Monday, June 14, 2004

and now the end is near...

so this is my last real day in india... tomorrow i'll be up up early to get a bus back to trivandrum and get myself to the airport. i fly from trivandrum to mumbai. then i'll spend the night at some airport hotel. and bright at early wednesday morning i'll begin my trek back to the US. i'm excited.

i had an ayurvedic oil massage today. it was quite nice and now i smell good. kind of like coconut or some sort of dessert. i couldn't get the woman to tell me what the scent of the oil was. she just kept saying it was ayurvedic oil. i finally got her to say that it was a blend of some kind.

had a minor annoyance with a money exchange man today. at the place i had been doing my e-mail everyday (until today - he pissed me off and lost my business). i knew that they had a not so good rate, because last night susie realized that she had no money and needed to exchange a tiny bit of cash. so i knew i would be getting 42 rupees to the dollar instead of the going rate of 44. he asked me how much i wanted to change, i said 20 dollars (some random cash i had left over from when i originally bought yen in detroit on the way to japan). so he had his little calculator and showed me that it would be 840 rupees. fine. so i hand him my cash, which happened to be 2 fives and 10 ones. then he's plucking away at his calculator again and he tells me i can get 820 for it. so i was a confused, i said 42 rupees, right? and he says there's a different rate for 1 dollar bills. well- i told him that was crap and give me back the ones. so he did, but then some jabbering ensued with the other guy in the shop, and he changed his mind. so i snapped at him and said fine, stop trying to rip me off. so it's really time for me to go, since i'm now yelling at people.

i'm feeling a little nervous about my re-entry into society. first of all the kind of reverse culture shock. and in a social sense, i feel like i've been gone for so long that people are just used to me not being around! so next time i speak/write to you i'll be back on american soil!

:)

Friday, June 11, 2004

the right hand as "the clean hand"

so i've had a terribly relaxing morning. slept until 7:30, stayed in bed until 9:30. haven't done any yoga - but i do plan to. i want to keep with my practice. in the past 2 weeks i've done about 18 yoga classes - an incredible record for me as far as exercise is concerned (well, since my ballet days). i'm feeling really strong now and pretty healthy despite my slide into eating bad foods again (had french fries and paneer masala last night, poached eggs on toast this morning).

so i have been trying to re-train my hands to use silverware once again. and the funny thing, you're only meant to use your right hand when eating. this is "the clean hand". you always give or take things with the right hand. the left hand is your toilet hand, and therefore unclean. but let's be honest.... i use my right hand....

anyhow. it's a sunny day here. we had rain last night, so it's a little muddy now. there's not much in the way of beaches... the water is very high right now. but i may go down later anyway and try to find some rocks to sit on. there are only a few shops and a few restaurants open now. we've got one restaurant which is going to make brownies at our request. v. exciting.

i did have a good time at the ashram, there were some very cool people there. and most of them had the same thoughts as me about the whole ashram experience. we liked the yoga, the controlled feedings had their benefit, but the chanting and lectures were bit much. on friday when susie and i left there were also 3 other people leaving. and many of the others were planning to leave the next day, since there would be only a few people left. (there was about 10 of us doing the yoga vacation)

so i'm de-compressing a little, relaxing my schedule and weaning myself back onto eating animal products. i think today i'll have a beer at dinner. and more french fries. :)

elvis has left the building

and i have left the ashram. i was skipping most of the lectures, because they were so boring, and i skipped the satsang (meditation, chanting and "talk" - only the head chick talking) quite a few times... plus i was getting tired of the food.

so i'm at varkala beach now, staying at a fabulous cliff top hotel for 80 rupees a night. i'll write a little more tomorrow, right now there's the pressing matter of eating something fabulous tasting!

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

i've been assaulted by a mango

seriously. i was on my way to the lecture and it just fell out of the tree and landed square on my right shoulder. hurt like hell. i screamed like a girl (but what did you expect). i'll probably have a bruise. my shoulder stands might suffer (and they have been fabulous lately).

so i've just waited 15 minutes to load this page and log in - so needless to say i probably won't be doing it again real soon. i actually wrote a really long post on monday, just before i came to the ashram, but when i tried to post it the browser crashed. i saved the text to a file and re-booted, i ran norton anti-virus (which found hundreds of infected files that it could not fix), i tried saving the text in an e-mail, but i couldn't send e-mail. suffice to say i'm a little fed up with computers right now. computers are stupid.

anyhow- i'm here, at the ashram. the first day i was feeling really lost and confused most of the time. today i'm just tired. it's pretty scheduled, we don't have much free time. which has it's good points and bad points... our daily schedule is generally:

5:30 wake up bell
6:00 satsang (group meditation, chanting, and talk)
7:30 tea
8:00 yoga class
10:00 lunch
11:00 karma yoga (ashram code for chores)
12:00 lecture
1:30 tea
2:00 coaching class (optional- if you're having trouble with a pose)
3:30 yoga class
6:00 dinner
8:00 satsang
10:30 lights out

so the early morning wasn't so bad the first day, but i'd had a good night's rest the night before. this morning i was quite tired. the satsang is an experience... probably my least favorite part of the whole thing. i have a lot of trouble with meditation. i like the idea of it, but mine is a mind that wanders... constantly, randomly, quickly. i tried just sitting there thinking (we meditate for 1/2 an hour) but that makes the time go slower, i think.

the chanting is kind of like singing in church. only i have no idea what the words are. there's lots of clapping and tambourines... classic new-agey stuff. then is a little talk from the head chick (i always think about "the leader" from the simpson's - look! another leader bean!) about whatever. sometimes interesting, sometimes she just rambles on and on.

the best part by far is the yoga class. it's challenging and interesting and we do the class near this beautiful lake. i'm feeling a little sore, but in a good way. we're starting kind of slow, and adding new poses everyday.

though we only eat 2 times a day there is loads of food - they come around like 5 times to see if you want more of this or that (the food is all vegetarian and mysterious - i mostly don't know what things are - but it usually tastes good). and so i eat plenty at every meal (with only my bare hand, i'll have lost all table manners by the time i come home). but i am still hungry later... i think i require more frequent feedings. i'll manage, i'm sure.

the lecture is just more of the "leader bean" talking about random things. i spend most of the time trying to be comfortable sitting on a stone floor. the karma yoga is no big deal. so far i've had to sweep the meditation room and clean the toilets.

so really, i like the yoga. the rest is bit too new age for me. i read that there would be an ayervedic doctor here, but apparently not at this time (it is low season). however, they have a library here. so i'm reading some books about ayerveda and yoga.

well, i've got another hour before yoga, and have barely had time to write in my journal, we are very busy mostly and the "leader bean" is long winded and often runs over. tonight we are going to some sort of local festival in the town, should be interesting. i may post again before i leave, but definitely not this week.

om...