bananas looking forward to a lovely breakfast overlooking the river when Brooke felt a little tug on her hand from behind. By the time she turned around the money was running up the rocks with half of our breakfast! Still not learning our lesson, seeing the monkey was 50 meters away eating half of our lunch we stopped paying attention for just a moment to situate our beautiful dining spot. A split second later the same damn monkey using his magic monkey warp speed, grabbed the rest of fruit leaving us shaking our empty bowl and dollop of yogurt at him as turned around to show us how tasty the bananas were to eat.

This one is actually cool! Monkeys swim! To our surprise (and delight since they were truly adorable doing it) we found monkeys in Rishikesh cooling off in the Ganges by diving in and swimming, actually under water, clearly just for the fun of it. With crystal clear water, we can say first hand that a monkey under water is a funny site.