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!